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Not today Justin
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YOU ARE THE REASON
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@justwriting-things
The most frustrating experience as a writer is having a clear vision in your mind of the story you want to tell but being too afraid to put pen to paper for fear of failing to do the story justice. I’m so scared that my actual execution will fail to meet my expectations that I’m paralysed to even start.
i NEED people to realise foreshadowing is. in fact. a literary device. and not a Bad Thing. the audience picking up on your hints is a Good Thing. because. it makes the story and it’s conclusion make sense. and some people will not see those but enjoy seeing them on a second read through. red herrings are one thing but if your novel consists of nothing but red herrings it’s not a coherent story it’s just a collection of paragraphs that don’t actually plausibly link to one another. you're not fighting with the audience you don’t look clever you look like you don’t know how basic fiction works. be vulnerable for once in your goddamn life and don't treat writing like a game to be won where the audience losing is a good thing.
Getting to the end of a story and going "THE CLUES WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME!" is always joyous for me whether or not I picked up on the clues leading up
If I saw the clues and caught the hints then yes! I am clever and me and the author/creator/artist etc were in on it together the whole time!
If I didn't notice the clues or got fooled but can clearly see them in hindsight then "Ha! You won this time storyteller! I am delighted by this game we play!' and then I enjoy putting the pieces together afterwards and enjoying how clever it was. I feel like the creator respects me as an audience
If there is a "twist" that comes with 0 clues or foreshadowing at all I'm annoyed. I'm pissed off. I feel like I'm being condescended to and patronised. It's not clever or interesting and makes me annoyed I ended up caring about characters and plot points that ended up meaningless.
Because it's not that these stories don't have foreshadowing or plot clues. They just abandon it for a "surprising twist"
A story that pays off the clues is letting me into the fun and makes a participant in the story
A story that just gives me a "shock" but no pay off is telling me not to engage or get attached or care. So why would I watch?
OMG! THIS!
Random plot twists that don't connect to anything in the story are not clever. If we don't see it coming because the writer didn't provide any clues, they aren't clever and it's totally unsatisfying (and I will NEVER read this writer again). These clues need not be lit up in neon with a parade of elephants and showgirls. But they need to be present
I'm a writer and am rarely surprised. Often, if I am surprised it's because the writer was a dumbass and included a "twist" that makes no sense (and therefore isn't really a twist, it's just random bullshit). If a writer genuinely surprises me, without being an absolute dumbass, I am FUCKING DELIGHTED! I will tell everyone I know to read the book/see the movie/watch the show.
Foreshadowing is the reward for paying attention. It's the story letting you in on the secret like a co-conspirator because you're the clever little audience member who has been picking up on the clues the writer has been setting up.
It even makes watching/reading again more worthwhile because if you didn't notice the foreshadowing the first time you have the joy of being able to notice the things you missed!
really nice gift for Specifically Me when the character has an immediate and violent panic response to being held down / physically restrained. especially if their affect is usually cheerful or relaxed or reserved and this is their one "sicko mode (wildly uncharacteristic)" button.
(stumbling out of the document covered in blood) ok i wrote 100 words
I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."
I WANT THE FAT WITH IT (1000 fire emojis) This this this. I despise 'write like this' advice. Like, write however the fuck you want.
it’s really important to me when men put their heads in women’s laps. one of the most important things i can see on my tv. men laying their heads in women’s laps or men sitting and women standing and the man holds her around the middle and presses his face into her tummy as she hugs him around the shoulders. two very important poses. extremely soul igniting tableaux.
“Ghosts are real” I can see how you could believe that
“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that
“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story
“Ghosts aren’t real yet” the fuck are you going to do
i can’t stop thinking about this soulless husk i saw at a thrift market today. like okay um Hi
I like when fic length/book length/movie length is its own punchline
characters: Ah, I'm so glad that's all over now :). But luckily that's done and dealt with and we can all resume our normal lives now :)
fic length: Chapter 9 out of 48
when the Big Bad of Nod-Krai, the Racher of Solnari, has been defeated (act 4 out of 8
Hey btw, another worldbuilding thing: You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things. They’re not inherently unrealistic, for as long as you address the realistic consequences as well.
Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)
Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?
A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.
An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!
Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.
The doves do protect the city. By shitting fucking everywhere.
While I absolutely love your idea, I just want to say that you can easily reduce public bird shitting from Pigeons by offering them comfortable lodgings where they can sleep and feed. Sure, you need to clean THOSE, but the pigeons shit a lot less all over town.
The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since it’s easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.
So I’d say one can of course still keep your general idea……but there’s also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.
In fact, one could potentially turn your idea around IN THE PIDGEONS FAVOR. So your world is like ours and most major cities have a big feral pigeon population. And most of those cities HATE the pigeons and try to fight them and stuff. And they think that pigeon worshipper town is frigging cuckoo. BUT when comparing, then pigeon worshipper town is ridiculously clean and beautiful. No bird shit everywhere, no ruined house facades and statues from erosion through bird poop. Pigeon haters go “how tf are you so clean, you have birds EVERYWHERE???” and the worshippers shrug and show their little bird temples spread around town that keep their precious birdies AND their town pretty.
I think this is a really good example of how research can greatly improve your worldbuilding! You don’t have to be perfectly accurate - it is fantasy after all - but the real world is so much more clever and beautiful than any of us know
advice that’s stuck with me: you don’t have to work inwards to justify a premise (e.g., ‘how would it ever be plausible to use snakes as currency’) as long as you work outwards in interesting ways from that premise (e.g., ‘how would a society that used snakes as currency look different? what would they use for wallets?’)
I love this idea that OP thought there wasn’t a town that had already handled it’s “We fucking love birds you guys, like for fucking reals” problem already through sheer human chutzpah.
Humans are THE pack binding specie. A way will be found.
For anyone else interested in or looking for more information about pigeon houses, the traditional word for them is dovecote.
I'm imagining a fortune teller who's also a child so her idea of what a good fate is vs a terrible one isn't really in line with her clients at all
Imagine u go to visit the oraclet (oracling?) and she tells u there's untold riches in your future and later it becomes very apparent that what she was predicting was you winning $20 from a lottery ticket
She dismisses every wedding she predicts as a Terrible Fate because she thinks the kissing is cringe
He doesn't exist to anyone but me yet. But I love him very much
He'll very soon exist to the players at my dnd table as an NPC companion. I just can't wait a whole week to show him off 🫴 look at he.
becoming homophobic because when two characters in a scene have the same pronouns you have to say their names one william times
finally some good advice on this post
you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands
op how does it feel to be the most correct person on earth
learn the rules
so that you can break them properly
The worst characters are the ones were you only get like three pieces of lore about them but the lore is so fascinating and hits your brain at just the right angle to have you behaving like a feral dog in front of your conspiracy theory cork board
also i know it's a meme that we all hate writing but that's not true. i fucking love writing. i am so serious, it's okay to love writing. you don't have to hate it to be a real writer. this shit rocks.
