musings of the mad @madnessspeaks - Tumblr Blog

Ways I Show a Character Is Deeply in Love (and Doesn’t Realize It Yet)

Falling in love doesn’t always come with violins and kissing in the rain. Sometimes it looks like, “Why do I know their coffee order, favorite pen, and dog’s birthday?”

They remember everything. Not because they’re trying to flirt. Just because their brain decided, “This person’s data is important now.”

They get annoyed by other people talking to them. Why are you laughing at their joke? He’s not even funny.

They show up. For dumb things. Things they wouldn’t normally care about. Your cat’s vet appointment? They’re there.

Their body reacts before they do. Smiling before their brain catches up. Leaning closer without realizing. Looking at their mouth while they talk. Oops.

They pretend they’re just "helping out." You know. Just being a good friend. A good friend who stares at your texts like they’re holy scripture.

They get flustered when the other person flirts with anyone else. “I’m not jealous. I just… think they deserve better. Like someone emotionally mature. Who knows their coffee order. Who… wears this hoodie. Okay bye.”

They panic when the other person gets too close. Not because they’re scared of them. Because they’re scared of how much they care.

wbqotd

Ok sorry you probably have already answered this a bunch but do you have a masterlist of questions broken up by topic?

I don’t. It's a good idea but I need to rethink what topics I tag before I create something like that and that's gonna take some work.

In the meantime, I've got a masterlist of questions in chronological order on google docs.

I've also stuck a list of tags I use under the cut. Lots of questions are tagged with multiple topics so it doesn't really work as a masterlist but at least you can sort by topics.

mellifera38

Mel’s Big Fantasy Place-Name Reference

So I’ve been doing lots of D&D world-building lately and I’ve kind of been putting together lists of words to help inspire new fantasy place names. I figured I’d share. These are helpful for naming towns, regions, landforms, roads, shops, and they’re also probably useful for coming up with surnames. This is LONG. There’s plenty more under the cut including a huge list of “fantasy sounding” word-parts. Enjoy!

Towns & Kingdoms

town, borough, city, hamlet, parish, township, village, villa, domain

kingdom, empire, nation, country, county, city-state, state, province, dominion

Town Name End Words (English flavored)

-ton, -ston, -caster, -dale, -den, -field, -gate, -glen, -ham, -holm, -hurst, -bar, -boro, -by, -cross, -kirk, -meade, -moore, -ville, -wich, -bee, -burg, -cester, -don, -lea, -mer, -rose, -wall, -worth, -berg, -burgh, -chase, -ly, -lin, -mor, -mere, -pool. -port, -stead, -stow, -strath, -side, -way, -berry, -bury, -chester, -haven, -mar, -mont, -ton, -wick, -meet, -heim, -hold, -hall, -point

Buildings & Places

castle, fort, palace, fortress, garrison, lodge, estate, hold, stronghold, tower, watchtower, palace, spire, citadel, bastion, court, manor, house

altar, chapel, abbey, shrine, temple, monastery, cathedral, sanctum, crypt, catacomb, tomb

orchard, arbor, vineyard, farm, farmstead, shire, garden, ranch

plaza, district, quarter, market, courtyard, inn, stables, tavern, blacksmith, forge, mine, mill, quarry, gallows, apothecary, college, bakery, clothier, library, guild house, bath house, pleasure house, brothel, jail, prison, dungeon, cellar, basement, attic, sewer, cistern

lookout, post, tradepost, camp, outpost, hovel, hideaway, lair, nook, watch, roost, respite, retreat, hostel, holdout, redoubt, perch, refuge, haven, alcove, haunt, knell, enclave, station, caravan, exchange, conclave

port, bridge, ferry, harbor, landing, jetty, wharf, berth, footbridge, dam, beacon, lighthouse, marina, dockyard, shipyard

road, street, way, row, lane, trail, corner, crossing, gate, junction, waygate, end, wall, crossroads, barrier, bulwark, blockade, pavilion, avenue, promenade, alley, fork, route

Time & Direction

North, South, East, West, up, down, side, rise, fall, over, under

Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, solstice, equanox, vernal, ever, never

dusk, dawn, dawnrise, morning, night, nightfall, evening, sundown, sunbreak, sunset

lunar, solar, sun, moon, star, eclipse

Geographical Terms

Cave, cavern, cenote, precipice, crevasse, crater, maar, chasm, ravine, trench, rift, pit

Cliff, bluff, crag, scarp, outcrop, stack, tor, falls, run, eyrie, aerie

Hill, mountain, volcano, knoll, hillock, downs, barrow, plateau, mesa, butte, pike, peak, mount, summit, horn, knob, pass, ridge, terrace, gap, point, rise, rim, range, view, vista, canyon, hogback, ledge, stair, descent

Valley, gulch, gully, vale, dale, dell, glen, hollow, grotto, gorge, bottoms, basin, knoll, combe

Meadow, grassland, field, pasture, steppe, veld, sward, lea, mead, fell, moor, moorland, heath, croft, paddock, boondock, prairie, acre, strath, heights, mount, belt

Woodlands, woods, forest, bush, bower, arbor, grove, weald, timberland, thicket, bosk, copse, coppice, underbrush, hinterland, park, jungle, rainforest, wilds, frontier, outskirts

Desert, dunes, playa, arroyo, chaparral, karst, salt flats, salt pan, oasis, spring, seep, tar pit, hot springs, fissure, steam vent, geyser, waste, wasteland, badland, brushland, dustbowl, scrubland

Ocean, sea, lake, pond, spring, tarn, mere, sluice, pool, coast, gulf, bay

Lagoon, cay, key, reef, atoll, shoal, tideland, tide flat, swale, cove, sandspit, strand, beach

Snowdrift, snowbank, permafrost, floe, hoar, rime, tundra, fjord, glacier, iceberg

River, stream, creek, brook, tributary, watersmeet, headwater, ford, levee, delta, estuary, firth, strait, narrows, channel, eddy, inlet, rapids, mouth, falls

Wetland, marsh, bog, fen, moor, bayou, glade, swamp, banks, span, wash, march, shallows, mire, morass, quag, quagmire, everglade, slough, lowland, sump, reach

Island, isle, peninsula, isthmus, bight, headland, promontory, cape, pointe, cape

More under the cut including: Color words, Animal/Monster related words, Rocks/Metals/Gems list, Foliage, People groups/types, Weather/Environment/ Elemental words, Man-made Items, Body Parts, Mechanical sounding words, a huge list of both pleasant and unpleasant Atmospheric Descriptors, and a huge list of Fantasy Word-parts.

Keep reading

ursulaklegun-deactivated2024122

I’m compelled by stories where the characters suffer a lot, but only if there’s catharsis in the end. If they just die without ever getting to recover I’m OUT because what’s the fucking purpose then? Voyeurism? Bye

amouagee-deactivated20210702

But happy endings are literally SOOO boring

ursulaklegun-deactivated2024122

So are you

atreefullofstars

The three most boring kinds of endings:

-I refuse to tell you the ending, you have to ~decide for yourself~! -And then they woke up. -And it was all miserable and pointless and nothing got fixed and nothing was better and everybody died or lived morosely ever after, now stay awake all night contemplating the futility of life and feeling shitty so I can masturbate to the idea that i have made Powerful Art.

Protip: it doesn’t take any skill or insight to make people feel bad. Just like it doesn’t take any skill to refuse to come up with an ending and make the reader decide, or to handwave all the questions of the narrative by saying they were never real at all. What takes skill is to gather together all your woven threads and knot them in a way that won’t unravel, that completes the narrative, satisfies the reader, and makes sense under scrutiny. That can be bittersweet sometimes! Characters can sacrifice a lot for their ending! It doesn’t have to be rainbows and kittens! But if the ending makes readers wish they hadn’t invested emotional energy in the outcome of the story, then the story has failed.

Don’t be lazy. Don’t cheap out on your ending. Work to put together something readers will be glad they read, even if it made them cry.

allwomenmustdieactually

IF THE ENDING MAKES READERS WISH THEY HADN’T INVESTED EMOTIONAL ENERGY IN THE OUTCOME OF THE STORY, THEN THE STORY HAS FAILED.

That’s it! That’s the point!

croquettish

mharti-mcfly

cleo4u2

THIS. I saw a post the other day that literally said if you do it to a fictional character, you’ll do it in real life.

No. Just NO.

I’m so glad someone put it into words.

decepticonsensual

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a legend, and he’s absolutely right.

And I really feel like there are parts of fandom that don’t get or don’t believe this, and I think that’s troubling. I’ve seen arguments that people shouldn’t have dark fantasies, or that bad impulses in themselves make a bad person. I’ve seen so much shaming over thoughts.

And if you get to a point where it’s bad to have dark thoughts and it’s bad to wonder what something would be like and it’s bad to put yourself in the shoes of anyone who isn’t “pure”, if fiction is no longer a realm where you can confront and explore, but an ongoing test of moral purity… well, maybe not everyone’s brain works like mine, but I feel like that takes away something incredibly important to being human.

athenagray

Purity culture is gonna kill art if y’all let it.

rainbowloliofjustice

Fiction is a safe place to explore whatever fucked up or dark desire that you have. You can write the most vile and fucked up shit in fiction and it be absolutely nothing you desire in real life. You can write about a serial killer who gets away with it. You can write about someone who goes on moral crusades to purge the world of all evils and still be the protagonist. You can write anything in fiction because that’s what it is meant for.

It isn’t meant to be a social commentary unless you create it to be.

It isn’t meant to be educational unless you create it to be.

Sometimes a story can be just that, a story. Entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not everything has to be deep, or have meaning, etc. unless the creator wants it to be and a lot of the purity types end up forcing something to have deep meaning or social commentary where it isn’t meant to. Is this inherently bad? No, but these people don’t just say “But this is my interpretation of it.” they go as far as trying to force that interpretation onto everyone else, including the creator, as a means of saying “See? It means that they promote/condone xyz so they’re bad and shitty people who should spend the rest of their life in jail with/are the same as people who’ve actually committed acts of violence against other people.”

one-lonely-whumperfly

THANK. YOU.

fangirlofall

@ all the people in the notes saying “yes except u can’t write about (list of immoral things they don’t want to see in fiction)” congrats on missing the point so spectacularly I’m not sure I could create better performance art if I tried

theinformationdump

Body Language Cheat Sheet for Writers

As described by Selnick’s article:

Author and doctor of clinical psychology Carolyn Kaufman has released a one-page body language cheat sheet of psychological “tells” (PDF link) fiction writers can use to dress their characters.

ao3commentoftheday

trying to come up with a title like

officerjennie

Sprinkle in some tears, maybe sobbing, and you’ve nailed it.

kallypsowrites

Alright guys. Title advice coming at you today.

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

writing-prompt-s

Your church-going, God-worshipping sister adopted a small child and you’re excited to see them. But when you do, the child is a menace. They’re throwing things everywhere, setting furniture on fire with seemingly nothing, chanting in Latin to summon demons, but the weirdest thing is that your sister doesn’t seem to mind.

vacantmall

“You literally adopted the antichrist, Anne. What the fuck.”

“Yeah, I knew when I saw him at the orphanage. I figured if the kid had some decent fucking parenting that we could avoid the whole ‘Revelations’ shite. Nasty business, that.”

George, who’s name has been kindly changed from Damien, approaches his new mother with a huge spider in his hands. It promptly bursts into flames.

“Good job, love. Now go find the rest.” George’s face makes no expression, but his eyes shine when he recieves a pat on the head for his efforts.

talieclandestine

As the months go by, George seems to settle down. He adjusts to school, friends, and the positive reinforcement Anne gives him. She encourages the good he does, even though the powers he uses aren’t “good”. When she gets calls from the school, it’s about a rambunctious boy that won’t sit still. Not a destroyer of the world and innocence.

It’s at Christmas dinner, that you let slip your amazement to your mother. How good Anne is for him and how he’s improved a lot. Still summoning hellhounds for games of fetch, though.

“Oh, he’ll forget how to do that when he falls in love the first time,” Your mother laughs, smiling wide.

“How do you know that,” you ask bewildered.

“Because, you did.”

nihilnovisubsole

a writing advice post: don’t describe characters’ eye colors, people don’t usually notice that in real life

me: anyway this character has pale blue eyes and this one has brownish-black and this one has sea green and you’re not my mother, you can’t make me stop

feynites

The trick is actually when you describe eye colours.

If a character is standing a good distance away from the character describing them, then unless they have massive and/or unusually vivid eyes (in which case, carry on) then no, they’re eye colour isn’t gonna be what jumps out about them.

So save it for later.

It can actually be a really moving experience to notice something pretty about another person’s eyes, the first time you’re close enough to. One of the major downsides of the ‘list format’ of description, where you just dump stuff like hair colour, eye colour, skin tone, height, built, etc in one big block, is that you lose a lot of the little human moments where people are honestly liable to pick up details about one another.

If you just tell me that, say, a character’s eyes have flecks of green in them, that’s boring. If your POV character notices the flecks of green in someone’s eyes because they’re sitting together on a couch and laughing and the light hit them just right and oh, so-and-so actually has unfairly pretty hazel eyes?

That’s a Moment™.

themodernmisandrist

If men stopped working…the world would continue on.

If women stopped working, then things would get ugly.

algo-hermoso

What?

tabathagfitzgerald

there has been an instance where this happened. it was 1975 and icelandic women decided not to work for one day. working as in cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, doing chores and so on, not only “not showing up to your workplace”. women did nothing that day, except showing up in reykjavik and protesting for gender equality, equal pay and equal representation in parliament, you know, cool stuff. you know what happened? havoc. men were left with food to cook and children they never took care of to pick up from kindergarden and entertain for the day. they went en masse to the food shops buying sausages because they could cook nothing else, they had to bond with children they never spent more than a couple hours a day with. they struggled combining their work day and the domestic tasks they had to sort out. and this just for one day. iceland in 1975 stopped working and things indeed got ugly. so ugly that women in the following decades became woke AF and soon it happened that women became president, took half of the seats in parliament and achieved one of the best living environments in the world. is your astonishment solved now?

artisinmysoul-deactivated201901

yES

rainbownightmares

Here’s an article on it

coonazz74

Very true.

tinygaysouffle

people who are like “yeah, but i’m sure the same thing would happen if men left the workforce!!!” not really tho bc look at WWII??

systlin

Literally what happens then is women say “Ok fine we’ll do that too” and do it.

carolimemes

This post now lives in my heart and drives me trough life

marciaillust

There’s only one thing worse than coming up with names for your ocs ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,it’s coming up with their surnames

mechanicalriddle

dude have i got the thing for you

onlyawfulrpgideas

I don’t know how these are being generated but they are so, so good

yeahwrite

Who else struggles with last names? Try this out!

promptaroonie

Write-O-Ween Prompts: Unusual and Rare Words Edition

As practice for the famous NANOWRIMO, a prompts list of unusual and rare words! I’ll try writing them: will you?

Uncanny: strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way

Chimerical: merely imaginary; fanciful

Susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound

Aubade: a song greeting the dawn

Ephemeral: lasting a very short time

Sempiternal: everlasting; eternal

Euphonious: pleasing; sweet in sound

Billet-doux: a love letter

Pluviophile: any organism that thrives in conditions of heavy rainfall; one who loves rain, a rain-lover

Redamancy: act of loving in return

Lachesism: the desire to be struck by disaster; to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire

Rubatosis: the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat

Nodus Tollens: the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore

Opia: the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable

Monachopsis: the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place

Énouement: the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self

Skulduggery: devious behavior

Tatterdemalion: raggedly dressed person; looking disreputable or decayed

Athazagoraphobia: the feeling of being forgotten, ignored, or replaced

Oblivion: the state of being completely forgotten or unknown; connotes feelings of isolation and aloofness, which lead to the annihilation or extinction of the self metaphorically

Abditory: a hiding, safe place to disappear

Hiraeth: the homesickness for a home you can never return to; a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past

Fernweh: the ache for distant places; the craving for travel

Sonder: the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own

Kenopsia: the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet

Kuebiko: a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence

Quiddity: the essence or inherent nature of a person or thing / an eccentricity; an odd feature / a trifle; a nicety or quibble

Wayfarer: a traveler, especially on foot

Nepenthe: a medicine for sorrow; a place, person or thing, which can aid in forgetting your pain and suffering

Gloaming: defined as twilight and dusk; the day’s end, the glittery, transient echo when time and nature meet

Eunoia: literally meaning “beautiful thinking” / FREE SPACE

andercas

I feel like when you’re writing, organizing chapters and dialogue is easy

but jfc, the amount of time it takes to constantly keep people moving and make sure they’re in the right spaces and trying to come up with wording for it is always such a shock.

Like, fuck, I made you pick up a coffee cup, you need to put it down at some point. also I can’t remember what I dressed you in, can you push up your sleeves? I don’t remember if you even have your shirt on.

and YOU. YOU OVER THERE, you got out of your chair earlier, but did you come back yet? Are you coming back? Where did you even go and why’d you get up? Fuck, I can’t make you sit down again already, you just stood up, go…over there. go get more coffee. Did you bring your mug with you? fine. bring the pot to the table and–wait, wasn’t the coffee pot already over here? shit, hold on, I need to go back and re-read and re-write

sergle

concept: deep sea mermaids with dark eyes and glowing pupils, deep sea mermaids that are 70 feet long, deep sea mermaids older than written language speaking a dead and foreign tongue forgotten by surface mermaids, deep sea mermaids being heard conversing through clicks and rumbles from far down submarines deep sea mermaids

baskerville-leviathan

Have I ever mentioned that this man is a genius? No?

thanatosjr

Instructions for a walk in the woods

Never turn around to check behind you. You’ll see nothing, but once you start doing it you won’t be able to stop, and an ominous feeling will follow you until you don’t lock your house’s door behind you.

If you stand very still and listen you will hear the woods calling for you. Don’t answer. Never answer.

You’ll hear things quietly following you, hidden in the trees by your sides. It’s okay, they’re just checking on you.

Don’t be scared, but be really, really wary.

If you have a bad feeling about taking a certain path, don’t. You’ll avoid whatever is waiting for you at the end of it.

You never know what may be buried under the soil you’re walking on. Remember that every time you take a step. Pray that whatever it is, it won’t wake up.

Be careful not to step on any beetle, or you’ll never get rid of them.

If you bring a knife with you, name it. Otherwise the blade will turn against you as soon as you try to use it.

Make sure you remember the way back home. As soon as you get lost, you’re just another piece of fresh meat.

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musings of the mad