It's for a book, I swear!

I read a passage in an ancient poem, and I seem to understand my own heart. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[itsforabookiswear]

CHARACTERS

children

description

development

emotions

injuries

psychology

NITTY GRITTY

dialogue

editing

formatting

narration

plot

publishing

vocabulary

WORLD BUILDING

careers

fashion

language

locations

names

tools

weapons

SETTINGS

fantasy

historical

modern

mythology

post apocalypse

science fiction

supernatural

RESOURCES

masterpost

prompts

links

programs

ADVICE

ENCOURAGEMENT

[brynwrites]

Part I: Outlining.

Fore Note: This is the process I’m currently using to outline, write, and edit my novels. There are a million different ways to journey through the writing process, and the only ‘correct’ one is the one that works for you in the moment. Everyone’s writing process is a little bit different, and most writers (including myself) change theirs every few books as they figure out what techniques are most beneficial to them and for certain types of novels.

I’m a pretty big outliner when it comes to complex novels and series, but simpler novels and novellas I prefer to wing. Below is the process I would go through if I were doing a full, detailed outline. For simple plots, I skip steps 3-5.

1. Brainstorming. This can involve pretty much anything, including but not limited to…

Daydreaming.

Inspirational pictures.

Science articles.

Life experiences.

Any of these eight exercises.

The key is to write down everything you might use, just in case in you need it. You can throw out a bad idea later but you can’t utilize a good idea you’ve forgotten.

Keep reading

[brynwrites]

Love your blog! I'm currently working on the outline of my first novel (a sic-fi mystery) and I am just so stuck on it! Worst case of writer's block I've ever had. Do you have any advice on how to overcome writer's block? xx

What to do when writer’s block stalls your story…

1. Know all your facts. What key steps lead up to the point where you’re stuck? Can you make a diagram of where the characters are at that point? Which facts do each character know and what are everyone’s goals? Even if you’ve just outlined these things, sometimes it helps to simplify them and make a quick graph, time table, or sketch.

2. Ask yourself simple questions. Step forward from where your story is at in the moment and ask where each individual plot thread needs to go. Break things down as far as you possibly can. Examples:

Say your characters need to infiltrate a secret basement. What forms of disguise do they use? What entry options are there? What security measures will they face? What skills and tech will they need to overcome them? What time of day would they enter? Etc.

Say they need to travel a long distance and meet some new characters along the way. What transportation will they use? How long will it take to get there? How will they spend their nights? Where are these new characters coming from? What situations might show off these new character’s primary personality traits and skills? Who might the main character accidentally stumble across one of these situations?

3. Take a step back. Sometimes it’s easier to brainstorm when you’re away from your usual writing place. Take a walk, go swimming, cook something yummy, play with your pet, do anything that allows you to think quietly while moving around.

4. Go for absolutes. What’s the worst possible outcome? The most humorous? What will cause these characters the most shock? What will benefit them the most? What will benefit the antagonist the most? Sometimes just coming up with a list of things that would never happen can help you get your creativity flowing, and sometimes you’ll find things that actually work along the way. 

5. Sit on it. If your brain is tired and frustrated by going over the same facts and questions again and again, then put it away and do something else. Let your subconscious do all the work. You’ll be amazed at what answers it’ll give you when you come back after a relaxing evening and a good night’s rest. 

6. Get some help. Throw the problem at your friends and let them work through it with you. They won’t know the characters or the story like you do, and they probably won’t come up with anything you can use, but just bouncing ideas off of someone and hearing all the wrong answers can help immensely. 

7. Skip it. This is your story. If you can’t figure out a plot point right now, you always have the option of skipping it and coming back later.

8. Work backwards. If you know your next plot point, figure out one step before that. Do the characters need certain information, skills, or items to proceed to that plot point? How would they acquire those? If you don’t know that far ahead, work from the climax instead. Who is your antagonist? What do they want? Why does the protagonist need to stop them? How can the protagonist go about doing this? What hurdles would get in their way of achieving it? How would they deal with those hurdles?

Tl;dr. The key to working through writers block is to:

Break the big question “What happens next” into smaller and/or more specific questions.

Exercise and rest.

^ Repeat!

[cy-cyborg]

Tips for Writing and Drawing Amputees: Bandaged Stumps

When writing and drawing amputee characters, unless your character only just lost their limb, they don't need to wear a bandage over their stumps.

to be clear, eda's depiction in the show was fine, since she'd only just lost her arm and went (presumably) without any medical attention, but because the show didn't have much time to show her afterwards, I've noticed a tendency of the fandom to draw her wearing the bandage permanently, so that's why I'm picking on her for my example lol.

It's a bit of a trope at this point, and I think it comes from one of a few different places:

Amputees do wear bandages on their stumps, but usually only for the first 6-12 weeks post-amputation, sometimes longer if the amputation was a result of a burn. It's possible people saw this though and assumed it was permanent.

Most amputees wear a sock made of either cotton or silicone under their prosthetics to provide them with some extra padding. These socks, called liners, often stick out from the top of the prosthetic socket and could possibly be mistaken for a bandage from a distance.

Some amputees will wear compression garments for a few months to a few years after their amputations which could also be mistaken for a bandage from a distance. These garments are designed to stop swelling and reduce phantom pain, but they aren't bandages.

Stumps get cold easier because their circulation typically isn't as good as the rest of the body, so some amputees will wear socks over them even if they aren't wearing a prosthetic to keep warm, which again could be mistaken for a bandage from a distance.

This one is funny, but in my experience unfortunately, it's the most common: people think the end of an amputee's stump is just a perpetual open wound that never heals. Meaning to avoid "gore" it needs to be covered. I've met fully grown adults who believed this until I showed up to work/uni without my prosthetics or socks on.

People are uncomfortable with seeing an uncovered stump and so put bandages over it to avoid confronting their biases.

Some combination of these points.

But yeah, unless your amputee has only just lost their limb in the last few weeks, they don't need a bandage.

The ironic thing too, is that for most amputees, bandaging a stump is nearly impossible. I've been in and out of hospital since I was 1 year old and only ever met 3 nurses and no doctors/surgeons who could successfully bandage my stump in a way that the bandage would even stay on. This is because stumps are usually tapered in shape (meaning they are wider at the top, closer to the body, and thinner at the bottom), so gravity will pull the bandage off 9 times out of 10.

On a final note: it's ok to show your amputee's stump, it's not gore, there's no blood, it just looks like a regular limb that just stops early. In fact, if you are writing/creating anything for kids or that is likely to be seen by kids, I encourage you to show your amputee's stumps at least once. I used to work on a disability awareness program for kids, and I lost count of the amount of times kids were terrified of me, because they all expected my leg to be bloody and gory. For a lot of kids, I was their first real-life exposure to an amputee, meaning they'd never even heard of people like me, or they had seen an amputee on TV, but because the show went out of its way to avoid showing the person's stump, they assumed it must have been because there was "something scary at the end" that they weren't supposed to see (kids are surprisingly perceptive, they will pick up on stuff like that without you realising). And scared kids aren't good at articulating why they're scared, and would often say really mean or hurtful things to me. I knew not to take it personally and learned how to handle those situations, but not everyone is used to dealing with kids. For a new amputee (or anyone who's less confident in their disability), the kinds of things those kids would say could be absolutely confidence destroying. I never blame the kids, it's not their fault, but the whole situation could have been avoided if they had seen people like us before they had the chance to hear the wrong info. Good representation like this can be the difference between a kid crying, making throw-up sounds and calling an amputee "disgusting monsters" (all things I've had kids do/say) and them just being like "oh ok, cool."

[letswritesomenovels]

Write What You Know (Not Necessarily What You’ve Experienced)

I’ve recently written a post about the true meaning behind the quote “good writers borrow; great writers steal.” 

Well, another piece of writing advice has come under scrutiny lately, so I’m here to explain the meaning behind “write what you know.” 

“Write what you know” really means “write what you understand.”

Many people interpret “write what you know” to mean “write about what you have experienced for yourself,” but that’s obviously silly advice. If everyone followed it, libraries would be much, much smaller. Writing is about using your imagination to explore worlds of possibilities. Bits and pieces of your personal history will of course come into play, but they should always be presented in new and interesting ways. Otherwise, writers would be too bored to actually finish their stories.

When people you think you should probably trust tell you to “write what you know,” they aren’t telling you to fictionalise your own memoir. They’re telling you to write about the things that you understand. 

A novel may be a great series of lies, but there must be truth at the centre of it all and that truth is a direct result of, and in correlation to, the author’s understanding of their subject matter. 

For an author, this means a couple of things:

You should always be able to empathise with your characters. You should be able to tap into your emotions, your passions, your relationships to inform their emotions, their passions, their relationships. 

If you’re writing a scene about two people walking along the Seine at midnight unable to admit their true feelings for each other, you don’t need to have traveled to Paris or walked along the Seine or talked about the moon on the water when really all you wanted to say was that the same moonlight was making the other person look very pretty that night. 

What you need is to know what it is to take a walk in a place that is romantic no matter if romance is taking place there, to have wanted to say something but been too afraid to say it, to be filled with hope and fear and misery and joy all at the same time. 

You should always be able to feel the heart of the scene, instead of simply imagining it. 

If you can’t put yourself directly into your character’s shoes, they’ll wind up saying or doing something that won’t quite ring true.  

You should always be both interested in and knowledgable about the topics and settings that find their way into your stories. 

You don’t have to be an archaeologist to write an Indiana Jones novel, but a healthy fascination with people like T.E. Lawrence, Roy Chapman Andrews, and Gertrude Bell should probably come into play.

You should always not only be knowledgable about the topic you’re writing about, but care for it. You should be able to understand why Indy says “it belongs in a museum!!” You should understand why your characters feel passionate about whatever they’re engaging in, because you share some of that passion. (Even if you wouldn’t dream of digging around in a desert yourself.)

It’s okay if you don’t know very much about a topic when you first get an idea for a book, but after doing some research about it, you should connect to the material in some way. 

As long as you’re interested in a topic or place, you’re not breaking the “write what you know” rule by taking the time to understand something you hadn’t when you first imagined your story. 

What’s more: write the kind of story you enjoy reading.

That sounds a little obvious, but people try to write stories they wouldn’t actually enjoy reading themselves all of the time. 

If you love reading YA fantasy novels, but feel compelled to write the next Great Literary American Novel, you’re not writing the sort of story you’re familiar with–that you’re passionate about–and that will show on every single page. Those are two very different sort of books. If you love reading YA, exclusively read YA, but try to write the GLAN, you’re not writing what you know. You’re probably not even writing something you truly care about.

And if you find the story you’re writing dull and uninteresting, any reader will probably feel the same way. 

If someone has read your work and says something along the lines of “you should stick to writing what you know…” 

What they’re really saying is that something isn’t resonating as true. That somehow, it doesn’t feel quite real. That they don’t think the characters’ emotional reactions are what they’d be in real life. Or that Indiana Jones is supposed to be a renowned archaeologist, but he doesn’t seem to know much about archaeology??? 

When they say this, they’re not telling you to go get a degree in archaeology or that in order to write that romantic scene, you must fall in love with someone, walk along the Seine with them, and then write what about what you felt in that moment. 

They’re letting you know that there is a disconnect somewhere between you and the writing. That they can tell you haven’t put enough of yourself in this story. That the circles don’t overlap as much as they should in the venn diagram between the knowledge, emotions, and interests the story requires and the knowledge you possess, the emotions you’ve felt, and the interests you invest in. 

When somebody says “write what you know,” ask yourself:

if you’ve really done enough research on this topic–if you actually want to write about this topic enough to do the required research 

if there’s another emotional well you can draw from to understand how a character might be feeling, how they might react to a circumstance

if this book is one that you yourself would pick up from a library shelf. 

And make sure there’s a core of truth within those all those lies. 

[fictionadventurer]

Story = External Events + Internal Change

External Events = Happenings that change the situation outside the individual character. The characters go to a new place, solve a problem, raise and answer a question, etc.

Internal Change = The character's internal reaction to these events, which changes their beliefs or personality

A story needs to have both. A story with only External Events is just Stuff Happening. A story with only Internal Change is just navel gazing.

Plotting is just figuring out how External Events can drive Internal Change, and how Internal Change can affect the character's approach to External Events.

Steps:

Decide on a starting and ending point for External Events. What is the problem, and how is it resolved?

Decide what the character's personality is at the beginning of the story, and decide how you want them to have changed by the end of the story.

Figure out which External Events along the course of the story will bring about the Internal Change you want to see.

A story can be driven by a character's refusal to or determination not to change, but we must be aware of that interior state and its effect upon External Events.

[luna-azzurra]

Some Actually Useful Questions to Get to Know Your OC Part Two

↳ What lie do they tell themselves to sleep at night? Seriously. What’s the little piece of denial that keeps them functioning? Do they pretend they don’t care what people think? Tell themselves they’re over that one person? Convinced they’re not the villain of someone else’s story? We all lie to ourselves; your OC is no exception.

↳ What’s their emotional kryptonite? A specific thing that absolutely shatters them, like someone crying? Being ignored? Praise from a parent figure? The sound of an old song? The smell of something nostalgic? Find it and use it against them (lovingly, of course).

↳ When do they feel the most alive? Is it mid-battle, mid-baking, mid-breakup? Does adrenaline light them up, or do they find joy in the quiet, mundane things, like folding laundry while listening to sad girl music? This can reveal a LOT about what drives them.

↳ What would totally ruin their day? A bad haircut? Someone touching their stuff? Or is it something deeper, like being reminded of their failures, or seeing someone else succeed where they couldn’t?

↳ Who do they think they should be? And who are they really? This one’s juicy. Do they think they should be a hero, but keep acting like a villain?

↳ What’s the one thing they’d never admit out loud, even under duress? The shameful thought. The inappropriate desire. The thing they desperately want but don’t think they deserve. DONT FORGET: Characters are built on what they repress.

↳ What are they petty about? Don’t pretend your OC is above this, I mean everyone’s petty about something. Do they hold grudges over stolen pens? Get irrationally jealous of someone’s hair? Still mad about a game of Uno from 2007? Petty makes them fucking real.

↳ How do they act when they think no one’s watching? Do they let their mask slip? Dance around the kitchen? Talk to their cat in baby voice? Cry a little?

↳ What would make them snap? Where is the breaking point? What line has to be crossed for them to finally say “Enough”? Is it injustice? Betrayal? Feeling powerless? You’ll know you’ve found it when it scares you a little (Or a lot).

↳ If they had a theme song, what would it be? No, seriously. The vibe of a character’s soundtrack says a lot. Is it Angsty indie rock? Bubblegum pop masking deep pain? Make a playlist. Your OC will tell you who they are... <3

[yagamimi-aka-mimi-deactivated20]

tweet

Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

[ama-kitkat123]

>:)c

May I present to you, nationalclothing.org?

It doesn't have everything, but it's still my first source when researching traditional clothing from other cultures.

[penanatomy-studies]

There's also this resource on historical fashion: Claire’s Historical Fashion Reference & Resources

[zheida]

another addition as far as physical media goes there is the encyclopedia of national dress (that i still need to buy myself bc this kind of thing is super important to my sort of fantasy designing) but yes i do agree i wish there was EVEN MORE documentation on this

[firstpersonnarrator]

I went down this rabbit hole looking for what people in the Middle Ages called their underwear. It was a challenge. So here are the ways I found what I needed:

Online, sometimes you can find seamstresses and tailors of cosplay or larp costumes, who do historical dress. The makers live or die by the authenticity of their work as a point of competition. So sometimes they link to the sources they used. try insta and pinterest.

You may also want to try “history of fashion,” “historical dress,” “history of costume,” etc search terms. You might get links to book publishers of huge historical dress tomes from publishers like Phaidon, Rizzoli, Taschen, the Metropolitan Musem’s Costume Institute (X).

Or try the most important fashion universities’ publications: Parsons (X), Central St. Martin’s (X), The F.I.T. (X) etc.

Some book options:

My personal favorite that I own:

Fashion History, by The Kyoto Costume Institute

(only goes back to 1700s tho)

And the all-important

the undies worn in the Middle Ages are called “braies”

[hinc-dracones]

seems helpful?

[tired-fandom-ndn]

Extremely nitpicky but I hate white wedding gowns in fantasy, especially when they make absolutely no sense in the setting. No, that culture in the far north that prioritizes function over form and mostly wears heavy furs would not have the means, ability, or desire to make a sleeveless ivory silk gown with a semi-sweetheart neckline. Please be sensible about this and use your creativity instead of just slapping a Kleinfeld wedding gown into a medieval fantasy setting.

[tired-fandom-ndn]

Here's some tricks to making interesting fantasy wedding dresses:

Focus on the things that indicate wealth and prosperity in your fantasy culture.

What materials would your bride have access to and what would make the most sense for her to wear?

What colors are not only beautiful and culturally significant, but also require expensive or rare dyes?

What imagery could be used in patterns that are relevant to the culture (animals, plants, family crests, etc)?

What skills could be displayed in the making of the gown (beadwork, embroidery, fabric painting, etc)?

What interesting and unique materials can you add that are relevant to the culture (fur, leather, bones, plants, shells, etc)?

Would your culture be more focused on the amount of material, things like trains and heavy lairs, or on the quality and detail?

What will happen to the gown after the wedding (worn for other events, turned into household materials, turned into other clothing, etc) and are there details to it that make any other functions easier?

What other things make the bride stand out (veils, headdresses, jewelry, makeup, body paint, hairstyles, outerwear, etc)?

Is it more important in your culture for the gown to be made by other people (showing off wealth) or by the bride and/or her family (showing off the bride's talents)?

[mosellegreen]

Writing Antagonists, Antiheroes and Villains

Obviously there’s a lot of overlap between the three, despite their differences, which is why this is all one post. In fact, some of the articles have one of those words in their title but the content of the article belongs in one of the other categories.

I think the links about the antagonist’s journey are some of the most interesting on this list.

Antiheroes

Heroes and Anti-Heroes - What’s the difference? Anti-heroes in Science Fiction Movies 5 Types of Anti-Heroes You Need More Scoundrels in Your Life: How to Write a Han Solo Hero in Six Easy Steps! Han Versus Luke – Who’s the Better Hero? Defining and Developing Your Anti-Hero, excerpt from Bullies, Bastards & Bitches by Jessica Page Morrell 4 Ways to Make Your Antihero Deliciously Irresistible

Antagonists

When Being Bad is Good: Creating a Great Antagonist Being Evil: Plotting From the Antagonist’s Perspective 10 Traits of a Strong Antagonist 12 Tips On How To Write Antagonists Your Readers Will Love To Hate Types of antagonist Seven Types of Antagonists Ten Tips for a Terrific Antagonist 10 Essential Tips for Writing Antagonists How To Write The Bad Guy Likable Villains 3 Traits Your Hero and Villain Should Share Guide to Writing a Villain A Guide to Villainous Motivations

Villains

Guide to Writing a Villain Creating an Interesting Bad Guy The Sympathetic Villain WriteWorld: Villains Exploring The Dark Side: The Anti-Hero’s Journey - despite the title, this article is about villains, not antiheroes as the term is usually understood Killer Personalities The Antagonist’s Epiphany How to Create a Credible Villain in Fiction How to Avoid Creating a Weak Villain 5 Characteristics of an Epic Villain Writing a Great Villain 14 Motives for Becoming a Supervillain Writing Villains Vs. Writing Heroes Villains Are People Too, But… A Short Defence of Villains by Agnes Repplier Villains: because a good bad guy is the author’s best friend. The Other in Fiction: Creating Wonderfully Wicked Villains Three-Dimensional Villains: Finding Your Character’s Shadow 10 Traits of Highly-Effective Villains Writing Tips #79:How To Write Better Villains Villains by Vicki Hinze The Sixteen Villain Archetypes

The Antagonist’s Journey

Exploring The Dark Side: The Anti-Hero’s Journey The Villain’s Journey Does the Villain’s Journey Mirror the Hero’s Journey? Forget the Hero’s Journey. Women want an Antagonist’s Tale Return to the Antagonist’s Tale

[pygmi-says-hi]

STOP DOING THIS IN INJURY FICS!!

Bleeding:

Blood is warm. if blood is cold, you’re really fucking feverish or the person is dead. it’s only sticky after it coagulates.

It smells! like iron, obv, but very metallic. heavy blood loss has a really potent smell, someone will notice.

Unless in a state of shock or fight-flight mode, a character will know they’re bleeding. stop with the ‘i didn’t even feel it’ yeah you did. drowsiness, confusion, pale complexion, nausea, clumsiness, and memory loss are symptoms to include.

blood flow ebbs. sometimes it’s really gushin’, other times it’s a trickle. could be the same wound at different points.

it’s slow. use this to your advantage! more sad writer times hehehe.

Stab wounds:

I have been mildly impaled with rebar on an occasion, so let me explain from experience. being stabbed is bizarre af. your body is soft. you can squish it, feel it jiggle when you move. whatever just stabbed you? not jiggly. it feels stiff and numb after the pain fades. often, stab wounds lead to nerve damage. hands, arms, feet, neck, all have more motor nerve clusters than the torso. fingers may go numb or useless if a tendon is nicked.

also, bleeding takes FOREVER to stop, as mentioned above.

if the wound has an exit wound, like a bullet clean through or a spear through the whole limb, DONT REMOVE THE OBJECT. character will die. leave it, bandage around it. could be a good opportunity for some touchy touchy :)

whump writers - good opportunity for caretaker angst and fluff w/ trying to manhandle whumpee into a good position to access both sites

Concussion:

despite the amnesia and confusion, people ain’t that articulate. even if they’re mumbling about how much they love (person) - if that’s ur trope - or a secret, it’s gonna make no sense. garbled nonsense, no full sentences, just a coupla words here and there.

if the concussion is mild, they’re gonna feel fine. until….bam! out like a light. kinda funny to witness, but also a good time for some caretaking fluff.

Fever:

you die at 110F. no 'oh no his fever is 120F!! ahhh!“ no his fever is 0F because he’s fucking dead. you lose consciousness around 103, sometimes less if it’s a child. brain damage occurs at over 104.

ACTUAL SYMPTOMS:

sluggishness

seizures (severe)

inability to speak clearly

feeling chilly/shivering

nausea

pain

delirium

symptoms increase as fever rises. slow build that secret sickness! feverish people can be irritable, maybe a bit of sass followed by some hurt/comfort. never hurt anybody.

ALSO about fevers - they absolutely can cause hallucinations. Sometimes these alter memory and future memory processing. they're scary shit guys.

fevers are a big deal! bad shit can happen! milk that till its dry (chill out) and get some good hurt/comfort whumpee shit.

keep writing u sadistic nerds xox love you

ALSO I FORGOT LEMME ADD ON:

YOU DIE AT 85F

sorry I forgot. at that point for a sustained period of time you're too cold to survive.

pt 2

[heywriters]

Quotes and advice on writing from multiple authors (transcriptions in Alts)

—

+ Please consider sending a little thank you and Buy Me A Coffee!

+ You can also find HEY, Writers! on: AO3 - Unsplash - Pinterest

[thewritershandbook]

Types of Ships

Parts of the Ship

Wind Directions

Sides of Boats

[fixyourwritinghabits]

my bad, should have reblogged from here. 

[scriptmedic]

Oh my gods, guys, this looks so useful!!

[rychillacases]

Reblogging for future reference.

[writing-in-the-grave]

A reference I desperately needed

[dungeonmastercole-deactivated20]

For all those seafaring adventurers.

[nudityandnerdery]

Finally, a good shipping post on this website.

[writingbox]

Here’s an invaluable writing resource for you.

[i-penna]

Was looking for this information just yesterday. Thanks so much.

[phantom-of-the-keurig]

Y’all I could have used this so many times before oh my good god

[mylordshesacactus]

A Writer’s Guide To Hurricanes, I Guess

I realized with a bit of chagrin that, while I’ve spent years bitching about how it drives me up the wall that nobody (in fandom or, in fact, mainstream media) has a goddamn clue how hurricanes work and yet insists on portraying them anyway…I’ve never actually tried to help by explaining what they’re actually like.

So, here’s a genuine, non-sarcastic, good-faith attempt by a Floridian to help you guys who might want to write this stuff at some point understand it, just a little.

So here we go, chronologically in terms of the storm’s progress.

The storm itself is the least of it.

This is the thing non-hurricane places don’t….get.

You can see a hurricane coming. You can watch it. You have, in fact, no choice. I need to reiterate this.

You have no choice but to sit there and watch a hurricane coming.

I’ve actually talked a lot in another post about what that feels like, and why hurricane parties are a thing. But try to imagine what that feels. Just…try. You have to sit there, for about a week, watching the wrath of God bear down on you.

You watch it come and you hope the path changes. You hope it veers off back into the Atlantic, of course, but you also–you hope it hits somewhere else. You know wherever it goes people will die and you hope it goes somewhere else. And you feel kinda bad about it; but you also don’t because these are just facts, this is a fact of hurricanes, they will go somewhere and people will die in that place and all of us hope it goes Somewhere Else and if it does, we know that the people Somewhere Else are praying frantically that it gets back on course and hits us instead and we understand.

(And when it does change course, when it doesn’t hit you, you almost feel….cheated? Because you spent so much time and energy preparing and fearing and coming to terms and accepting and bracing and then it–doesn’t happen.

And the guilt of praying it would go Somewhere Else is nothing compared to being disgusted with yourself for actually feeling disappointed that you were spared the apocalypse this time.)

The wind is different.

If you listen to weather reports on hurricanes you’ve absolutely heard the phrasing “sustained winds of X miles per hour with gusts up to Y” without really thinking about what that means.

Now, of course everyone’s been in windy conditions. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly how the hurricane is….different, so I’m just going to describe what it’s like.

The wind always comes from one direction. There’s no being “knocked this way and that” or whatever; the wind comes from the direction the wind is coming from. Always.

(If you’re near where the center of the storm passes, this direction will slowly change as your position relative to the eye changes. But it changes over a matter of hours–like the angle of the sun.)

The wind is a constant, unrelenting force. There’s no….there’s no dips in the wind. It never lessens, it only spikes and then returns to baseline. In a normal windstorm, no, it’s not that the wind ever stops blowing, but…there’s an ebb and a flow. A hurricane is a wind tunnel in which every so often someone revs the engine and there’s a few seconds of higher wind, but it never drops below where it’s set.

(The wind will snake under plywood and storm shutters; it will rip them clean off, if you haven’t screwed them in properly. Screws, not nails. The wind makes deadly projectiles of anything not fastened down. Plywood and storm shutters can be broken, by anything travelling fast enough. It is standard procedure, if you have lawn furniture or anything else not secured that doesn’t float, to carefully lower that furniture into a pool–if you have one. It will stay untouched, and won’t be flung through your neighbors’ plywood.)

This is why hurricanes take down so many trees, why they do so much structural damage. Buildings in hurricane zones are built to withstand high wind, and most trees in these areas can survive high wind too or they wouldn’t have survived so long. But there’s only so much that nature and engineering can do about sustained high winds, without a moment’s rest, for hours, unending, no respite…

In landfall footage–ie, the stuff you see on the news–you likely see this effect in the palm trees-watch how instead of tossing, they’re just bent. It never lets up. In the instances where a bent tree violent bounces back before bending again, trust me–that’s not a letup in the wind speed. That’s the tree having been bent too far, and springing back from the sheer pressure on its internal structure. That’s the tree being stronger than the wind–for now

It’s mostly not like the TV reports.

There’s a reason I referred to “landfall footage” above. News broadcasts, for a lot of reasons, focus on the storm at its worst. The highest storm surge, the highest winds, the most brutal damage, occurs where the eye wall first crosses from being over water to being over land.

(Remember–by the time a storm “makes landfall,” everything for miles around has been experiencing the storm for hours already. “Landfall” is when the EYE of the storm first hits land, not when the storm “arrives”.)

But hurricanes are…vast. Look up satellite footage of hurricanes. Really look at it. Look at how much sheer area they cover.

Most places do not experience landfall-level disaster. That’s why, when people evacuate–well, when residents evacuate, the tourists and recent transplants tend to panic harder–you’re basically always evacuating to someplace that will still have vanished under that mass of swirling clouds. Evacuation sites are still inside the hurricane, but wind speed, storm surge, etc–everything drops dramatically even a few miles from the eye.

On a related note, the eye itself rapidly starts shedding power the moment it’s no longer over open water. Generally, the simple act of making landfall instantly drops a hurricane at least one category in severity. Hurricanes are eldritch gods; they rise from the sea and from the sea they take their power. Cut off from it, they starve.

Do not think for a moment that just because you’re “only” experiencing Cat 1 winds that this storm can’t kill your ass dead. Do not underestimate what the death throes of a dying god can do.

Storm surge isn’t high waves, and it isn’t rain.

Storm surge is the actual sea level rising. The entire ocean being dragged onto land by the power of the storm.

Particularly wet and slow hurricanes might–rarely–drop enough rain to cause flooding. However, that’s unusual; most places here can handle heavy rain. The rain isn’t the problem.

(Slow hurricanes are killers on another level. It’s everything I’ve already said about the unrelenting brutality of the wind, coupled with the fact that–as, again, the vast majority of the storm has been raging for hours by the time it “makes landfall”, and hurricanes draw power from the Eye being over the water–it now has hours upon hours of fully-fuelled destruction before it begins to weaken by being cut off from warm water. It doesn’t weaken, it just….keeps going. And the storm surge is present that entire time.)

I’m just gonna direct you to this NOAA diagram on how storm surge works.

The northeast quadrant is the strongest.

This isn’t a proper subheading it’s just something I rarely see people not from Florida acknowledge. 

No matter where the storm is coming from or what angle it hits at–the northeast quadrant is the killer. You do everything in your power to avoid being caught northeast of the storm.

In hurricane-prone areas, the threat is felt year-round.

All the major intersections? Our stoplights aren’t hung on wires from wooden poles–those blow down too easily. They’re bolted to thick metal pipes, “hurricane-proof”. Major roadways that are above floodlines are labelled as evacuation routes.

Things like that.

Hurricanes make their presence known long before the disaster begins.

You start to get “hurricane weather” days–days–before it hits. The sun is out, the weather is fine except for a…

Well, a constant, low-level breeze, with much less variation in angle and direction than usual, fewer gusts, but still primarily a natural breeze. And then you go outside and you look up at that cheerful blue sky and it’s already there.

They’re called cloud bands. You look up and the entire sky is just fluffy white clouds, racing at speed in one direction…

(The breeze, in those early few days, is light. Present, but light. The clouds are always, always racing as if before a gale. There’s a pervasive, eerie wrongness about this, looking up–the clouds moving much, much faster than the wind that should be driving them.)

A hurricane is not a thunderstorm.

This is the cardinal sin and the clearest, most common misconception. Hurricanes are not thunderstorms. In fact it’s actually very rare to have lightning or hear any thunder at all during a hurricane, compared to an average summer storm in hurricane-prone areas.

People often portray hurricanes as basically….the worst storm they can remember, but bigger, and badder, and worse. Hurricanes aren’t just big and intense, they’re….different. They’re something different.

Hurricanes are…quiet.

Except that they’re not.

You know when people talk about the wind howling? Think of the most intense storm you’ve ever sat through. Think about the sound of the wind.The way it whistles through leaves. Hold that experience in your head.

Now forget it. This is different.

Hurricanes don’t sound like that. Hurricanes are….

The sound a hurricane makes is a howl, yes. It makes palm fronds and grass steps and leaves whistle like a rapier scraped against a sheathe, yes. But you barely notice those shallow details, because the sound a hurricane makes is below that, stronger, more powerful.

Hurricanes moan.

Hurricanes are the entire world around you slowly and steadily fraying at the seams, and it moans, low and deep, agonized and hungry, and it never stops. Never. Not until it’s over.

Hurricanes are a world ending.

The storm passes, and the hurricane has only begun.

Do you think people stock up as heavily as they do, with generators and nonperishables and such, for–what, for a few hours of wind and rain, however alive?

No.

Because once the tempest is past, now you have to…exist.

You will not have power. If you were in a very, very lightly-affected area, you might have cell service. Most of your neighbors have evacuated. Many roads can’t be used because they’re washed out, or there are trees or power lines down across them.

It’s very common to lose water pressure. Common practice in hurricane-prone areas is to fill your bathtub with water before the storm–so that, when you lose water pressure, you can use a bucket to flush your toilet. Because those conditions, assuming you’re in an area that can be repaired and not rebuilt, can take weeks.

Weeks without running water, a flushable toilet. That gets grim fast. You brace for the storm. You prepare for what follows.

A hurricane is an eldritch abomination.

Hurricanes are alive.

Hurricanes are Old Gods.

Sitting through a hurricane is not like sitting through a bad storm or like sitting through a tornado, which is fast and unstoppable but then it’s over like it never existed save for the destruction left behind.

In order to get a clearer understanding of just how much the universe is vast, how much it does not, cannot, even notice you enough to want you dead because you are so small it would not comprehend you as possessing an existence if it tried–you would have to go to space.

And while the world moans around you and something out there, alive, growls at a frequency you can’t hear but you feel–you don’t cuddle for warmth during a hurricane. You just don’t.

You keep the generator running outside in the lee of the house where it won’t kill you all with gas fumes, connected via wires that snake around through a cracked door somewhere it won’t get blown open. You make sure it doesn’t run out of fuel, that it doesn’t get water blown into anything important. You use it to power a TV first–to keep the weather report on. You power lights second, if it’s a decent one. You can’t afford one powerful enough to run your refrigerator; you ate the ice cream before this started.

You play games. We’re human; it’s what we do. We play games in the face of our own helplessness. But while you play, you listen. You can’t not.

It’s always there. The world creaks on its hinges. You feel the edges threatening to dissolve. If you sit for a moment and are quiet, that ever-present moan is there, something ancient and powerful on a scale outside your comprehension. There is no cozy comfort of being bunkered down safe against the storm, not here.

There is no “safe” against this. You sit still and quiet and bear witness.

And when the sun rises in the aftermath, you’re surprised to find the world–even a wrecked and altered world–still exists. It shouldn’t. You were there when it ended.

And–and I cannot emphasize this enough–there’s no fucking thunder.

[kacchanot-fucking-deal-with-this]

So you know when you're writing a scene where the hero is carrying an injured person and you realize you've never been in this situation and have no idea how accurate the method of transportation actually is?

Oh boy, do I have a valuable resource for you!

Here is a PDF of the best ways to carry people depending on the situation and how conscious the injured person needs to be for the carrying position.

Literally a life saver.

(No pun intended.)