Random Ramblings

So basically a place to show off my nerdy crafts and random writing.

[luna-azzurra]

Signs your romance subplot has absolutely no tension (sry)

♡ they meet and immediately like each other (goodbye conflict, we barely knew you)

♡ the only thing keeping them apart is a misunderstanding that one conversation would fix

♡ both characters describe the other as "beautiful" within three pages of meeting

♡ their chemistry is told not shown (the narrator insists they have spark. they don't.)

♡ the love interest has no personality outside of loving the protagonist

♡ they argue once, make up immediately, never argue again

♡ obstacles are external. they always agree with each other about everything.

♡ the rival love interest exists for two chapters then vanishes without explanation

♡ they almost kiss. something interrupts. this happens four times. on the fifth time they kiss. the end.

♡ the love interest is described as funny, clever, and kind. we see none of this.

♡ their big emotional moment is in the rain. it is always in the rain.

♡ the breakup lasts exactly one chapter before they reconcile

♡ "i've never felt this way before" said by someone with no prior emotional history

♡ both confess feelings at the same time. no awkwardness. no stakes. just synchronized emotion.

♡ their first kiss is perfect. no bumped noses. no wrong angle. cinematic and frictionless.

♡ jealousy subplot introduced and dropped without consequence

♡ they have one shared interest and it is the plot

♡ trauma bonding mistaken for romantic chemistry (these are different things)

♡ the side characters ship them loudly. this is not a substitute for actual tension.

♡ one of them dies temporarily. other is devastated. they come back. no lasting emotional damage.

♡ they end up together because the plot ends, not because they chose each other

♡ epilogue: married with children. every loose end tied. nothing left to feel.

[luna-azzurra]

Small human things that make a character feel real !!

☽ checking your phone and not registering the time. checking it again. still nothing. putting it away anyway

☽ the half-smile you do when you're trying not to cry in public

☽ looking at your hands during a hard conversation instead of the person

☽ laughing at something right after you say it like you surprised yourself

☽ going to say something and then deciding not to and the moment is gone and it's too late and you think about it for three days

☽ the way you hold your breath without knowing when something's loading

☽ saying "no yeah totally" when you absolutely did not follow what they said

☽ the very specific tired where you're staring at a wall and your face just. stops doing things

☽ nodding while on the phone even though they cannot see you

☽ the tiny pause before you say someone's name for the first time

[luna-azzurra]

Ways to Describe Hands!! <3

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Injuries! (AGAIN)

Your action hero just got shot in the shoulder, stitched it up in a motel bathroom, and is now running through a forest. I need you to know that a shoulder wound severs muscle, nerves, and sometimes bone, and the human body's response to that is not "mild wincing followed by full range of motion." here is what injuries actually do to peoplee...

⊹ Adrenaline is REAL and it does allow people to do extraordinary things immediately after injury, BUT it is a loan, not a gift. you borrow the function and you pay it back later with interest. Your character might genuinely be able to run for twenty minutes after being stabbed. and then the adrenaline drops and everything the body was delaying arrives all at once. the collapse is NOT weakness. it's biology collecting its debt. write the debt collection. it's more interesting than the heroic sprint anyway.

⊹ Blood loss changes cognition before it drops you. you don't go from "fine" to "unconscious." you go through a whole middle stage of confusion, poor decision-making, emotional dysregulation, a strange calm, tunnel vision, difficulty forming sentences. Your injured character making a bad call, saying something they normally wouldn't, becoming suddenly and inexplicably gentle--that's blood loss. use the middle stage. it's dramatically rich and almost nobody writes it.

⊹ Recovery has a timeline and the timeline is long and boring and inconvenient to plot. a broken rib takes six weeks and during those six weeks sneezing is a genuine emergency. a concussion means no screens, no reading, no bright lights, and symptoms can persist for months. a stab wound to the abdomen means weeks of infection risk, limited mobility, and a specific kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. Your character being sidelined and frustrated and useless for a long time is not a narrative problem. it's the story.

⊹ Pain also affects personality in ways writers skip. chronic pain makes people short-tempered and then guilty about being short-tempered. it makes concentration difficult. it makes intimacy complicated, both emotional and physical. a character who was patient and warm before their injury and is now snappy and withdrawn is not a character regression. they're in pain. pain is exhausting in ways that don't show on the outside. the people around them noticing and not knowing how to help is a whole story in itself.

[everettiguess]

“I need to get back into writing” > doesn’t write anything > “I need to get back into writing” > doesn’t write anything > “I need to get back into writing” > doesn’t write anything >”I need to

[ladydarkphoenix-blog]

So I've started training at an MMA gym recently (yay turning 40 and doing all the things child me wanted but wasn't allowed to because "it's not ladylike/socially acceptable in our circles") and have noticed there's a lot of exercises with Prison or Jail Cell in the names which I know is just to indicate small space but gives me so many ideas for my favorite characters to subtly still stay in shape on the sly while held captive it's not even funny. Why am I like this?

[sashayed]

but ykw at least i'm not on mount everest. at least i'm not paying tens of thousands of dollars to slowly suffocate in a 300-person line at the gates of hell. never in my life will i have to be steered in a hypoxic stupor through the maze of poop and corpses atop mount everest. on this earth a lot of horrible things can happen to you without your permission but there are a few that you have to opt into. you can just say no thanks! and be guaranteed never to have to be on mount everest. much to be grateful for actually

[sashayed]

still not on mount everest this morning 😌 alhamdulillah

[phoenixthegreat101]

y’know what I want to see more of with whumpees?

Dissociation

like most of the Whump I see has whumpees who remember everything clearly and are always crying and shi.

but what abt whumpees who dissociate heavily? Whenever they were tortured or whatever they mentally checked out of the situation, their mind somewhere far away from the pain.

and this carries over to when they’ve been rescued. Say Caretaker accidentally triggers them and instead of crying their eyes glaze over, mind already somewhere far away where they can’t be hurt

idk it’s just something interesting

[writingdose]

“I want to write a fic about this but I don’t think anybody will be interested in it” ummm hello excuse me ma’am what do you mean you don’t think anybody will be interested in it??? YOU. YOU ARE INTERESTED IN IT???? write it because YOU are interested in it and YOU want to write about it. fanfic writing should always be first and foremost about YOUR enjoyment, not other people’s.

[willgrahamscock]

ai could never outdo my beautiful perverted mutuals

[willgrahamscock]

this is because they write with their mind penis and have terrible childhoods and horrible luck, which seems to be the key factor in writing shakespeare level smut

[willgrahamscock]

and english is their 4th language

[hucklerabbot-and-rock]

[promptcalender]

Small Town Romance Dialogue

“Did you just steal cherries out of that garden?”      “Ah, the guy who lives there steals our apples. It's a mutual understanding.”

“Truck broke down, eh? Wanna hop in? There ain't a gas station anywhere within the next 10 miles or so.”      “Don't hold it over my head later.”      “Oh, I absolutely will.”

“I'd get out of there if I was you.”      “Why? It's just cows.”      “Sure. But their bull just spotted you from over there, and he does not look happy.”      “Oh, shit.”

“Seriously? I make out in my truck once and it gets in the town paper?”      “Last month they had an article about a branch that fell. Trust me, we are currently the talk of the town.”

“Heard your ex showed up at the diner during your shift.”      “I didn't realise you were part of the grapevine now.”      “My neighbor makes very good cherry pie and she is very well connected… You good though?”      “Yeah. Thanks for checking up on me.”

“What do you think you're doing? If you try to chop wood that way, you'll end up with an axe in your knee before you got enough to even light a fire. Come on, I'll show you.”

“Oh my god, what are you doing here?”      “Oh, I was just on a nice walk in the storm. I came to check on you when the power went out, dummie. I know you don't like the dark.”

“Did you hear the news? John Smith's little one was seen running around with that delinquent that vandalized the town hall building!”      “No! But that was always such a sweetheart!”      “Well, you know what they say about apples and trees. Have you heard about what their mother did during the prom of ‘86?”      “Why don’t you come in? I just put coffee on.”

[Prompt Calender: May 17th, Rural Life Sunday]

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Trauma!

i love you all and i need you to stop writing trauma as a single breakdown scene in the rain after which the character is Healed and Ready to Love Again. that is NOT trauma :(

⊹ Trauma doesn't announce itself. it shows up as your character suddenly not being able to eat a specific food, or going very quiet in a loud room, or laughing at the wrong moment because their nervous system decided that was the appropriate response. it's mundane and weird and it makes no sense from the outside. the dramatic flashback sequence is the least realistic part. the most realistic part is your character suddenly needing to leave a grocery store for a reason they can't articulate.

⊹ The body keeps score and it keeps it in the strangest places. a particular smell. the quality of light at a certain time of day. a tone of voice that sounds like someone who hurt them. your traumatised character doesn't think "this reminds me of the bad thing." their heart rate spikes and they don't know why. they feel wrong and they can't locate the feeling. they're irritable for three days and only later, if ever, do they make the connection. write the disconnection. it's more honest.

⊹ trauma also does not make people universally sympathetic and wise. it makes some people controlling. some people funny at inappropriate times. some people very good in a crisis and completely unable to handle a normal day. some people are generously kind to strangers and absolutely terrible to people they love. trauma shapes behaviour in contradictory, inconvenient ways that don't resolve into a lesson. your traumatised character can be difficult to like. that's not a flaw in the writing. that's the WRITING.

⊹ Healing is not linear and it is not a destination. your character does not get better and stay better. they have a good month and then something small undoes two years of progress and they have to start again with slightly more tools than before. that's the actual shape of it. the spiral, not the arc. the scene where they finally open up and cry is not the end. it might not even be progress. sometimes it just means they were tired that night.

[spookyboywhump]

I do really love it when women write graphic and fucked up things. I feel like so often people react to fucked up fiction with “of course a disgusting man would write this 🙄” and it often carries an unspoken (honestly sometimes spoken) message of “a woman’s PURE and DELICATE and FEMININE mind could NEVER think of something this VILE”. Thank you women in fucked up fiction 🫡

[unspeakablearchives]

[promptsforthestrugglingauthor]

Writing Prompt #4026

"You used to have a spark of...something. I don't know. Life. Passion. Something. But now all I see is..." She waved her hand in his direction, letting the gesture complete her thought.

"You really know how to make a guy feel special."

[writing-prompt-s]

A demon has cursed you with the inability to have children or form a family, and as soon as you learn of this you went to tell the witch who you promised your firstborn child, as this clearly will prevent you from fulfilling your side of the deal.

[its-jesster]

✨Three coffees no lunch✨