Spinster of this parish. Enjoys reading, wearing comfy clothes and dating fictional men. Fic on Ao3 | Masterlist. Over 18. Sometimes nsfw. Under 18s do not interact. Feminist. BLM. She/her.
Title: One Three Four - Tumblr / Ao3
Summary: You ask Javier to show you how he masturbates
Pairing:  Javier Peña x F Reader
Tags: Smut; Male masturbation; Intimacy; Memories of vaginal sex; Feelings
Wordcount: 1.3k (complete one-shot)
Rating: Explicit
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Narcos one-shot
Title: The Crossroads Iâm Standing At - Tumblr / Ao3
Summary: Oh my god they were roommates
Pairing: Javier Peña x Steve Murphy
Tags: Pre-slash; Roommates; Sharing a bed; Unresolved sexual tension
Wordcount: 1.3K (complete one-shot)
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Narcos series
Title: Donât Look And It Wonât Hurt - Â Tumblr / Ao3
Summary: Javi is a regular at an all night diner where he makes a connection with a lonely waitress
Pairing: Javier Peña x Original Female Character (waitress)
Tags: Â Friends to Lovers; Eventual smut; Soft Javi; Mutual Pining; Angst With A Happy Ending; Touch Starved; Hurt/Comfort; Intimacy; Panic Attack (just one instance); Idiots In Love
Wordcount: 25.5K so far (ongoing multi-chapter series)
Read Chapter One On Tumblr or on Ao3
Read Chapter Two On Tumblr or on Ao3
Read Chapter Three On Tumblr or on Ao3
Read Chapter Four On Tumblr or on Ao3
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The Mandalorian one-shot
Title: Gresham House - Tumblr / Ao3
Summary: Â Din has a secret place he visits between jobs: A boarding house in 1930s London.
Pairing: Din Djarin x âYouâ (Boarding House Proprietress - nameless female oc  - can be read as a Reader fic but please heed the tags and notes.)
Tags: Smut; Time Travel; Inter-dimensional Travel; Setting is 1930s London; Female protagonist (âYouâ) is a Boarding House Proprietress; Lap-sitting; Praise Kink; Service Top Din Djarin; Vaginal Sex; Suppressed Emotions; Touch-starved; Intimacy; Historical Inacuracies; Nameless ofc, No physical description; Second Person pov.
Wordcount: 3.4K (complete one-shot)
Rating: Explicit
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Narcos one-shot
Title: A Walk In The Woods - Tumblr / Ao3
Summary: Sex in a forest with soft Javi
Pairing:  Javier Peña x F ReaderÂ
Tags: Â Porn with feelings; Smut; Soft Javi; Sexual tension; Vaginal fingering; Vaginal sex; A bit of dirty talk; Praise Kink; Brief Oral sex, F receiving; Snuggling and cuddling; Intimacy; Semi-public sex (not played up as a kink)
Wordcount: 6K (complete one-shot)
Rating: Explicit
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Prospect one-shot
Title: He Is Home - Tumblr / Ao3
Summary: Comfort sex with Ezra
Pairing: Ezra x F Reader
Tags: Smut; Angsty Fluff; Taking A Bath Together; Soft Touching; Oral Sex, F Receiving; Vaginal Sex; Hurt/Comfort; Forehead KissesÂ
Wordcount: 3K (complete one-shot)
Rating: Explicit
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Prospect series
Title: Less The Horror Than The Grace - Tumblr / Ao3
Pairing: Ezra x Medusa
Tags: Implied/Referenced Past Rape (no rape in this story), Smut, Magic, Eventual Violence, Fix-It fic, Crossover Pairings, Ezra is immortal
Wordcount: 4.2K so far (ongoing multi-chapter)
Rating: Explicit
Nolan is decidedly an artist who has an appreciation for and respect for cinema and the craft of film making, and he has a love for making films that are supposed to be strange, dreamlike, even nonlinear. which is hindered by the fact that he, strangely, seems completely uncreative and artistically bland.
Package containing three reusable silicone lids for preserving supermarket hummus, which cost very little and which I honestly donât give a fig about: weâve posted your parcel. (weâve posted your parcel.) your parcel is posted. Your parcel is posted. Your parcel is moving. Tracking number for your parcel. Your parcel is being hand-carried to the depot by a courier named GREG. Your parcel is nestled gently at the DEPOT. Your parcel has been fed and watered and given a comfort break. Your parcelâs overnight nurse is named DILYS. She has twelve years of experience and a qualification. She reports YOUR PARCEL is DOING WELL. YOUR PARCEL HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. YOUR PARCEL HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. Your courier is named MERVYN and he is an AQUARIUS. your parcel is due at 12:13. We apologise. Your parcel is due at 12:17. This is due to MERVYN encountering ROADWORKS. Your parcel is circling. MERVYN is on your street. MERVYN IS HERE. Here is a photo of your feet with the parcel. Your parcel ARRIVED. how did you like MERVYN. Was he okay. Would you use him again. Would you trust Dilys to safeguard the following: a glass case containing a crystal gem / a balloon / a bucket of water. Your parcel was four minutes late. Weâll email you forever now. Do you like this
Package containing fragile and valuable birthday present to myself, anxiously awaited: due date of FUCKOFF Posted NEVER đ
Highlights & Tidbits from Band of Brothers 25th Anniversary Symposium Cast & Crew Panels: DAY ONE
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF DAY ONE PANELS
The first panel was smaller, included Shane Taylor (Roe), Rene Moreno (Ramirez), and Peter Youngblood Hills (Shifty), Freddie Joe Farnsworth (who worked w/ Dale Dye as the military advisor at the actors' bootcamp and on the show, and also played the guy on white horse in Carentan.
They covered some general stuff, though good chunk of it focused on how the military advisors influenced the production, esp. the actors both in training and in set, and Band of Brothers' legacy among military community, etc.
The second panel focused on casting, writing and putting together research and scripts, experiences of the actors w/ their vets, and the actors' experiences overall/how it affected them, and a bonus Dale Dye moment at the end
It included the casting team (Meg Liberman, etc.), some of the producers and writers (Tony To, Erik Jendresen, Ivan Schwartz, etc.) actors James Madio (Perconte), Dexter Fletcher (Martin), Frank John Hughes (Guarnere), Ross McCall (Liebgott), Shane Taylor (Roe), and Rick Gomez (Luz). Also, two brief Tom Hanks Zoom cameos (no mention of deleted scenes đ)
In the audience for this panel, I spotted Eion Bailey, Richard Speight Jr., Matthew Settle, Robin Laing, Dale Dye, and Tim Matthews. Several notable crew/creative team also were in audience, e.g. Anthony Pratt, Bruce McKenna.
Ready? Here we go!
GENERAL TIDBITS
- Playtone producer/chair of second panel Kirk Saduski implied that Tom Hanks mightâve known about 9/11 before it happened đ
- Dexter Fletcher accent jumpscare
- Shane Tayor introducing himself saying he was âon home turfâ (at the event in New Orleans) đ„°
- âitâs a love storyâ (- one of the writers about Band of Brothers/the bonds between the Easy Company guys) đ
- Iâm obsessed with Dexterâs hair and accessorizing. Itâs giving pretentious theater critic
- Rene Moreno did a little bow down "weâre not worthy" gesture when Shane Taylor as Doc Roe got introduced in the first panel
- Shane has two daughters đ„č ("I'm surrounded by females, all smarter and prettier than me")
- Frank John Hughes just became a grandfather! He said, if he could talk to Guarnere again, he would pick his brain about his experience as a grandfather and great-grandfather đ„ș
- A guy on the first panel says they didnât actually teach the assault at Brecourt at any point while he was attending West Point in the years following Band of Brothers' release... another episode postscript falsehood!
- To pass the time waiting for wardrobe, etc., the cast had ping-pong tables off-set, and would have competitions
- Freddie Joe Farnsworth: âMadio, all 4 foot 1 of himâ đđđđ
- Rick Gomez: "It was an extraordinary show, made about extraordinary people, by extraordinary people, and when you get a chance to be exposed to extraordinary, that changes every cell in your body, because then you know what it is for the first time."
- Ross McCall: "We had the best of the best - our amazing (producers, directors, writers, cast, casting directors, costume, makeup, the list goes on and on and on)- we had the best of the best, except probably the English catering. That was the one thing that I think we probably couldâve done better. But apart from that, everything was top notch, so well done."
On the Vets Sharing their Stories
- In order for producer Ivan Schwarz to "prove himself" and earn Dick Wintersâ trust, Dick made Ivan not only bring him a letter of recommendation from Tom Hanks but ALSO made him read and then the next day (!) give him a book report of Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.
- The producers said that Saving Private Ryan was groundbreaking in the graphic depiction of combat, and seeing the audienceâs openness to that and them gaining that frame of reference for what it was like, had an effect on the veterans' willingness to share.
- "A year before the 2000 Easy Co reunion it was: 'Grandpa wouldnât talk about it.' At this reunion, there was a line around the room for them to talk and share."
- Someoneâs favorite story about the whole experience of crew of writers & camera crew etc meeting & interviewing one of the vets was that there was a crowd of people around the house. The guy asked, "Was it bc they thought Tom Hanks was going to show up w/ them? No, it was because it was the first time grandpa was telling his stories." đ
On Writing
- The original outline for the show was 13 episodes đ„Č
- They received EIGHT (8) boxes worth of material that Easy vets had sent to Dick Winters for the show &/or that the publication of the Band of Brothers book inspired them to share, and that material was then compiled by writer Erik Jendresen and Tom Hanks into the Band of Brothers "Bible"
- Producer Kirk Saduski (the panel chair) asked Erik what he remembers from how they chose to divide up the episodes: âWell, it was 26 years ago, Kirkâ (Ross behind him, laughing)
- (On how they solved the problem to frame the events of EP 6, when everyone was paired off in their individual foxholes): "Well, there was one guy who was going around, looking for some scissorsâŠâ
- Writer discussing focusing on characters or pairs they thought it was most fitting to spotlight in each episode: "Well, Episode 6 was Roe and Babe, Episode 7 was Lipton and Speirs..." (me: đ)
On Casting
- Madio, being asked about his casting experience: âWell, I was first offered the role of Richard Winters...â
- Madio did his audition w/ Frank and Kirk Acevedo ("3 Bronx guysâ)
- During one of his first calls with Bill Guarnere, Frank asked if had any advice for his final audition, and Bill said: "Just remember, I was a 19-year old paid killer. Anything else?â (âAnd I said, 'No, thatâs good, sir'â)
- The story of casting Damian Lewis, told by @lupoteodoro in this post
- Ross, quoting Frank: âMeg didnât just cast the show, she cast our best friendsâ đ
- Tony To: "...and had privilege to meet Frank, Ross, Shane... all of these guys."
Rick:
On Ross McCall Kissing the Casting Director
Tony To revealed that when Ross McCall came into his audition, he kissed Meg Liberman on the mouth đł
Ross: Meg had a sign that said: 'Please Donât Shake Hands.' So me being me at 24 years old: "I see weâre not shaking hands, how about a kiss on the mouth." End of story.
Meg: And thatâs all it took.
(cue jokes that was ALL that happened, and the rest of the audition was all professional)
Later, Rick Gomez: âFirst, Iâd like to say I have the utmost respect for Meg Liberman and would never try to kiss her on the mouth. I would never say anything like that. I would never insinuate anything like that. And Meg knows that. Meg knows that, deeply. And I want this audience to know that as well.â (Tony, visible within frame, was laughing his ass off)
On Learning about their Vets
- Ross: "All the other guys who were casted got all this material on the vets they were portraying, or got to meet them. All I got was a manilla envelope w/ ONE picture, a picture from the book." (He later explained that he got most of his info from the book and from the Easy Co vets, who he said were happy to talk about their buddy)
- Ross, on Liebgott : âHe had a little bit of spice to him, which I liked."
(Sidenote: Someone needs to tell Ross that Liebgott wasnât actually Jewish! Also, Ross said (in the interview snippets in between panels) that he spoke German due to his grandmother being German, which is also not true.)
- Frank said that Bill Guarnere always answered the phone by saying âYowzaâ đ
- Frank, on talking w/ the real Bill: "As fearless as he was in combat, as fearless as he was in the next hardest thing, which was sharing.â/"We talked 3 or 4 hours every day. I knew how he felt about everything, there was nothing unsaid between us."
- Guarnere wouldnât talk about Bastogne, so Frank got that info from Carwood Lipton (whom he described as "a classy, elegant, wonderful guy.") @lupoteodoro tells the whole story in this post
- Ross: "When Bill and Babe came down on set, it was like The Beatles had arrived."
- The vets were not really into talking about themselves/things that they did, but would love to talk about their buddies/things their buddies did
- Peter Youngblood Hills went to visit the real Shifty (who coincidentally lived an hour away from his mother's house), and spent a few days with him, learning to imitate Shifty's shooting style, etc. One time, Peter slept in, and Shifty was like: âWeâre not gonna win the war if youâre sleepinâ in bed!â and another time, joking that: âI was gonna adopt you, but you eat too much."
- Shifty's line in Ep 7 about his dad being an excellent shot was entirely verbatim from his own conversations with Shifty
Pics I found online from that visit
On Bootcamp
- Shane said it was 12 days, Tom Hanks said 3 weeks, Ross said 10 days, Freddie Joe said 14 days, Dale Dye said 13 days⊠đ€·
- Shane: "Firstly, let me say that Freddie Joe petrified me"
- Freddie Joe expanded on the psychological techniques they used building up the actors' resentment towards Sobel- e.g. they'd give (David Schwimmer) the wrong answers/instructions, and then give (Damian Lewis) the correct ones. He also secretly gave Compton, Guarnere, and the other sergeants some commissary boot polish, carton of smokes, etc., but then they turned around and were giving it out to the rest of the guys in their squads.
- Freddie Joe, when asked about any injuries at bootcamp: âWe found out Doc Roe can't do stitches yet.â (Shane: âI thought I could.â)
- Peter said that they picked a specific thing for each of (the actors) to become really, really good at
- Frank: "During actors bootcamp, Shane, being trained as a medic, would come and wrap feet, etc. At one point I said: 'Doc what the hell are you doing? You were in West End two weeks ago, now youâre my primary care physician!' And no one doubted him! If you got hurt, you yelled for him, and he fixed you."
- At the end of each day, Shane would have to make rounds to check on everybody, to patch them up, or also just listen to them vent about how they were doing. He said he loved that additional responsibility, and he found that he really loved talking care of people.
On Production Design
- They shot almost everything just outside of London in Hartfordshire and Hatfield
- Pretty much everything besides the concentration camp, Hatfield House, and Zell am Se, was filmed either in a disused airfield in Hatfield, or in the two huge warehouses they rented.
- Warehouse-filmed scenes included everything from Bastogne, Eagles Nest, Paris, Carentan, and even the river from episode 8
On the Strict Expectations for Actors On Set
- It was finally about 6 months down the line that the actors started to know each others (real) names!
- Freddie Joe gave an example in which went looking for Donnie Wahlberg, expecting to find him in his trailer (which he was not allowed to do) and bust him, only to find that all the background performers and his (Donnie's) team were inside his trailer, and Donnie was sitting outside on the ground.
- Rene: "It was mandatory to carry your weapons from moment you got to set to moment you leave, you couldnât set them down."
"Oh you could! but we didnât."
"I forgot once⊠Just once."
Peter and Matthew Leitch
Poster and still from the movie AKA (2002)
Peter brought this up, when answering a question about staying in role while on set.
Just prior to Band of Brothers, he and Matthew Leitch had been in a movie together playing gay lovers, and, being in this experience as actors on Band of Brothers/on set, Peter said, they had to be "brought back to their senses to some degree." đ
Peter ALSO mentioned how the previous role he had just come off filming had been as a male prostitute. (At this, Rene, grinning, pointed in acknowledgment to someone in the audience? No idea who or why)
Afterwards, Freddie Joe (who I think may have been learning all this information for the first time) stated that he and Dale Dye did NOT know that Peter & Matthew had done that (movie) together beforehand, and that he wished he had known that information. He joked that he definitely would've put them in different barracks.
The Clubbing in London Story
Peter brought up a memorable moment of Jim Madio from a night out (Shane: âThereâs always a Madio Momentâ) and Shane told the full story:Â
The cast was out in London at a club in Soho one night. They were up on the second floor, in front of some large windows. Outside below were half a dozen huge, rowdy, drunk guys, who started shouting up at a woman in the cast's group (the girlfriend of Bart Ruspoli, who played Tipper.)
He (Madio) heard them, and took off his shirt (âlike a muscular Mighty Mouseâ) and took off down the stairs and out to the street. The rest of the group ran down to follow him, and saw Madio running after them down the street, chasing these big guys off down the block and around the corner.Â
Last but not least... Ross McCallâs Dale Dye Tribute
At the end of the second panel, Ross McCall went up the podium, looking like he was going to announce he was running for elected office, and gave a wonderful speech about bootcamp and Dale Dye
- The freshly-cast actors each got sent a letter, hand typed like 1942 being invited to bootcamp. Their instructions were they could only bring: reading materials of a religious nature, a piece of paper and pencil, towel (army green), and their gym attire.
- âWe were yelled at more than any human beings have ever been yelled at, and we sorta lapped it up and loved it."
- "He (Dale Dye) knew what made each one of us tick. He knew what would break us down. And he knew how to pull us back up again"
- "I was a little cheeky back then, go figure. I used to get away with murder with this man. When he was yelling out orders, or chewing someone to pieces, I would make some stupid dry comment. And, kinda like my dad, he had a smile, 'cause he knew there was no malice. He knew I was there to do a job and he knew I took it really, really seriously, as did all the men."
(Meanwhile Iâm wondering: "Okay, but where heâs going with this? Did Dale Dye die just recently and I didn't hear about it? Is this speech a promotional announcement for a new "actors' bootcamp" for tourists?")
Surprise! They are giving him a paver stone tribute at the museum
Dale Dye: âFor once in my miserable, misbegotten life, I'm speechless."
To end his brief remarks, he offered his principle of leadership: "You have to love 'em to lead 'em, and I love 'em.â đ
It's an inhumane question, I know. This list could easily have been ten times as long so if I missed your favourite moment, please share it in the comments/reblogs.
Had to vote for my second favorite (okay, they're all my favorites), but really, the absolute hottest was S1, after the party, in bed with Maud: "How would you have had him touch you?"
O . M . G . That scene lit me on fire; I'm still not over it. I don't think I ever will be.
It's an inhumane question, I know. This list could easily have been ten times as long so if I missed your favourite moment, please share it in the comments/reblogs.
if you're having trouble sleeping the best you can do is put a bright object close to your face and look at it for at least 30 minutes. if that doesn't work you can close your eyes but make sure to think really hard about a bunch of bullshit
#men undressing women: [drakeNO.jpg]#men assisting in dressing women: [drakeYES.jpg]#heâs really concentrating in getting those laces sitting right#what a good boy#anna karenina: vronskyâs story#gif harrietvane
On of the things that I learned in high school, which was just one of those facts that was just kind of like, âYeah?â but is also one of those facts that you rarely see represented, that it does sort of startle into this idea of âwait, is that right.â Men absolutely helped their wives and lovers dress, especially in times when dress had become complicated enough that women could not get dressed alone (ties and buttons that had to fasten in the back for one reason or another, for example). If a woman didnât have a servant to help her dress, and most women did not, it was the job of her husband once she was married.
i know iâve probably written about these all individually but iâm putting them together in one post. these are writing tricks that are extremely cheap and dirty; when you use them it feels like cheating and honestly by posting them iâm probably exposing all the easy moves in my own work, but more than a writer i am a teacher, so here you go, some writing cheats that have never steered me wrong.
quick character creation
whatâs really annoying is when you have two characters sitting at a restaurant or something and the server has to come by. to what degree do you describe the server so that itâs clear theyâre just a background character but that theyâre not just a faceless form, so that the world has texture without taking up too much space on the page? rule of three, babeyyy: two normal things and a weird one.
she had pale skin and blue eyes but her hair was dyed black like a 2010 emo kid.
he was tall and broad, and he wore a sweatshirt with an embroidered teddy bear on it.
the woman stood there comparing the prices of toilet paper. she had a short angled bob and carried a keychain the length of a trout.
why does it work? it gives the reader something to hang onto, a brief observation that shows the world exists around your narrator. it also works when introducing main characters, but thereâs so much action going on that you canât take time to write a rich long paragraph about them. all you need is a little hook.
quick setting creation
i used to TOIL over descriptive paragraphs. for years i was like, description is my weakness, i must become better at developing imagery. i believed this because a famous writer once projected a paragraph i had written onto a screen and asked my cohort, âcount how many images are crafted in this paragraph.â there were none. none! my friends were sitting there like, âwe are TRYINGâ but they couldnât find any.
i would say that after years of studying imagery development at the sentence level, i am, perhaps, competent at it, but what was more helpful was for me to shrug and tell myself, âiâm just not a writer who does that.â
anyway. my cheat is thus:Â
thereâs not much you can assume about your audience. the audience is not a homogenous whole. but your ideal audience is something you can guess at, and that means you can play around with their existing knowledge and expectations.Â
if you say your characters are in a tacky shit-on-the-walls restaurant, if your ideal reader is an american who went to restaurants during the maximalist era of franchise design, they will conjure their nearest memory of one of those places. and for those readers who arenât familiar with it, theyâll use other context clues to conjure that space. the point is, you donât have to list every single stupid license plate nailed to the wall. you can leave it as one detail of one sentence and let your reader extrapolate from there.
if i say the dentistâs office looked like a gutted 90s taco bell, maybe no ideal audience would have ever seen a place like that, but a lot of people can mentally conjure a dentistâs office and a 90s taco bell and overlay them together to create a weird and fun image.
you can go even simpler than that: a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory. a tiny studio apartment with a hotplate instead of a stove. a mansion with a winding stairwell. the point is that you want to define the size of the space and its general vibes.
in some ways detailed description can be overrated, because your reader conjures images even in absence of them on the page. and for those readers who canât mentally conjure images, it doesnât matter anyway; they take you at your word. the trick is to figure out what details are unexpected, relevant to understanding the story and its characters, and those are the things that you add in.
one other note: after working with hundreds of writers on drafting, for *most* of us itâs difficult to develop images and establish setting in a first draft. itâs nearly always something to be saved for a second or later draft. i think itâs because while weâre writing we tend to put character and action first.
nail the landing
thereâs a joke i heard once from a writer i really admire:Â âyou know itâs literary fiction if the story ends with a character looking at a body of water.â
and god itâs so painfully sad and true how easy it is to nail the landing of a given story by ending on a totally irrelevant piece of imagery. the final beat of a story followed by your character looking up at the sky and seeing a flock of birds in the shape of a V flying past. or maybe theyâre sitting in their car and they count the rings of a nearby church bell. or maybe they watch an elderly couple walk down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. i donât know!! when in doubt shove an observation, an image, whatever, something neutral at the end and itâll sound profound.Â
(this cheat is the only one that can really bite you in the ass because if the image is too irrelevant you risk tonal incongruity. for use only in the most desperate of times.)
sentence fragments
when writers ask me how to punch up their writing or start developing their own style, my go-to advice is to give up the idea of a complete sentence. fuck noun-verb-object. if you have a series of character actions, knock off the sentence subjects like in script action. if the clause at the end of your sentence is particularly meaningful, donât separate it with a comma but a period and make it its own thing. if your character is going through something particularly stressful or heinous, that bitch is not thinking in complete thoughts so you donât have to convey them that way. make punctuation bend to your will!!
rhetorical moves
this one opened a lot of doors for me stylistically. remember that famous writer who called me out on my lack of imagery? i always thought his prose was beautiful, that heâs one of the best living prose writers, etc. once i learned more about rhetoric though, i realized he just employed it a lot.Â
usually when we talk about beautiful sentences it means a sentence that uses rhetorical devices. the greeks were like, you know what, when we give speeches there are certain ways to phrase things that make the audience go nuts. letâs identify what those things are and give them names so we can use them intentionally and convince people of our opinions.
i love shakespeare, i really do, but one of the big reasons heâs still a household name today and his plays are still performed is because every sentence of every goddamn play utilizes a rhetorical device. the audience is hard-wired to vibrate at the sound and cadence of his writing, like finding the spot on a dog that makes their foot thump. for five hundred years, william shakespeare has been scritching that spot for us.
i have no idea why, cognitively, rhetorical devices are so effective. iâm no rhetorician. all i know is that well-deployed anaphora makes a reader want to throw their panties on stage. my intro to rhetorical devices was the wonderful book the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth, a surprisingly fun read! hopefully that will open some doors for you the way it did for me.Â
the downside to this is that once you know rhetorical devices, itâs like learning how the sausage is made. on one hand, as a writer, youâll have a lot stronger grasp of style, but as a reader good prose loses some of its magic. Â
pacing it out
many writers, myself included, rely on the tried and true âhe bit the inside of his cheekâ or other some such random action to help pace out dialogue. one time my thesis advisor sat me down and said âyouâve got to take all of those out.â
âall of them?â i said.
âall of them,â she said.
i thought, but that will weaken the text! it didnât. once i cut what i came to call cheek-biter sentences i never went back. and now when i edit for other people iâm like, look i know where youâre coming from but just cut all these out and see how the scene stands. if it doesnât feel right you can put some back in. a lot of times when youâre drafting you put those in the way some people say âum.â theyâre just sentences you jot while youâre thinking of what the other character says, so from a writing perspective it seems like youâre pacing, but readers donât read it that way. they just want to get to the next line of dialogue.
but sometimes you really do need to pace out a scene and i think there are other ways to do that that donât rely on banal physical movements, such as:
interiority: a sentence or paragraph of relevant cognition, bonus points if you weave in background context. good interiority defines the voice of your writing.
observations: i know i just said description is overrated but idk sometimes you just need a character to note the back and forth clacking of one of those desk ball toy things.
character texture: maybe your character notes something about the person theyâre talking to. a wilted pocket square. a mole that looks like it needs looked at by a dermatologist. a scar on their forehead. some detail that deepens or complicates our understanding of a character.
narratorial consciousness and access
this one is less a cheat and more a problematic opinion i have that doesnât win me any popularity in writing circles.
i believe that if youâre writing in first person or close third or any narration which is dedicated to the mind of one character, you are only ever obligated to convey the experience of that characterâs consciousness. and nothing else.
by that i mean, if your point of view character is unobservant? then theyâre not going to even notice the flight attendant is missing one of their canine teeth. if your pov character is focused and obsessive, theyâre going to think lavish, detailed paragraphs about that which theyâre obsessed with and have no acknowledgement of the rest of the world. if your pov character has no understanding of time, does your story even need to be linear?
defining the scope of a narratorâs cognition early on can give you parameters in which to work. even if you donât consciously do this, you still do it. if you write in third person limited present tense without really thinking about it, thatâs your scope. iâm just pointing out you can choose to do it differently. you get to define your narrator.Â
whenever we talk about narration we also talk about information access and the order of information being revealed/conveyed. writing must always be in order; even if youâre writing multiple concurring things, it still has to be rendered on the page in order one after the next, because the human mind canât read two sentences over top of one another.Â
if weâre restricted to the mind of a character, that means weâre also restricted by their knowledge and experiences, and this can be used to your benefit. i donât want to take too much space for this but i do talk more about the relationship between narration and reality here.
in short, you the writer get to chooseÂ
what the reader knows,
in what order they know it, and
its relationship to the presumed real events of the story, which develops the (un)reliability of your narrator
okay going to cut this off now before i go on more rants about narrative scope. i hope you found this helpful and go on to put some of these nasty lifehacks in your own writing!!
