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@m-r-levine
Writeblr ReIntro
I have returned after a period of radio silence on all social media which was brought on by various unpleasant IRL reasons, but in the spirit of endeavoring to improve the circumstances, here we are. This is my main blog, most reblogs are shuffled off to either @chosenofthree or @0ncem0rew1thfeel1ng
current editing job has me thinking almost CONSTANTLY about the psychology of punctuation, which is super cool but also I don't have the mental energy to actually articulate my thoughts so they're just going around and around in my head like
Okay I'm gonna try and articulate at least some of this. What really Gets Me is that while punctuation in English has its own specific set of standards/rules, a lot of how we decide to use it is intuitive, subconscious and highly context-dependent. Look at:
Alaric sat next to me without a word; this time, the silence between us was fraught.
That semicolon usage is technically correct: it links together two related independent clauses into one sentence (just like that colon links up the two clauses of this sentence, and the parenthesis turn this last part into an aside!) Technically speaking, there would be no need to change that sentence. If I was doing a straightforward proofread, I'd probably leave as-is. But! Compare to:
Alaric sat next to me without a word. This time, the silence between us was fraught.
That full stop distills the information into a double-punch delivery. First punch: he sits down. Second punch: the silence is fraught. The quality of that silence, its fraught nature, has been subtly elevated from the surrounding text, which emphasises it far more than when it was attached to the previous clause by a semicolon. If you wanna expand more on that silence, you could stick a semicolon back in:
This time, the silence between us was fraught; if it stretched any further, it was going to snap back on me like a suddenly-released tape measure.
That shifts the focus a little more onto the latter clause. Now it's not just about the fraught silence, but the effect that the silence has on our narrator.
You get something similar with the difference between clauses separated by commas, em or en-dashes and parentheses. As already demonstrated, parentheses are the textual equivalent of a stage whisper (sotto voce, if you will). Dashes are powerful tools for creating both on-page and mental space around a specific idea, thought or action.
It looked at me with its eyes – all six of them – then slid noiselessly back into the black water.
Dashes there emphasise the number of eyes. Maybe that's important because it means the water creature is giving the narrator its full attention suddenly, or maybe you just want to emphasise that this thing has six eyes – point is, those eyes are now the focal point around which the rest of the sentence's meaning coalesces.
You could use commas in that same sentence and be technically correct, but the feel of the sentence would be pretty different. Commas create minimal interruption to the flow of information so they don't create the same amount of information. They're like gently driving over a slight speed bump straight to the next thing, whereas dashes make you stop the car for a moment and look at the view. If that's the effect you want though, then commas are perfect!
Do you see what I mean? Very few of us are actually taught this stuff, and the connotations of different punctuation shifts naturally over time (think of the difference in how older people vs younger people use the ellipsis), but by and large readers will understand what you're doing with your punctuation choices even if you weren't fully aware you were making a choice in the first place. it's like a language all by itself! pretty neat, huh?
Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:
Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.
You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.
When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.
A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)
Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)
The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.
Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.
Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.
As someone who spent over a decade catering luxury events, let me add some back of house info:
These events are almost always open bar. They're not trying to make their money back on alcohol. They want you to drink and eat and donate generously.
If there are cocktails, there will be at most two on offer, pre-made in large tubs. You cannot order a different version, it is what it is.
There are two types of events: cocktail style or seated. The first includes roaming hors d'oeuvres or a fancy buffet with tiny plates called a grazing station. For a long night, the roaming food will get a little bigger throughout the evening and have a 'main' at some point based around a protein.
A seated event will usually be more structured and may include multiple courses. Silver service is not in vogue anymore. You are likely to get either alternating meals brought to you like at a wedding, or served banquet style. A good caterer can get a plate to everyone in a 300 person event in about three minutes.
Drunk people are the same no matter how expensive their suits. They still laugh too loud, spill their drinks and slip on the dance floor. They are usually less embarrassed about doing coke in the bathrooms.
A full scale event that starts at 6pm will have staff arriving at noon to begin setup. Earlier if there's a light show or pyrotechnics. Typically venues don't just have 30 tables and three hundred chairs lying around, let alone table cloths, chair covers, etc. It's all rented and brought in on the day. Bands and DJs will be running audio tests in the background throughout.
Most heritage buildings that host these things, like museums and manor houses, aren't really designed for them. They might put down mats so you're not walking in stilettos over two hundred year old wooden floors, the kitchens are weirdly far away, and there are not enough taps. There is never anywhere for staff to sit, so if you open the wrong door you might find half a dozen waiters sitting on upturned milk crates in a room full of million dollar paintings, eating the left over bread.
Really old buildings don't have enough bathrooms, which means the staff will be sharing with the guests.
Clean up starts the second the event ends, if not sooner. Unattended glasses will start to disappear first, then table decorations. When the timer ticks over, the lights come back on and exhausted staff strip the tables, pack up dirty glasses and unopened wine bottles and have to Tetris it all into the back of a van. The venue is booked for that day only, so everything has to be gone before anyone can go home. A large event that finishes at midnight might take until 3am to be cleared away.
These are very long and physically demanding nights for anyone working them. The staff all get to know each other, and will absolutely notice someone trying to sneak in wearing a borrowed uniform. They are not being paid enough to care.
What if... writing the “wrong” thing is what leads you back to yourself?
In our newest guest contributor's blog post, Blackbird writes about burnout, creative pressure, first-time fanfic, and the unexpected side quests that can help us rediscover the joy in creating things.
"It's important to find the part of you that's fueled by nothing more than pure self-indulgence, and to give that part of you the space to exist.
Whatever form that takes."
Have a read over on the blog! - the Ellipsus Team xo
Forbidden Love
“They’ll kill us…” “I know.”
“We can’t keep doing this.” “I know. But I don’t know how to stop.”
“This is going to get is both killed.”
“We have to go. They know, we have to go right now.” “What? What are you talking about?” “They know! About us! They know!”
“What if we left? Maybe somewhere else we could just… be.”
“Isn’t this thrilling?” “And absolutely moronic? It really is.”
“We don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
“Relax, no one saw me.” “How can you be sure?”
“Is all this worth it?” “You mean being with you? Because for me, it absolutely is.”
[Prompt Calender: June 3rd, Love Conquers All Day]
And all of this at once.
writing tip #4179:
staring at a blank page? well it wouldn't be blank if you put some words on it, would it
Learn Your Limits
We're officially a week into the Summer Challenge!
So time for a check in. How's the writing going?
I hope everything is going great, and you've accomplished a lot this week!
But, what if the results weren't great? What if didn't reach your weekly goal? What if you already feel like quitting?
But! This is why we sent up the challenge with fresh goal setting each week.
So, instead of quitting, use what you've learned this week to make next week better.
Think about what went well, and what didn't.
If you found that doing a daily writing sprint worked out great, but you didn't hit your word-count goal, then the answer is pretty simple, lower your word-count goal for this week.
If you felt too over extended, then set a lower target for this week.
On the opposite side of things, if reaching your goals felt very easy, try setting a goal that's a little more challenging.
Overall, don't treat a single week like it's the end all. Instead, use it as an exercise in figuring out your limits, and use that information to set better goals this week.
When it comes to writing goals, it's all a learning process.
And don't forget to put it in writing, or make a post about it.
And in the spirit of that? The word prompt for this week is Limit.
Use it however you want. Just make sure you keep writing!
By the Numbers - a short fic challenge
Write a fic with 6 puns/references/inside jokes in 7 sentences.
Write about the meaning of life, the universe, or everything in exactly 42 words.
Write a smut scene in 69 words.
Write a fic of 101 words that includes at least one dog.
Write a 10 sentence fic about why one character hates another.
Write a 666-word fic about a dark omen.
Write a fic containing substance use that is 420 words long.
Write a fic that's 404 words long about a character who can't find something.
Write a fic with a three-digit word count (100-999) that contains your AO3 user number.
Write a 314-word fic that contains a mathematical concept.
Write a new backstory in exactly 52 words.
Write a 616-word fic that takes place in our universe (for a fandom that doesn't).
Write a dystopian future!fic that is 2046 words long.
Write a fic about an evil government that is 1984 words long.
Write a fic that is 177 words long and contains the number 76 and a reference to football.
Write a fic about a hacker that is 1337 words long.
Write a fic that is 24 sentences long, formatted in 7 paragraphs, and describes a character's year.
What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?
Partial transformation - mummy rot is slowly turning you to sand, a near miss from a medusa left you with partially stoned body parts, etc.
Hypnotic suggestions from being mind controlled persist after the controller’s death, causing the victim to occasionally take actions to support the cause of a mind flayer cult that no longer exists.
Repeated demonic possession has left the patient with permanent gaps in their soul’s defenses, causing them to immediately get re-possessed if they go outside a consecrated area.
Post-resurrection trauma as the revived soul remembers an unpleasant afterlife.
Magical healing can get very weird if something is stuck in the wound. It’ll get you back on your feet, but you can get outcomes like “there’s a chunk of wood fused into your chest because the magic couldn’t figure out how to get the arrow out of your chest and just healed it in place,” and this can cause mobility issues or infection vectors down the line.
SHealth tied to something else - the health of a tree, the amount of frost on the ground, the inverse of another person’s, the political power of whoever cursed you
Curse of bad luck - makes any small illness or injury potentially fatal if not treated with anti-curse in addition to anti-infection procedures
Magical reliance on a magical or nonmagical substance - can have any number of side effects
Repeatedly being drunk by vampires can cause an increase in blood production and therefore high blood pressure and related ailments. Can be treated by blood letting.
There’s a lot of hybridization happening in a lot of fantasy settings, and that’s just asking for a lot of people with weird half-dragon genetic disorders. Works out fine for some people, not so much for others.
Parasitized by (insert creature here). If you don’t take the correct precautions to keep it dormant it will continue to spread and eventually hatch out/transform you.
Repeated contact with the undead has left you open to their influence - leading to hearing or seeing things that other mortals can’t, which can distort or distract from more mundane concerns.
Alternately to being more vulnerable to intrusion, one’s soul can form a scar that makes helpful magic more difficult to take in.
Sleep disorders that make one fall into an impenetrable sleep at a specific trigger, or to do so for years at a time.
Out of phase with 4D space, one’s body not connected to itself or anchored in place/time in the usual way. There could be a consistent two hour gap between the things you hear and what has happened, you might clip into the floor as if it was in a different place for you, or you might slide through the material plane in cross section.
Intermittent intangibility.
Split into two people, each with only half your traits.
Stuck in a mirror.
Sensitivity to ambient magic - like the thing where peoples’ joints ache before a storm but for being near ley lines or people with a lot of magic built up or other magic reservoirs. - The potential for magic, but where the magic has not yet begun.
Heal spell dependency: years of repeated serious injuries being healed by magic causes the body to stop healing naturally. seen often in professional fighters and those with a long career in hazardous occupations.
the forgotten dread: memory modification magic has caused the subject’s conscious mind to forget some past trauma, but their subconscious still remembers, causing them emotions that they cannot explain or justify ranging from mild discomfort to blind panic when presented with triggers related to the aforementioned trauma. often encountered in cases where the subject has paid an unscrupulous mage to make them forget their past as an ill-advised alternative to therapy.
Psychically Transmitted Memories: the subject’s mind has been linked to another person’s and, although the bond has since been severed, they have retained memories or thought patterns from the other person that are difficult to distinguish from their own.
Negative Life Syndrome (previously “False Life Syndrome”): seen most often in cases when the subject is exposed to dark magic while in the womb, Negative Life Syndrome leaves the subject’s life energies tainted by undeath without making them truly undead. common symptoms include intolerance of radiant magic, aversion to sunlight, and the inability to set foot on hallowed ground; rare symptoms include healing from negative energies, sudden necrosis, and the desire to eat flesh or drink blood of living beings.
lycanthropy
Early Life Possessions: the subject was possessed by a spirit or demon during early childhood or infancy, and the possessing presence was in control of them when they learned important milestones, such as how to walk or speak. The subject is now dependant upon the possessing presence to help them perform these tasks or, in cases where the presence has since been exorcised, performs the relevant tasks at a level appropriate for an infant or small child.
Body requires nutrients not found in human food, and you must eat rocks, or gems, or some other alternative. You may or may not have the ability to actually digest these without magical assistance
Awareness of too many dimensions makes it difficult to interact with just this one - either to keep track of conversations, or walk to specific locations without ending up on another planet instead
Telekinetic psychosis - delusions tend to physically affect those around you (but HIGH chance for ableism in this one!)
you have flare-ups where your skin tends to slough off and be replaced by some other substance
After sharing life energy with a dying loved one, you’re now both trying to survive off one person’s supply. Like chronic fatigue, but if your loved one gets too big of a bruise you won’t have the energy to get up until it heals
living in reverse
stuck at a certain age
supersenses lead to constant overstimulation
you’re a changeling, and if you don’t have someone who loves you close by, you’ll turn back into sticks and mud
One that I like is the idea that paladins (and anybody else with supernatural immunity to disease) have their own “disease” in the form of severe allergies. If you’re magically insulated from ever catching any disease, ever, your immune system isn’t getting any kind of natural use. So it overreacts to everything. Being immune to being sick makes them “sick.”
Mages that have complications of their own magic, such as Pyromancers overheating if they don’t let off a fireball now and then, or conversely, being prone to hypothermia and needing their fire magic in order to stay warm.
Summer Writing
June, July, August
It's summer, some of you may even be on vacation, and up here in the northern hemisphere it's already way too hot. None of these things lend themselves to a lot of writing time.
But we are writers, are we not? Let's write then.
Summer writing means setting manageable goals, something we can fit in between all the other stuff. This may be a wordcount goal, or to work on the story for a certain amount of time. It may also be something else creative you want to do.
@mareebrittenford is working on a fancy spreadsheet for you, and I'm (@barbex) making a weekly image for you, where you can write down your goals for that week and get a little, optional, prompt for your current project.
We start on the first of June, and until then, I want you to think about what a realistic goal is for you for the first week. Make a post about it and tag this blog. Let's write together this summer.
~barbex
Oh yeah, and don't use generative AI, that would be totally beside the point of writing together. And also stupid.
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(background photo by Julien Lavallée on Unsplash)
Me when I write for 30 minutes: 1k words
Me when I write for 2 hours: 500 words
Me when I write for 4 hours: -300 words
Once Oscar Wilde, coming down to lunch, was asked how he had spent his morning. "I was hard at work," he said. "Oh?" he was asked. "Did you accomplish much?" "Yes indeed," said Wilde. "I inserted a comma." At dinner, he was asked how he had spent his afternoon. "More work," he said. "Inserted another comma?" was the rather sardonic question. "No, said Wilde, unperturbed. "I removed the one I had inserted in the morning."
hey boy don't kill yourself. green's dictionary of slang is available online and allows you to explore 500 years of english vulgarity. you can search by part of speech, source, time period, etymology, and usage. there's a whole category for gay slang. they even have specific citations listed so you can see the exact context for yourself. boy did you know that in 1927 "to kneel at the altar" was slang for "to sodomize"
some other hits:
Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)
Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)
To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)
Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]
Lily: penis (1919)
Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)
Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)
Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)
Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)
Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual
Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)
Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.
Anyways feel free to add y'all's favs to this post. & if you use this for gay historical fanfic please share with the class
#OH THIS IS EXTREMELY EXTREMELY HELPFUL#writing#resources#saving for later#maybe i should move my 1920s story from '25 to '27 because..... bro..........
note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.
also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:
Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']
Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)
Like. Honeydripper?????? That's so horny I can't stop thinking about it. We need to bring THAT back
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!
memes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made
Writer Self-Challenge Bingo
Usually, writing bingos are either fandom-specific, ship-specific, or linked to certain themes or tropes. A couple months ago, we at Duck Prints Press got to talking - what if there was a "fulfill this challenge!" style bingo aimed at writers? Instead of squares for tropes or ships or kinks, the squares for this bingo are writing challenges, such as "write x words in a sitting," "participate in a sprint," or "draw a map or floorplan for a location in your story." We've been developing it on and off ever since, and now we're ready to share the results!
We now have a list of 100 writing challenges (you can see the full list here), ranging from pretty darn easy to really hard (but we haven't rated their difficulty - what's easy for one writer will be hard for another, so a difficulty rating would be meaningless). We pre-generated a few cards, just for fun...
...or, you can use this link to generate your own!
https://bingobaker.com/#e7f0e229ba002276
We are not running this as a formal event. Sadly, we just don't have time right now to make rules, handle sign ups, track participants, create custom bingo cards, etc. However, we don't think we need to! Everything you need to run your personal writer self-challenge bingo is right in this post - if you're the kind of writer who'd find something like this helpful, we encourage you to use one of our pre-gen cards, make your own, or even just use this idea as a launching-off point from which to make a challenge that fits your brain.
And, if you do choose to use a bingo card, and end up writing and posting any fic, we encourage you to add it to our AO3 collection, and/or tag us so we can reblog/retweet/boost it!
As long as you're writing using strategies that help you, the rules don't matter, so get out there and write that thing!
(and, if you have ideas for more writing challenges we can add to our list, we'd love to hear them, and we'll potentially add them to our bingo card generator list!)
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taylor titmouse's guide for improving your itchio store page
(The Night Guest)
a few years ago i wrote a big angry post about how bad people are at marketing their own work and what they can do to be better at it. since then, the advice about twitter has largely become unnecessary and irrelevant, but the advice about what information you should be putting on your product page is still important and [through gritted teeth] nobody's fucking doing it.
so this post is going to be a step by step break down of what you can do to improve your itchio store pages to make them more informative and customer friendly. you're reading this because you 🫵 want to learn and improve. or you're just curious and/or like it when i yell. but either way taking my advice is your choice and if you don't feel like doing any of it you don't have to, much like nobody has to buy your books. if you've ever lamented why nobody buys your work but you're not making it easy for them to do so, it's 🫵 your fault and you annoy me immensely. take responsibility for your bad business practices.
anyway, let's make you better okay?
(and also note that all the store pages i'm using as examples are for adult works, but there's no explicit images in this post. you'll only see anything if you click through the links)
