f1 (cl16), figure skating, tx rangers, denver broncos, dallas stars, san antonio spurs, tx longhorns. also heatedrivalryposting for the foreseeable future.
my take of unknown temperature is that yuna's "okay, enough. what's the plan" is good & helpful & correct for that moment. like if either of them had to look An Emotion directly in the face for one more second i think they would have exploded
I see so many people saying shit like "the way fandoms behave makes me really nervous to write the story I want to write, what if my fandom sucks" and I just want to sit down with all of them and be like it's ok, you don't have to worry, you're not going to be famous
it’s very iconic and rich that hudson has an honest-to-god entourage. this is the stuff of celebrity fantasy. it’s kind of romantic and cinematic—a crew of loyal industry professionals being pulled into the limelight by their magnetic superstar client. even rarer and richer that it’s a group of women
yuna in the elevator really is just such an insane story choice. the sea lion ramping anxiety is all shane’s until it’s ilya’s too, his MOTHER? now he’s thinking about shane mother. when he’s on his way to fuck. #hisenmeshment
ilya brings her up twice in ep2 shane asks who taught him the world sexting and he says your mother. and he says did your mom buy these pillows. ilya is ruminating on #hisenmeshment i know he is. he looked up into the stands way back at the prospect cup and saw shane there with his mother. ep2 also the first time we find out ilya’s own mother is dead, and while he says my father maybe my brother will be at the olympics the moment we actually find out is when he says (carefully) mama’s dead. to his father. who has forgotten 😩
hi salad! what are some of the things youve learned in your first year writing? tips?
In no particular order:
If writing was easy, everyone would do it.
At the same time, you have to love the struggle. Otherwise why are you doing it?
Try for consistency—as in, a couple sentences a day—but don’t get too hung up on it. Sometimes I go through long periods of reading only or doing other kinds of art. Making yourself anxious about it doesn’t help.
Take a walk if you can’t think of what you want to say.
I’m an outliner. I need to have a rough idea of what I’m doing with a story.
I’m also prone to underwriting, so I’m always trying to add details and emotional beats. It’s not the worst thing in the world to be sparse with your prose, but I also really admire people with vivid and lush writing styles; I think I struggle to let scenes breathe. Speaking of which:
Get a beta reader, ideally one who isn’t afraid to whack you. There is no faster way to improve than to work through edits and constructive criticism. Not everyone cares about that, which is fine; everyone has a different process or goals or whatever.
Beta read for other people. If you can read someone else’s work and pick out moments that don’t land, sentence rhythms that fall flat, pacing that drags, that will help you notice the same in your own work.
Beta reading is critical reading, which I also recommend and do a lot of. I often read books with a highlighter and pencil in my hand. The same goes for fics I really like—if I love something, I often download it and re-read it while annotating. Unfortunately now I’m just describing putting yourself through a creative writing class.
I’m a big believer in Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: “Vigorous writing is concise.” This is true in every field (believe it or not, I get paid to write op-eds and policy papers, which is where I learned most of the fundamentals of writing), and it also applies to fanfic. Many fics are too long. SORRY! They are. As S&W say, “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” Your words can tell something other than pure plot advancement, but they have to serve some sort of purpose. S&W have all sorts of tips that are incredibly useful in fiction. At any moment, the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. The worst thing a fic can be is boring. You are trying to tell a story to your reader. Get their attention and hold it!
Along these lines, I’ve found that if something is boring me to write, it’s probably because the scene is unnecessary or could be shorter. This advice comes from the inimitable susiecarter IIRC.
Also, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is incredible even for fanfic writing. And I’m slowly working through Steering the Craft (thanks Freya for the suggestion!). Orwell, critiquing political writing, says that “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.” I really do think this is true of fic too. Avoid turns of phrase that are fanfic staples. Don’t be pretentious in writing unless your style calls for it. Be concrete.
Read the types of stories you want to write and write the types of stories you want to read.
Part of putting your work out there is that people are going to have opinions about it. Nothing is for everyone. It’s your art; stand behind it. In other words, stop caring what strangers online think unless you are specifically soliciting concrit.
If you are writing from close third, everything on the page should be filtered through the character’s POV. If your character wouldn’t notice the high ceilings, don’t write about them.
Especially in kink or darkfic, you have to commit to the bit (another Freya tip). What is the meat of it? What makes it sexy? What’s interesting? Get grosser and more perverted and more honest. If you as the writer are flinching away from what you actually find iddy, why should the reader be interested? Why are you writing it if it doesn’t turn you on/make you sick/excite you/make you laugh/make you cry? Don’t let shame keep you from writing something real.
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