Leah's Tumblr @leahclifford - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Friends! It has been a minute since I posted on here, but I wanted to tell you the second book in my Resurrectionist Series releases today! Hopefully, you’ll pick it up? Both Vial Things and Something Grave are available in audio, ebook, and paper/hardback! https://leahclifford.com/resurrectionist-novels-1

#books #amreading #series #ya novel

spencerthespacer-deactivated202

leahclifford

Copyediting problems...

valeria2067

Take Your Gatekeeping and Shove It.

So, this past weekend, I took my 11-year-old daughter to SuperCon to meet her favorite actor (and favorite Doctor), Peter Capaldi.

She wore a little blue TARDIS-decorated dress and some Doctor Who pins, and she nearly cried with joy when Capaldi greeted her for the photo op. He was a consummate gentleman and such a sweet and enthusiastic person.

An hour or so after the wonderful photo op experience, she and I were sitting at a table in the food court area.

A burly, older man plopped down nearby. He looked at my little girl’s outfit, smiled, and said, “Do you even KNOW anything about Doctor Who?”

WTF, dude?

I was too stunned for a second to even respond, so he started right in with the ‘quizzing.’

“Who are the Doctor’s biggest enemies, and what planet does he come from?” this stranger asked.

Now I had moved past shocked and right into indignant/angry/protective mode.

“I don’t want her to be quizzed on something she loves, because I don’t want her thinking she has to prove ANYthing in order to be a fan,“ I told him.

Looking at my daughter, I said “You don’t owe strangers explanations or information, ok?“ She said OK and looked relieved.

Still he pressed on, patronizing grin and all: “Oh, I just want to be sure parents are raising their kids right.” Then he turned to my daughter again and asked “Who was the first Doctor, then?”

I cut him off right there. “No. I don’t want her quizzed. At all.”

Dude blinked in disbelief, sighed, and left about a minute later.

“Thanks,” my daughter said. “He was making me feel awkward.”

I held her hand and looked into her eyes. “Some men think they can have power over you by making you prove yourself. You never have to do it. They’re just insecure and pitiful, so they want to make you feel like it, too. It’s not only about fan stuff, and it’s not always just men, but be careful not to fall into that trap, ok?”

That crap isn’t harmless fun. It sets up a pattern of approval-seeking, self-justification, self-doubt, and fear of exclusion that is very dangerous for children (particularly girls).

Fuck that.

TL;DR: Do NOT come at me, my little girl, or anyone in my vicinity with your condescending, gatekeeping bullshit.

The next time, I won’t make the mistake of even TRYING to be polite.

prismatic-bell

Ladies (and gentlemen who Get It, and folks who are both or neither and also Get It): don’t forget, if you see someone doing this to another fan in a public space, you most def can speak up and call them a shithead for it. Even if the quizzing isn’t a fandom you’re into.

james-winston

The Titanoboa, is a 48ft long snake dating from around 60-58million years ago. It had a rib cage 2ft wide, allowing it to eat whole crocodiles, and surrounding the ribcage were muscles so powerful that it could crush a rhino. Titanoboa was so big it couldn’t even spend long amounts of time on land, because the force of gravity acting on it would cause it to suffocate under its own weight.

laurdlannister-kingslayer

I’m so glad they aren’t around

vitressence-deactivated20150307

omg me too. I’m scared enough of 26 ft long anacondas. I’m so happy Megalodons, those giant sharks, aren’t alive either

laurdlannister-kingslayer

Praise natural selection

poppypicklesticks-blog

I remember watching Walking with Beasts or something similar, or some British tv show about evolution

The subject was something like a 12 foot long water scorpion

I was so startled by its sudden appearance and narration that I yelped: “12 fucking feet?!?! I’m fucking glad it’s extinct!”

silvermoon424

Dude, prehistory was home to some fucking TERRIFYING creatures. For some reason, everything back then was enormous and scary. Extinction doesn’t always have to be a bad thing!

And Poppy, what you saw was an arthropod known as Pterygotus (it was actually featured in Walking With Monsters). Not only was it as big (or maybe even bigger) than your average human, it had a stinger the size of a lightbulb. REALLY glad that bugger isn’t around anymore.

Also, Megalodon deserves to be mention again, because just hearing its name makes me want to never be submerged in water ever again.

sashayed

GOD, I HATE THIS POST. HOW DO WE EVEN KNOW THAT SHIT ISN’T STILL AROUND? LURKING? EVOLVING? WE DON’T. WE DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT SHIT DOWN THERE. THE OCEAN IS A PRIMEVAL HELLSCAPE NIGHTMARE AND WE ALL JUST DIP OUR STUPID FRAGILE UNPROTECTED FETUS BODIES AROUND THE EDGES OF IT LIKE THAT’S NORMAL. FUCK THE OCEAN.

honey-andrevolution

this is so relevant to my interests

siphersaysstuff

It wasn’t just the predators. North Carolina was once home to giant ground sloths…

THAT IS A GODDAMNED LEAF-EATING SLOTH.

We’ve got a skeleton of one of these fuckers at the museum downtown, and man, just being NEAR it is unsettling.

anneriawings

DON’T FORGET PREHISTORIC WHALES, SOME OF THOSE FUCKERS WERE TERRIFYING

AMBULOCETUS WAS AMPHIBIOUS AND PRETTY BADASS

BASILOSAURUS WAS THIS GIANT REPTILIAN CETACEAN THAT PROBABLY SWAM LIKE A DUMB EEL BECAUSE OF ITS TINY FLUKES BUT THIS FUCKER WAS 60 FEET LONG AND AT THE TOP OF THE MARINE FOOD CHAIN

AND THEN THERE’S MY FAVORITE, ZYGOPHYSETER, WHICH WAS THIS HUGE EARLY SPERM WHALE THAT ATE SHARKS AND OTHER WHALES

IT WAS NOTHING BUT TEETH

gallizfrey

The reason why the animals in the prehistoric times were so big was because there was much more oxygen in the atmosphere if I recall correctly. Because there was so much oxygen and so few carbon gasses, life on earth was able to grow to terrifying lengths and heights, don’t forget how giant the bugs were.

shabbytigers

I have never seen so much prime nope in a single post

ororomunroedontpullout

Also important to note that megalodon is theorized to still be alive,possibly living in the darkest depths of the ocean. They haven’t found signs of its extinction

king-of-the-edge

scientists: “we haven’t seen a megalodon in quite some time now, let’s just hope it’s exstinct”

aninactivebloggfgfgf

This whole post is my JAM not gonna lie I am fascinated by massive prehistoric animals

iguanamouth

Could you draw me a toad or frog? It can be really small and simple, I just wanted to request a small pick-me-up!

incorrectunsolvedquotes

If I get taken out by a serial killer, please know I died doing what I loved: learning too much about serial killers.

Ryan Bergara (via incorrectunsolvedquotes)

prokopetz

I have to laugh when I see folks going “well, what if the artist didn’t intend for there to be any deep symbolism?” The Death of the Author entirely aside, any artist can tell you that the fact that you didn’t intend for there to be any deep symbolism doesn’t mean you didn’t put some there anyway. I personally know multiple fanfic writers who’ve put together what they thought was just an interesting bit of fluff, then they went back and re-read their own story a month later and they were all: “oh, god dammit - this is about my relationship with my mother, isn’t it?”

latining

I came out to have a good time and honestly I’m feeling so attacked right now.

fog6v7a4m8p5i8r3i8s1m0

shoepixie

Score!

leahclifford

YAY! :D !!!

maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20

The Art of Invisible Movement

Several weeks ago, an aspiring writer asked me what my opinion was on “in-between” scenes — scenes where “nothing happened.” She noted that her favorite scenes in books were often ones where characters were only talking about their lives. How did I recommend including these while maintaining pacing?

I have three thoughts on Nothing scenes.

1. Always Be Mindful of Invisible Movement

I don’t believe in Nothing scenes. I believe in scenes that appear as Nothing scenes to the reader, but are actually full of invisible movement. I have a rule for myself — insofar as I do rules — that every scene should be doing at least two things, preferably three or more, no matter how much it appears to be about merely one.

Here are examples of things scenes can do:

• give backstory

• demonstrate character change

• create a sense of place

• satisfy logistics; i.e. move a character from place A to place B

• establish character

• explain worldbuilding

• move through action sequence

• move external plot forward

• establish dynamic between two characters through conversation or action

It can be tempting to grab just one of those and say DONE. SCENE. GOOD. But efficient storytelling, powerful storytelling, involves doing many of these at one time. A scene may appear to be merely about a character crashing his best friend’s car. But it must also be about his character journey and about his dynamic with another character, all the while pushing the external plot forward. Complexly written, but simple to read: ah yes, these scene where Ronan takes the car.

A Nothing scene might overwhelmingly appear to be merely a conversation, but it needs to be doing heavy lifting in the places in between words. Work in place, backstory, character motivation. Let the unspoken seethe inbetween the spoken. Subtly tie the conversation to the external plot. Why is the conversation happening now? Make sure it references the steps that came before it to make it seem inevitable instead of like an element that can merely lift out and be placed elsewhere without consequence.

What you’re attempting to do is maintain invisible movement. Remind the reader of what is still lurking during this quiet moment. Or remind them that this is the stake: that this quiet moment is what the characters are fighting for. Or situate the quiet moment within a larger, external plot machination, and end the conversation by wrenching them externally according to the plot.

But don’t just let them talk. You can at first. Draft it that way. Be delighted by the quiet conversation you’ve written. But then get back to work. You ain’t done. Push things forward invisibly by having the scene do something else in the background.

2. Earn It

You’ve got to earn all frothy conversations or quiet moments in two ways. First is the rhythm of the thing. It’s like a mix tape. Don’t group all the quiet stuff together, dude! Tense action scenes seem more speedy when interspersed with quiet moments, and vice versa. Earn your quiet moment by putting us through our paces for a bit first.

Second: you’ve got to emotionally earn your quiet moments, your Nothing conversations. You may have been daydreaming of the moment your two characters finally open up and reveal their deepest truths through memes, but if you do it too soon, the scene will feel empty … and slow. Like just a Nothing scene.

An emotional conversation should be a reveal, a satisfying culmination of something half-seen until that moment. Timed correctly, far enough along in the emotional journeys, these conversations will feel like a resting place or a reward instead of a lull.

3. You Can’t Live on Ice Cream Cake, or You Ruin Ice Cream Cake

There’s a reason why a lot of readers think they love Nothing scenes — they mean the scenes mentioned above, quietly emotional scenes placed well within the narrative. They feel amazing! But the chemical make up of these scenes mean that they only work when used sparingly. It’s not the quietness of them that makes them incredible. It’s what had to happen to make the quietness possible. Ice cream cake is special because it’s a rarity, brought out only for special occasions. The same goes for all pleasurable excesses in novel-making: banter, kissing, action sequences, emotional porn. They all need to be used sparingly, and to be placed as a result of story, not instead of it, or you’ll find yourself with a Nothing novel, because ice cream cake for every meal makes it lose its meaning.

The thing to remember about novel writing is that the key to pacing is tension, and tension doesn’t always come from negative consequences. Positive consequences can work just as well (think of it: love stories, exploration narratives, training sequences). Make sure your Nothing scenes maintain invisible movement by continuing to promise some kind of tension, and you’re golden.

Oh yeah, and most important? Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t pull it off in a first draft of a scene. Just because you have to end up with a hard-working scene doesn’t mean you have to be able to juggle all those layers at once. Writing is revision, revision is writing, etc. etc. etc.

leahclifford

As a rule, I try to make every scene serve three purposes, whatever they may be. They could be furthering the plot, laying the foundation for a character’s motivation and moving the MC and love interest closer together. They could be amping up the tension, showing how a character reacts when confronted and giving a layout of the location the finale is going to take place at so the reader is familiar later. Any three things, but always, at least three things.

motorizedduck

Prince Rupert’s Drop

Did you guys ever hear about Prince Rupert’s Drop? The British Royal Society was really interested in these things back in the 1600s.

It’s basically a long, thin, practically snaky bit of glass that you get when you drop some molten glass into water. It solidifies into a shape like this:

The interesting and weird thing is, you can’t really break the bulb part. You can take a hammer to it but it won’t break. But the long tail is fragile and easily broken. And if you break any part of this thing, it explodes. Really, it just blows up into a million tiny little shards.

With modern high-speed cameras, they’ve managed to measure the speed of the fracture at slightly faster than one mile per second.

The reason why it breaks like this is because, when the molten glass rapidly cools, the surface hardens right up, but the inside still stays hot for a while. As the inside cools, it pulls in on itself really hard in all directions, leaving the entire drop in a constant state of high tension. When it’s entirely cooled, it only takes a tiny fracture to release that chain reaction of released tension that breaks all of it almost at once.

octoswan

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

shatterstag

oh this is REALLY nice

carifas

AMBITION: Nemesis [Someone you loved is dead]

The Cage-Garden In a far corner where the stars above glow dim and even the squeaks of the bats are hushed, a brick-walled garden lies…A dank but serene place with a mossy fountain at its heart. Dark hives of bees humming on the far side…

“But you know this…don’t you?”

ghoulnextdoor

I’m not much for holiday music (though I’ll fight you when it comes to the clear superiority of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas”.) If you, like me, prefer your winter sounds bleak and brooding, here are three playlists sure to frost the cockles of your heart during the cold waves and snowfall, and into which you may escape when the rest of the world is too damn jolly.

Sounds For A Midwinter Night