To Whom It May Concern

I am a broken vessel made complete by Jesus, hello and welcome to my tumblr.

[noimnok]

So, question. Im planning on writing entire books on this app. Does it have word limits or anything? and can i place certain posts into certain folders to keep chapters in order and cordinated?

Does writing 4000 word chapters on tumblr seem fit? I got questions, need answers, please assist me.🥹

[noimnok]

The hummingbirds sing a woeish song; for the adversaries of many have succeeded and brought even the innocent to their graves today. And the women weep, they weep and claw at their faces, their outcries more dreading than any other thing.

The women's medley wails are of unsaid apologies, esoteric love, and of precious anamnesis dowsing their brains in rainwater. They sob clamorously to ease the torment in their hearts, and the mourning women are so almighty that even the toughest men weep as well and I weep with them— for the fallen.

-My Man Made War Dance

By Me.

[corvase]

hey, how are you? So, I wanted to ask if you have any advice on writing dialogues and if it's okay to start a chapter or story with a line or conversation :))

hiya, i am doing well :) i hope you’re doing well too!

dialogue advice

firstly, yes, starting with dialogue is 100% okay. there’s no fool-proof-amazing-works-every-time method to starting chapters/stories. you just start in a way that makes the reader want to continue :) (which easier said than done, i know)

phew. dialogue is a tricky subject. for some people it’s super easy to write, and for others it is the-bane-of-their-existence-would-rather-count-hay-strands-in-a-hay-bale-for-five-days-straight-than-write-dialogue (it’s okay we accept u guys too ❤️)

one easy tip regarding dialogue i always think of when writing is:

write dialogue the way you want your characters to be grounded in your world.

i don’t think there’s any other way to go about writing dialogue properly than to observe and write with what you already know. i feel we overcomplicate dialogue. writers always tell us to write like humans speak and we wonder… what does that mean? but we’re also human. we know exactly what that means even if not how to put it on paper :))

i think dialogue in that sense is tricky. writing is taking ourselves out of a world we live in and putting ourselves in ones we built from the floor up. but dialogue grounds your characters and their world in that way. it reminds us that our characters are, in some sense, human. it makes us believe in these characters. it makes us think they can exist. that they are more than just words and paper and that if this world was truly real, these people would not be an anomaly.

but i also don’t want to say that all characters need to talk with that grounded realness, the way, for example, some characters tarantino designed in pulp fiction did. it’s okay to have characters who don’t fit into that division of reality, for example the characters from norman jewison & john shanley’s moonstruck, because something that also grounds characters, more than dialogue, is the way you characterize them.

a character can live in the twenty-first century and speak like a shakespearean character if it makes sense and grounds them in your story. there is no real boundary for dialogue except for doing what you know makes sense and fits your story.

i apologize because this is pretty all over the place & i didn’t really give a solid answer…. but i don’t think there is one, especially because even in my own person projects, all my characters speak differently. i hope, however, that you think more clearly and simply about crafting your character dialogue:)

happy writing.

[holywyrm]

Bad Pacing Advice

Anything that can go wrong, should go wrong. Right?

Not necessarily.

This is really common advice for when a plot feels flat or boring. And sometimes, it's really good advice. But sometimes, it the worst advice you could get. It really depends on why the plot is feeling flat.

A plot is made up of beats: events that have to happen in order to move the plot forward. Another way of saying this is, what things need to happen before the story's conflict can be resolved?

When a plot is falling flat, it generally has one of three problems. Either there aren't enough story beats, the story is moving too quickly from one beat to another, or the story is moving too slowly from one beat to another.

Making things go wrong is good advice if there aren't enough story beats. Too few beats means there might be too much space between beats where the story can sag and get boring. In other words, slow pacing. It can also make the conflict seem too easy to resolve, because story beats are often obstacles that need to be overcome before the story can satisfactorily end.

However, if your story is moving too quickly between beats, making things go wrong isn't always the right answer. It can work if you deliberately use a set-back to delay getting between two points that would otherwise be too close. But just making something go wrong for the sake of it will only add more beats to the story, it won't slow them down.

If your story is moving too slowly, making more stuff go wrong is about the worst thing you can do. At best it just makes your story longer. At worst, it adds new beats between your already existing beats, increasing the distance between them even more. It might seem counter intuitive but making things go wrong (killing a character, losing a fight, getting captured, friendship and relationship drama etc.) can actually slow your pacing down more.

I notice this issue a lot in epic fantasy stories. Maybe it's just me, but I find when things are constantly going wrong -- when the plot isn't getting any closer to being resolved because every time the characters try to take a step forward they end up worse off than before -- I get frustrated and bored. I just start thinking "here we go again. Get to the point!!"

Sometimes your characters need to succeed too. Good pacing isn't making your characters fail at every opportunity. It's knowing when to let them fail and when it's time to move forward.