If you think I know how to speak or write English even though it's the only language I know then you are very wrong. Posts pieces of writings and cross-stitch patterns I'm working on.
They don't tell you this but besides the Beloved Mutual there's also the Longterm Follower who you don't follow back but they're always in your notes and you're kind of watching them. Checking on the longterm follower's bio every so often like turning over a log. She's trans now good for her
Realizing I'm somebody's longterm follower who they don't follow back but check in on every so often. This is what's happening when you see the [Following] in your notes
Guys, I edit professionally. This list is legit. Incorporating these suggestions before you hire an editor will save you A LOT of money. Even if you did these and nothing else, you’d see significant overall improvement in your work.
That said, you don’t have to overthink these things when you’re writing a first draft. If you write, “she said angrily” in a first draft, you can always revisit the phrasing in a second draft. I mention this because overthinking style can lead to a loss of momentum, and losing momentum is why so many people never finish a draft. Give yourself permission to write fast, write messy or ugly, and edit your draft into beauty later.
The title will often be the last thing you come up with because it takes knowing your story and the core of your story to really give it an awesome title. So until you finish it’s okay to title it ‘that story with dragons and stuff’ or ‘project that is personally trying to kill me’. Something like that. Then, when you’re done, ask yourself the following question.
1. Who is the most important character?
2. What is the climax/penultimate moment of the story
3. What is the most significant or symbolic object?
4. What are some particularly memorable lines that encapsulate the story’s theme
5. What are the primary emotions of the story
Now you have building blocks. So let’s look at some titles. (Note you can use this for chapter titles too)
The Harry Potter series is named after its main character but ALSO the most important object in the book. JK picks the mystery that needs to be resolved and puts it right in the title. The philosophers stone, the chamber of secrets, the prisoner of Azkaban etc. they’re just vague enough to intrigue was but also interesting
Other works title it by a character’s nickname/title like ‘the great gatsby’ or ‘the princess bride’ or ‘the hunchback of notredame’
Still others title books based on the major plot events/climax. A game of thrones is titled that because it’s where people start fighting over the throne. A clash of kings reflects the war of five kings. A storm of swords represents the peak of the war. Etc. etc.
Some titles even tell you what happens in the climax (though vaguely). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest tells us the fate of our lead and we read to see how it happens.
Then we have our significant object titles. This is especially great for episodes/chapter titles. I’m Attack on Titan there’s an episode called ‘a small blade’. It seems unimportant but it’s a blade that a character asks to be left with so he can off himself if necessary (the character is very depressed at this point). His friend tosses it away and refuses to leave him behind. The message here is: keep fighting. So that’s the object that message represents. Another example is ‘to kill a mockingbird’ we don’t know yet but this is symbolic for the death of an innocent. Symbols are great of titles
Then there’s emotions. A lot of times you get punchy one word titles out of this and I use them for chapters a lot: grief, rage, joy etc. but they can be used in full books too. Like: ‘beloved’ or ‘doubt’.
Then there are book titles taken from famous book quotes. “As I lay dying” comes from the odyssey. “Children of men”, “clouds of witnesses” and one million other titles are plays off bible verses.
But Kallypso, you might say. That’s so much information. How do I choose? Well you can think about your genre. If you’re writing a fluffy love fic, a quote or emotion or symbol is the way to go. If you’re writing character driven fic, a play off of a name. If you’re writing plot driven fic, describe the plot vaguely.
Or try them all! Write a title for each category and see which one fits best. And that is your advice for the morning
Decided to post an excerpt from a one-shot I’ve been working on for the last two or three weeks. Super excited for what I have so far and hope to have it done and edited in another week or two!
Sango looked down at where her hands were gripping at Miroku's robe. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but with so much emotion Kohaku felt his heart clench. "What about what I wanted? Did you even consider that? Why would I want this? All I want is for both of us to live, to live together. I had decided that if staying with me meant your death, then I would rather have you alive, even if it meant leaving me behind." She slowly removed her fists from his robes and placed her right hand firmly over Miroku's chest where his heart was. Kohaku noticed with trepidation that the tendrils of purple miasma looked like the legs of a spider about to pierce her flattened palm. "And now, I don't even know how you’re going to die. If it's going to be from this-" Sango's left hand grabbed Miroku's gauntleted one and placed it over her own heart "-or from your Wind Tunnel."
Miroku just stared at Sango wordlessly. His mouth was moving, struggling to say something, anything, but nothing came out. Sango took this chance to look up at him again, fresh tears building at the corner of her eyes. "Miroku-" his free hand was shaking as it came up to cup the side of her face "-I don't want you to die, I love you."
With those words, Miroku finally moved and with speed Kohaku hadn't been expecting out of him, kissed Sango. Kohaku felt his face turn red and a squeak of surprise from Kagome found his hand smacking over her mouth to stop any more noise from escaping. He turned his head away from the sight of his own sister kissing her fiance, but caught the way both of Miroku's hands began to thread into Sango's hair, the way her's moved from between their bodies to snake under his arms to grip the back of his robes; whether to hold him closer or to hold him there, Kohaku didn't know, didn't want to know. Tried to focus on the burrs caught in Kirara's fur and how much of a pain they would be to remove later. Tried to ignore how quickly they had let the kiss deepen, how it was clearly not the first time they had done something like this.
Next to him, Kirara seemed almost uninterested the scene and yawned dramatically. Regrettably, Kohaku wondered how often the two of them had used the cat demon to function as a look out while they stole as many moments of privacy as they could manage. A shift out of the corner of his eye revealed that they two of them had stopped their kiss, but still had yet to separate. Sango had buried her head in the space between Miroku’s neck and shoulder and he was almost completely hidden by her hair. But with the silent shaking of Sango's body and the way Miroku tried to hold her closer with every tremble, it was evidence enough of how they were feeling that he didn't need to look at their faces.
Kohaku wanted to leave. He had never so badly wanted to be anywhere else in his life. This was private and not something anyone was supposed to witness, but he couldn't leave. The dried and crushed leaves and twigs beneath him would crackle the moment he tried to get up, and even if they somehow miraculously didn't, the bushes he was hiding in certainly would the instant he moved. And Miroku and Sango were so silent now that they would hear anything out of the ordinary. He was trapped, plain and simple.
"Miroku?" Sango's voice was muffled in the fabric of his robes but it sounded drained and just so, so tired. "Can you promise me something?"
Miroku untangled his hands from her hair and stepped back, not enough for Sango to release her hold on the back on his robes, but enough that he could comfortably cradle her head in her hands. For a few seconds all he did was rest his forehead against her own, his thumbs wiping away any and all tears from her cheeks, his eyes closed as he just breathed in her presence. "Anything."
"Promise me, that when we go and fight Naraku, that you won't use your Wind Tunnel. Promise me."
Kohaku could only watch as Miroku's face screwed up in pain and he could hear the hesitation and how painful it was to speak. "I can't, I'm sorry."
Living up to the knots part of my username now! Just finished the cross stitching on this piece, so all that's left is to work on the back stitching and French knots!
Depending on how quickly I can finish the back stitching will determine what my next project is going to be.
Some of the best writing advice I ever got was if you’re stuck on a scene or a line, the problem is actually about 10 lines back and that’s saved me from writer’s block so many times.
Often times, I find myself stuck on what a character should say next or what should happen in a scene to connect A to B or so on. When this happens, I fall into the trap of writing and rewriting the same few lines over and over, and becoming more and more dissatisfied every time until I give up.
But problem is almost never actually whatever line I’m trying to write at the moment; the issue is the stuff leading up to the line. Maybe there are structural issues with the set up, maybe I wrote a bit of dialogue that was out of character leading to a discussion that doesn’t make sense, maybe I’m missing a vital piece of exposition or expositing too much. It could be a lot of things, but the important part of the advice is to look back and be willing to consider changes to something earlier in the work (even if you’re really attached to like a piece of dialogue or a particular sentence or something) instead of trying to find a way to force out a scene that’s not working.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Preview
The next morning, Mushin was proven right in his assumption of an awful hangover, but the Mist of Sages had been phenomenal and he considered it a price well-paid. Even if it did feel like his head was about to spilt open. It was a shame though that he had accidentally spilled the remainder of the sake in the pitcher when he slept. Still, he thought the yelling from everyone else that morning when they realized he wasn’t actually dying from some ailment or another had been completely uncalled for and had just made his headache worse. In fact, his head was the entire reason he was even digging around the store house for more sake in the first place. From his experience, Mushin found that drinking more alcohol took the edge off and numbed the effects of his over-drinking better than anything else. Any alcohol he found would pale in comparison to the Mist of Sages of course, but he couldn’t have everything.
Everything, in this instance, also seemed to include more sake, he had been through the entire storehouse at least three times now and all he discovered was a small mouse nest in the corner he was going to have to clean out, and the fact that he was apparently going to have to order more ink and paper. Mushin sighed mournfully, he was going to have to put an order in for more sake, and other supplies too of course, the next time the young boy from the nearby village came to help clean the temple. And judging from the extreme deep-clean that Miroku and his friends had done just the other day, that wasn’t going to happen for a few days yet, at the very least. Although, now that he thought about it, Hachi had been hanging around a lot lately, maybe he could finally put that lazy racoon-dog to use and get him to drop off an order.
With a plan set that would replenish diminishing supplies, and get him more sake of course, sooner rather than later, he stood up to find Hachi. Only to crack his head on a low shelf he had forgotten about and stand cradling his bald head as the world went white around him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
From the covered stairs in front of the old Buddhist temple, the old monk Mushin sat in silence with Miroku. In his hands, he held a small cup that he kept filled with sake from a pitcher by his side. Mushin liked to believe that after all these years of practice that he could hold his liquor well, but this stuff, this Mist of Sages, had hit him like a club from the very first sip. While he could tell that he was no doubt going to wake up with a raging hangover the next morning, it was going to be very worth it.
He had felt a little guilty sending Miroku and the others up the Kasumidake for it; while no one had said that anything strange had happened up there, the lack of words clearly meant that something had. But with every additional sip he took, Mushin could feel any guilt and regrets he had about sending them there,or about making them clean the entire temple and buy him an expensive meal, quickly evaporate away. Anything this good was made to be drank with no regrets.
By all accounts and purposes, some (very, very good) alcohol coupled with the clear and peaceful night air, and spending some quality with the man he had raised since childhood, should have been the perfect combination to make the best of what could very well be his last night alive. And yet, Miroku had been restless the past view minutes, darting his eyes between Mushin and the area of the temple where his friends slept, constantly opening and closing his mouth but never saying anything. Mushin would have felt insulted, but he could tell that it wasn’t that Miroku would have preferred to spend the evening with his friends than an old, drunk monk, but rather that he had something he wanted to tell him, he just wasn’t sure how.
“What’s on your mind Miroku?”
Miroku turned to face Mushin in confusion, but quickly gave a small smile and sigh. “Sorry Master, I suppose it was quite obvious wasn’t it.”
Mushin took another small sip of the sake. “I haven’t seen you this restless and unsure since that priestess came to visit the temple when you were only thirteen. So I assume that whatever you want to speak to me about involves a woman in some way.”
He watched as Miroku once again looked towards the sleeping area of the temple before taking a steadying breath. “I asked Sango to marry me.”
Well, that had been unexpected. Mushin finished the remainder of the alcohol in the cup and grabbed the small pitcher to pour some more out. “So that’s what happened on the mountain I assume? And since none of you have said a word about it I suppose she shot you down?”
Miroku’s face twisted into one remembering unpleasant memories as he seemed to recall what actually took place. “No, and I would rather not speak about what took place there if it’s all the same to you.”
Mushin simply shrugged as he took another sip and sorted through his drunken stupor for who this ‘Sango’ was. Miroku had seemed to think he would know who this women was so it was clearly someone he had met and was somewhat familiar with, which narrowed it down to the two girls that travelled with Miroku. He recalled one of the women, a demon slayer if he was correct, never far from the younger monk when they were in the same room, and her barely suppressed fury at the dinner the other night. If she had been furious because of the inn girls clamoring over Miroku then her actions suddenly made that much more sense.
“The demon slayer? I’m surprised that you managed to get her to agree to have your child Miroku. Though I suppose it does makes sense. A child with your spiritual powers and her demon slaying training would certainly be up to the task of killing Naraku.”
“No, you misunderstand Master Mushin. I asked her come live with me after we kill Naraku and to bear any children then. I couldn’t bear the idea of her watching me getting sucked up into my own Wind Tunnel and then watching our child get sucked up as well years later. No parent should have to watch their child die before them, especially in a way as horrible as this.”
Mushin looked up at the large, round fissure in the ground that served not only as the grave of Miroku’s father, but Mushin’s best friend. He could understand the sentiment clearly. It was a horrid way to die, leaving no closure for their loved ones, and nightmares for those who witnessed it as well. Not a single trace of the person was left behind, it left no body to bury or any items to make a shrine to honor them in death. It was an indiscriminate death as well, sucking up anyone and anything in the vicinity before finally leaving it’s curse on the next in line and starting the vicious cycle all over again.
“Besides, I refuse to do what Father did and simply have a child with Sango just because they would have a better chance of defeating Naraku if I fail.”
Mushin sighed at this and took another sip of the Mist of Sages. It seemed that for all Miroku loved and respected his father, he still hadn’t forgiven him for that.
“I must say, I am surprised. You seemed to have no qualms about asking every girl out there to bear you a child until now. What changed?”
Miroku’s gaze was hard. “You know I had been searching for any hint or trace of Naraku ever since Father died, but it seemed I was no closer to finding him then Father had been. I had started to think that the only way to remove the curse was to follow in his footsteps and make an heir. And then, with no warning, the Jewel of Four Souls had not only returned, but been shattered, and shards of them were turning up all over the area. I had intended to collect as many pieces as possible and use them to heighten my own power and draw Naraku out, but I met Kagome, Inuyasha, and Shippo instead.
“It was only supposed to be a temporary partnership, but then Naraku started to appear everywhere. It was like he was following them and I realized that if I stayed then I would finally get a chance to defeat Naraku and the curse would be broken and end with me. I couldn’t afford to pass an opportunity like this up.”
Mushin nodded along, but wasn’t sure if it was because the sake had started to make him dizzy and tired, or if it was what seemed like the right thing to do. He deemed it was probably some combination of the two.
“And where does the demon slayer come into this?”
Mushin didn’t think it was possible, but Miroku’s eyes hardened even further and he clenched his right hand into a fist. “Sango joined us not long before I asked you to repair my Wind Tunnel. Naraku had killed everyone from her village just because she had found a shard of the Shikon Jewel and they were keeping it safe. Not only that, but he had left the village defenseless by taking away their most powerful slayers on a mission to his castle, and used that opportunity to take control of her younger brothers body and kill everyone with them, including her. She told us that she had actually clawed her way out of her own grave and Naraku took that chance to tell her that not only had her entire village been slaughtered but that we had done it. When we finally met her she had come to kill us and was covered in her own blood and barely standing, even under the power of a jewel shard in her back. By the time we had managed to convince her that Naraku was lying, she was so close to death it was a miracle she was able to speak, muchless move. Naraku had taken everything away from her Master. Her home, her family, her friends, her community, everything.”
Miroku smiled softly and Mushin was surprised at the amount of fondness and love in it. “You should see her fight though Master Mushin. When Inuyasha wields the Testusaiga he’s the strongest fighter of any of us, but Sango is far and away the most skilled. She doesn’t even have any spiritual or demonic powers like the rest of us but can fight leagues better than anyone else I’ve ever met. She spent years training and perfecting her fighting style and it shows. She has back-up weapons for her back-up weapons! Even when injured and on death’s door, she was able to go toe to toe with Inuyasha. I truly, honestly believe that if Sango and Inuyasha ever had to fight each other seriously, she would win. She knows so many tips and tricks for overcoming his attacks and weakening his demonic senses that there would be nothing he could do. She is truly a sight to behold.
“And she loves so much it’s unbelievable. When she learned that Naraku had brought her younger brother back to life to use against her, all she could think of was freeing Kohaku and getting him back to her. She wears her heart on her sleeve and can become angry at the drop of a hat but it’s just proof of how passionate she is at what she does and knows what she wants in life, and she’s not afraid to take on anything or anyone in her way to get it. She acts so quiet an unassuming when not fighting, but in battle I can’t think of anyone I trust more to have my back.
“I’ve never met such a strong women in my life, and I want her in it for as long as I’m still alive.”
Mushin just listened to all of this, slowly sipping the sake as he realized for the first time just how far Miroku had fallen for this demon slayer, how much he loved her. That his proposal hadn’t just been the words of a man who didn’t have long to live, but the words of one who intended to live, and spend the rest of it with her. It shocked him, that Miroku had finally found and been able to grasp what his father had wanted but had never been able to have.
With this thought in mind, he finished off what little alcohol was remaining in the cup, and watched Miroku grab the pitcher and poured some more into Mushin’s cup himself.
remember not to overdo your first chapter. i’ve read so many stiff first chapters that are the result of overworking bc the author is concerned with getting it exactly perfect. give it no more edits or attention than anything else.
y'know that writer feeling of needing every sentence to be perfect? don’t give in. if every sentence is individually perfectly fine-tuned, people will notice.
it’s our job as writers to make people forget that they’re reading and get lost in the world we’ve created–to make people not notice.
I work around for this: Don’t fine tune the sentences yourself; instead have a dozen or so readers go through the chapter and just mark any sentence that takes them out of the story, and edit those particular ones to be less obtrusive!
Don’t edit the first chapter until after you’ve finished the first draft! I know so many writers who will write the first chapter or two and just edit those over and over again for weeks. Here’s the thing, what if at its structural level, the chapter is flawed and needs to be changed or scrapped altogether? You’re only going to know that AFTER you finish the first draft and read the work as a whole. If you’ve already put hours of work of editing into Chapter 1, you’re going to be reluctant to make changes, especially if that change means completely rewriting the beginning. Save yourself some time and write the whole book first, edit later.
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