Warning: Highly Unorganized

[sawyersscribbles]

A Complete Guide to “Punk”

No matter what story you want to tell, it’s important that it has its own unique flair. I’m not saying invent an entirely new genre or subculture, but it’s great for readers to explore different concepts and ideas through your writing. One really cool way I’ve seen a lot of people do recently is add some subject of “punk” into their writing. But what is punk? Generally, “punk” in literature is a component of the setting which is really important for the images and tone of the story. In this list, I’ll tell you every form of punk that you’ll probably ever need to use, so let’s get started!! :D

Keep reading

[wellfuckthishellsiteiguess-deac]

the one thing all of us writers have in common is that none of us are fucking writing

[she-who-fights-and-writes]

Me: Writes for .25 seconds

Me: Ok time for a quick break

Me: *Doesn’t write for the next three weeks*

[writerswritecompany]

Things writers love to do via @PaperFury on Twitter 

[mcaitmoyer]

I’m definitely not eating white cheddar popcorn with chop sticks so I don’t get my fingers covered in powder.....

[procrastiwriting-deactivated202]

My main problem as a writer is that I don’t write because “I have a story to tell”. I write because there are worlds I want to visit, ideas I want to explore, people I want to meet, conversations I want to hear, emotions that I want to express, and impossibilities I want to make real.

Which means that I still need a fucking plot.

[sweetdreams-baby]

I thought this would be more appreciated on tumblr

[lianabrooks]

Quick And Dirty Tips For Creating Subplots

– Not everyone should love the hero.

– The more antagonists you have the more conflicts you create.

– Real life should happen to the characters, even if they are saving the world they have jobs and responsibilities.

– Give the character interests and friends outside of work.

– Multiple point of views aren’t a bad thing if you know how to juggle them.

– It all needs to come together at the end.

– Not every antagonist needs to be vanquished at the end.

– – Give us more than one character to love– (from Diantha)

— Make each and every character count — (from Diantha)

Stories need subplots. Make sure yours has one.

[mcaitmoyer]

I have a feeling this is going to help me a LOT

[jhoomwrites]

@ other writers: how the hell do you write short things????

[ltleflrt]

I think it involves blood magic.

[kristsune]

@ other writers: How in the hell do you write long things????

[ltleflrt]

It definitely involves blood magic.

[bluegrasshole]

@ writers: how in the hell do you write

[hopepunkbutch]

its blood magic all the way down

[thats-what-sidhe-said]

@ writers: How do you learn blood magic?

[dykemaclachlan]

it definitely involves writing

[lizard-is-writing]

How to Plot a Complex Novel in One Day

Now first, I have to say, that the plot you’re able to come up with in one day is not going to be without its flaws, but coming up with it all at once, the entire story unfolds right in front of you and makes you want to keep going with it. So, where to begin?

What is your premise and basic plot? Pick your plot. I recommend just pulling one from this list. No plots are “original” so making yours interesting and complicated will easily distract from that fact, that and interesting characters. Characters will be something for you to work on another day, because this is plotting day. You’ll want the main plot to be fairly straight forward, because a confusing main plot will doom you if you want subplots.

Decide who the characters will be. They don’t have to have names at this point. You don’t even need to know who they are other than why they have to be in the story. The more characters there are the more complicated the plot will be. If you intend to have more than one subplot, then you’ll want more characters. Multiple interconnected subplots will give the illusion that the story is very complicated and will give the reader a lot of different things to look at at all times. It also gives you the chance to develop many side characters. The plot I worked out yesterday had 13 characters, all were necessary. Decide their “roles” don’t bother with much else. This seems shallow, but this is plot. Plot is shallow.

Now, decide what drives each character. Why specifically are they in this story? You can make this up. You don’t even know these characters yet. Just so long as everyone has their own motivations, you’re in the clear.

What aren’t these characters giving away right off the bat? Give them a secret! It doesn’t have to be something that they are actively lying about or trying to hide, just find something that perhaps ties them into the plot or subplot. This is a moment to dig into subplot. This does not need to be at all connected to their drive to be present in the story.  Decide who is in love with who, what did this person do in the 70’s that’s coming back to bite them today, and what continues to haunt what-his-face to this very day. This is where you start to see the characters take shape. Don’t worry much about who they are or what they look like, just focus on what they’re doing to the story.

What is going to change these characters? Now this will take some thinking. Everyone wants at least a few of the characters to come out changed by the end of the story, so think, how will they be different as a result of the plot/subplot? It might not be plot that changes them, but if you have a lot of characters, a few changes that are worked into the bones of the plot might help you.

Now list out the major events of the novel with subplot in chronological order. This will be your timeline. Especially list the historical things that you want to exist in backstory. List everything you can think of. Think about where the story is going. At this point, you likely haven’t focused too much on the main plot, yeah, it’s there, but now really focus on the rising actions, how this main plot builds its conflict, then the climactic moment. Make sure you get all of that in there. This might take a few hours.

Decide where to start writing. This part will take a LOT of thinking. It’s hard! But now that you’ve got the timeline, pick an interesting point to begin at. Something with action. Something relevant. Preferably not at the beginning of your timeline - you want to have huge reveals later on where these important things that happened prior are exposed. This is the point where you think about what information should come out when. This will be a revision of your last list, except instead of being chronological, it exists to build tension.

Once you’ve gotten the second list done, you’ve got a plot. Does it need work? Probably. But with that said, at this point you probably have no idea who half your characters are. Save that for tomorrow, that too will be a lot of work.

[mcaitmoyer]

Reblogging so I can work on this tomorrow instead of my actual work

[cogesque-deactivated20210410]

Fyr is a pickpocket with a metal hand and a scar where his heart should be. Bored with monotony of everyday life on a continent floating a hundred miles above The Nothing, he tries to steal the king’s crown…and fails. Sentenced to burn on the night of the metal moon, Fyr’s only chance to survive is to accept a deal with an enigmatic monster from his past.

The job is simple: sneak aboard an infamous pirate skyship and kill its immortal captain.

A story of thieves, pirates, wyverns, and magic, Metal of the Undying is going to be a high fantasy steampunk epic unlike anything the average reader has ever seen.

It has a proper blog now! This blog will be linked on my page, easy to access, or you can go right ahead and follow it to get exclusive access (WOW!!! FANCY). The primary thing that I’ll be posting there that I’m not going to on this blog is visual fanciness–if I get around to creating it. All the worthwhile things will be reblogged to cog-writes after a few hours to a few days.

You might be thinking: Why does she need an entire blog for one story? Self-important much? and I don’t blame you for that, haha. The primary reason that Metal of the Undying is getting its own blog is for the sake of organization. There are several facets of the world that I’ve received questions about (the magic systems and how wyverns work, as two examples), prompting me to think that I need a better organization system.

Well, here it is! If you open the page, you’ll see a big list of topics off to the left–these links will take you to posts with relevant tags so you can read all about them. As of now, I don’t have a huge amount of content, and the blog still needs some spiffing, but it is a thing that exists as a resource for you and me. Hopefully you’ll find it valuable, or at least fun!

@lady-redshield-writes, @greenhousewriting, @asundeendoesthings, @theguildedtypewriter, @mcubed35, @wri-tten, @mcaitmoyer (tags for people who were into my suggestion about doing this and/or expressed interest in beta reading) 

[thehikingastronomer]

What are the stages of drafts? I'm trying to write my own book but I dont know how to draft properly and I feel like I'm gonna be stuck in a gutter if I don't know

Yesssssssssssssss someone finally asked it!!!

I’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity to explain this and show everybody my inverted pyramid :D :D :D

I present, The Inverted Pyramid of Revising a Book

Now I’ll explain each section of the inverted pyramid:

THE FIRST DRAFT

This should be self-explanatory. You write the first draft. For novels, 75-150,000+ words of the world inside your head.

PLOT, CONTENT, SCENES, AND MAJOR CHARACTERS

Go back and fix it all up. Did you tell the story you wanted to tell? Did you include scenes and events that add up to the conclusion you present?

Are there any unnecessary scenes you could delete, or scenes that are redundant to other scenes? Get rid of them. If this means entire chapters have to go, wave bye-bye.

Do your main characters have believable back stories and arcs, and do they act appropriately in character at all times?

Is there any point in time when your characters do something that they literally WOULD NOT DO? Change that up.

WORLD-BUILDING, CHARACTERIZATION, HONING IN PLOT POINTS

Now pay attention to the deeper aspects of the story. Delve into the world your characters live in. Do they react appropriately? Does any part of society influence them more than others?

What does your world look like? Delve into the setting. The cultures, the technology, the history.

Work with your secondary characters and how they interact with your main characters. What role do they serve overall? Does the main character’s journey affect them at all, or vice versa?

Tighten up plot points. Stay concise if possible.

SENTENCE STRUCTURE, FLOW AND PACING OF SCENES

Now that the major parts of your story have been patted down, you can begin focusing on the technical stuff. Start broad.

Do you have redundant sentences? Do you start multiple sentences the same way?

Throw in short sentences.

Drop the pronoun from the beginning of a sentence every now and then.

Use commas instead of ‘and’ if you find you use ‘and’ a lot.

Does the flow of sentences and paragraphs fit with the tone of the scene?

Chop sentences apart. Use quick, sharp words.

Or combine sentences and flowery language and soft words.

BETA READER CRITIQUES AND SUGGESTIONS

Now that you’ve really patted this thing down, find people willing to read your work (hopefully for free).

Ask them to point out inconsistencies. Are they confused by anything?

Beta readers can tell you when things are boring or exciting. They’ll laugh. They’ll fangirl. They’ll beg you for more chapters.

Your brain is soft from so much revising. Beta readers are fresh, and will pick out things you’ve glossed over from seeing it so many times.

Shake things up and host a video chat for you and your betas! It’s a great way to make friends :)

PUNCTUATION AND MISSING WORDS

NOWWWWW you’ve finished all the major revisions and your story makes sense!!! All that’s left to do is get the broom and sweep it up (or the vacuum cleaner, or generate a black hole from the Large Hadron Collider to suck out all the errors because that’s super-effective**).

This is the nitty gritty stuff, and I highly recommend either forcing yourself to read really, really slow, or better yet, read your book out loud, start to finish.

You’ll trip up over misplaced commas and periods.

You’ll literally hear when a sentence is awkward.

Your brain will get confused when there’s a missing word.

Fill in the gaps, hammer down the boards, tidy up the place like you’ve got guests coming over.

THE FINAL DRAFT

OMG

OMG

OMG

OMG IT’S FINISHED AND YOU CAN SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD AND BUY PHYSICAL COPIES THAT YOU CAN HOLD AND SMELL AND RUB ALL OVER YOUR FACE AND DRAW IN AND DOG-EAR AND TOTE AROUND TO SHOW PEOPLE AND SIGN AUTOGRAPHS AND BECOME YOUR OWN LITTLE CELEBRITY!!!

Email the newspaper (I’ve appeared multiple times).

Email the local TV station (I’ve appeared on live TV).

Email book talk radio shows (I’ve had a Q&A for an hour on live radio).

……..Marketing is hard.

I hope that helps!

N.B. **please do not ask CERN for permission to use the Large Hadron Collider to create black holes that suck out all the errors in your book. You’ll look silly, and you might destroy Earth in the process.

[hiddlestomm]

DADDY

[fihli]

me: i don’t need validation to create things

also me, after posting one (1) thing, constantly refreshing, watching, waiting:

validate me

[sometimesrosy]

Fun Things To Do During The Second Draft

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life writing first drafts. Sometimes they get finished, sometimes they don’t. But I’ve learned a lot from it.

The next phase, The Second Draft, is a comparatively new phase for me. Do not be fooled. Your book isn’t done after one go. And maintaining that energy long term, past the first blush of getting the story out, is part of writing.

Each time I do a second draft, I get better at second drafts. And this time… I’m kind of having fun with what used to be a torturous process of OHMYGOD WHATDIDIDO? HOWDIDIMESSTHISUP? HOWDOIFIXIT?

Now I understand that the first draft was me telling the story to myself and getting to know my characters and discovering how things happen. So the second draft is going back over it and detailing, expanding, hilighting, and fixing the comical mistakes that happened when I didn’t know my characters quite so well. Which are NOT a flaw or a sign that i can’t write, but part of the writing process and a sign of how much the story has grown and I have grown as a writer.

So. A list of fun things you can do while revising your first draft:

Toss in foreshadowing. that’s a hint, y’all. it’s gonna come back later. I know because i can’t wait til you see it.

Switch someone’s character description, gender, hobbies, personality traits, etc. Because some of my secondary characters went from little to big, or male to female to non binary, or from alive to dead. Shut up. don’t @ me. I kill people in my stories. Anyway, it’s quite a shocker to be reading my first draft and find a character I decided to kill off walking around and talking. No no. It’s not quite as bad when I misgender a character or have them speaking as a tough guy when they’re really quiet and spiritual. Or make them a tiny delicate girl instead of a physical force to be reckoned with. No no. Fix that. Ew. Gives me the willies.

Take out the “blah blah” OMG, shut up MC. I don’t want to hear you go on at length about how you feel about your sister. You know how when some boring person won’t shut up and you have to listen to them? Second draft. Don’t have to listen. Shut them up. Interrupt them. Have another character butt in and point out their mopiness. Make them take action instead of ruminating. BRING THE SISTER IN AND HAVE HER SHOVE IT IN HIS FACE. 

Laugh at how cardboard the MCs are in the beginning and then add in some details that you know from later to make them vaguely foolish… or maybe sad. Sometimes both. Both is good.

Come up with subplots for the secondary characters who were ignored the first time around and sprinkle that in throughout the whole story, so that by the time they get to the end, they too have had a transformation that we only realized in passing because it wasn’t the main plot.

Realize how small scenes through out the first draft connect to the larger universe you have created and realize that if you tweak this or that, you can set up BOOK TWO. Like, from the very beginning.

Oh yeah, those secondary characters with subtle character development? They’re getting a romance in the sequel. And that leads to conflict and connects with the politics and the science fiction. And OMG I’m discovering something about my new plot by revising my old one? YAY. I’m outlining book two while revising book one. Oh, the foreshadowing. 

Enjoy the story. Read it like a reader. If something turns you off or makes you close the doc, take that as a sign that it won’t thrill your reader either. That troublesome passage/chapter has a problem, and you need to puzzle it out. It’s a puzzle. Figure out what bothers you. Take it out or fix it. For me, I’ve seen too much blah-blah, a character who doesn’t belong in the story, a flat character who is boring, too much backstory, a passage that needs more action or dialogue, a character who is acting OOC. Each time it’s a sign that I need to give attention to the problem. And when I figure it out and fix it, it’s SO much better and I get happy again. 

Have fun with your second draft! It’s like a game where you can rearrange things and see how that changes the whole picture. 

[mcaitmoyer]

Just some rough sketches for figuring out where my new-ish WIP is going to go. I don’t usually follow a strict outline. I’m way more of a “discovery” writer, so I don’t necessarily know what’s going to come next.

Also, apologies in advance. I’m pretty much limited to mobile-only versions of tumblr. I don’t have a real laptop/desktop. So formatting might be a little wonky.

————

The flickering lights of the sterile hallway cast shadows that writhed and changed. The familiar path seemed strange and dangerous. It was deserted, but something seemed to be calling Ace deeper into the building. She reached a cross way and knew exactly where she needed to go.

There was a voice now, a low moan that was barely audible. The tiny hairs on her arms stood up. Ace had the sinking feeling that she knew what she would find. Something inside of her was screaming to turn around, begging her to leave. Once she saw this, she wouldn’t be able to forget it. But there was something else. A stronger voice telling her to keep going. If she turned back now, she would be forever haunted by ‘what if’.

She stopped in front of an exam room. The little flag outside that indicated if there was someone in there showed that whoever was inside was highly contagious - limited personnel only. Ace knew that was a lie. She pushed open the door and saw a man laying on the table. He twitched, muttering constantly under his breath.

As she drew closer, Ace realized that he wasn’t twitching. He was pulling. He was fighting against the restraints that held him down. He tried looking over his shoulder as he heard her footsteps draw closer. She walked around the corner and made eye contact with the patient.

He was terrified.

He pulled even harder against his restraints. The only sound to come out of his mouth were whimpers, like someone in pain. Ace backed away. His eyes were alight with words he couldn’t seem to form. He wanted this to end.

Kill me. His eyes begged. Only a whine escaped his lips.

Ace turned back to the door. There was a huge, monstrous form blocking the way out. Horror flooded her, instincts told her to run, but the monster walked towards her. It closed in on her and she couldn’t get away from it. The monster was coming for her and there was nothing she could do to escape.

[reasonandempathy]

Pixar’s 22 Rules for Writing

[studyquill]

i hope this meme isn’t dead yet lmao

[studysnooze]

my entire life summed up rn