I’ve forgotten to introduce myself, so let’s do a little recap before I post anything else :)
My name is Nesrine (pronounced Nasreen in English), I’m 21, go by she/her and I was born and raised in France but I have algerian roots (North Africa).
I’m pursuing a master’s degree in international relations (this degree is more law-oriented than the traditional ones in the field, at least in France), and I’m also in a lot of associations related to my field.
Other than that, I’m on Tumblr because I truly love reading (when I have the time) and what I miss the most is a sense of community because all my bookworm friends aren’t in our birth town anymore 🥲. So this is what I’m going to post about the most !!
If I was interesting enough, don’t hesitate to subscribe and to send me a message 💕
it’s just so so hard right now in france, it’s been ten days of massive heatwave in france and i feel my body slowly deteriorating ? constant nausea, dehydration and tiredness, and i’m a young healthy woman, so i cant even imagine it for children, elderly people, pregnant people, anyone with a physical or mental illness and basically anyone vulnerable.
and i’m just so tired of politicians overlooking this abnormal situation and tell us to use fans and drink water ? a teenager died during his baccalauréat exams, many children in kindergarten have fainting spells, hospital put survival blankets on the window in nurseries and emergency aisles, meanwhile macron dines with trump using our tax money (more than 700k€) that could be used for our public services ??
i’m so tired of those climate meetings that go to nothing, those unrespected treaties, those massive extractions in over exploited countries, those ai data center, that meat industry, that fossil energy industry, to the point where we’re loosing spring and autumn ? it’s so so hard to live it right now, my ecoanxiety is spiking now.
on an individual level i’m begging you to be careful, and on a societal level, i’m begging you to educate yourself on the subject and raise your voices against those money-hungry classes all over the world
it’s just so so hard right now in france, it’s been ten days of massive heatwave in france and i feel my body slowly deteriorating ? constant nausea, dehydration and tiredness, and i’m a young healthy woman, so i cant even imagine it for children, elderly people, pregnant people, anyone with a physical or mental illness and basically anyone vulnerable.
and i’m just so tired of politicians overlooking this abnormal situation and tell us to use fans and drink water ? a teenager died during his baccalauréat exams, many children in kindergarten have fainting spells, hospital put survival blankets on the window in nurseries and emergency aisles, meanwhile macron dines with trump using our tax money (more than 700k€) that could be used for our public services ??
i’m so tired of those climate meetings that go to nothing, those unrespected treaties, those massive extractions in over exploited countries, those ai data center, that meat industry, that fossil energy industry, to the point where we’re loosing spring and autumn ? it’s so so hard to live it right now, my ecoanxiety is spiking now.
on an individual level i’m begging you to be careful, and on a societal level, i’m begging you to educate yourself on the subject and raise your voices against those money-hungry classes all over the world
after a long time of being completely silent on this blog (and i apologize in advance), i finally found the will to write here again !
if you want a life update, everything’s fine ! i’m on my way to become the president of a political association of my local area, i passed my year and i’m on my last year of studies before graduation. it’s a bit more complicated on the friendship level, i’m facing many disappointments but it’s okay, i learn to rely less on the others and more on myself that way.
and finally, a cute little photo of my summer tbr, both in french and english.
- the city of brass trilogy (i’ve ordered the other books for my birthday - i turned 22 btw i’m so old already)
- a rereading of the picture of dorian gray
- the brothers Karamazov
here in France we’re facing a massive two-weeks long heatwave, so be really careful, stay indoors, hydrated as much as you can, and fight against the billionaires and the capitalism at the root of our problems.
after a long time of being completely silent on this blog (and i apologize in advance), i finally found the will to write here again !
if you want a life update, everything’s fine ! i’m on my way to become the president of a political association of my local area, i passed my year and i’m on my last year of studies before graduation. it’s a bit more complicated on the friendship level, i’m facing many disappointments but it’s okay, i learn to rely less on the others and more on myself that way.
and finally, a cute little photo of my summer tbr, both in french and english.
- the city of brass trilogy (i’ve ordered the other books for my birthday - i turned 22 btw i’m so old already)
- a rereading of the picture of dorian gray
- the brothers Karamazov
here in France we’re facing a massive two-weeks long heatwave, so be really careful, stay indoors, hydrated as much as you can, and fight against the billionaires and the capitalism at the root of our problems.
btw you’re a pathetic bully with mean girl attitude if you screenshot other people’s fics to repost and mock them and the authors. you’re the reason fandoms become toxic when they’re supposed to be a comfort zone and a safe space for people. and you have the audacity to say it’s a shame more and more writers decided to no longer share their works. you’re harming fanfic community and you’re driving writers and fan artists—whose works you’re privileged enough to consume for free—away until the ones that are left are bullies like you. just because a fanfic is not for you doesn’t mean you have the rights to mock or shame it. not everything is made specifically to tailor to your personal liking. so disrespectfully, if you do this, grow tf up.
either respect fanfic writers and fan artists or be quiet.
Do people who uses AI in their novel really likes to write ?
So now I’ve finished my fourth year of uni, and as I have nothing to do, I gave myself the challenge to write a whole novel before next fall. And I’ve just finished the outline (not chapter-by-chapter, but I still managed to put my main scene ideas in order, the main protagonists and the main plot). I’ve found an old novel idea in my old Wattpad account and I decided to work it again.
And my conclusion is : writing is actually so fun !! When it comes from your own head, when ideas flow or even when you’re struggling to find good sentences, the thought process of writing is actually so fun that why would someone involve a machine to think about it ? I feel like it strips the mere concept of writing from its sole purpose, so my question is : do people who uses AI in any part of the process really likes to write ? Why would they do this ?
I’m talking about writing, but if we think about it in a global way, every kind of art, whether it’s painting, writing, singing, only exists because of the thought process behind it. And if you need a binar code to « create » art, let me tell you that you don’t create. You just materialize a binar code into our world, and indeed, the machine is the artist, and you’re only the « messenger » in some way.
Is it my way of swearing that no AI will be involved in any of my writings? I think so.
So I’m writing a fan fic about two best friends, and I’m trying to think of ways that they can spend time together, but I can’t think of any platonic activities /: and how to maybe bring them from that to an emotional connection? Please help 🥺
Hi :)
Platonic activities could be quite a lot of things, especially between best friends. I could give you some things that are normal to do with friends.
And do you mean an emotional connection between them as best friends? Maybe you can write me again, what exactly you mean and I give you the list of activities now :)
Platonic activities for friends
take a walk and talk about everything and anything
go swimming
run an errand together
go to the park and have a picnic
play games
go the movies and buy your favourite treats
visit a museum
go to a bookshop and pick books for each other
dress up and then go nowhere
bake cake and eat it right out of the pan
go to a café and drink a tea or coffee
do a movie marathon with childhood favourites
go to a concert of your favourite band
declutter each other’s wardrobes
hold a yard sale
work out together and motivate each other
go to a drag show or a play
cook for each other and judge each other’s food like you’re on Top Chef
Well-written relationships between characters are what makes a story beloved. And while writing romance has it's own difficulties, it's even more tricky to write good and believable friendships.
What role do friends play in a story?
It depends a bit on if the friendship is between MCs or if the MC is friends with side-characters. The friendship with another MC could be the focus of the story and driving point for the plot. But the friendship with a side-character could help your MC to rant about their problems, to get a second opinion, to get an honest truth, to see a situation from another perspective and to realize that they are not alone in this. They can also be helpful to show your MCs regular life outside of whatever special happens to them in the story and helps to show why your MC is the way they are.
Types of friends
the best friend
the friend group
the situational friend
the old friend
The best friend - they share almost anything with each other, their opinions matter, able to tell them off if they are wrong, closest thing to a sibling, people know them as a duo
The friend group - in on all the tea, give honest opinions, help out where they can, can have deep, but also very casual scenes
The situational friend - friends because of circumstances (having classes together, being on the same sports team, having mutual friends), are friends when they see each other, don't really seek each other out outside of that situation, knowing about specific parts of each other's life, but not other parts and wouldn't share deep conversations
The old friend - think about childhood friend vs. college friend - the friends have met in completely different parts of each other's lives, know each other in different ways and probably have a different understanding of each other, the old friend would probably not know everything about their life right now, but they still fall back into old patterns with each other (good and bad)
Give them something in common & some differences
Humans like to flock together with people with similar interests, personalities and lives. So give your fictional friends things they have in common. Sharing the same goal, liking the same things, having compatible personalities, having the same outlook on life,...
But friends are not a carbon copy of each other. Give them some differences that don't hurt their friendship in the long run, but rather some that can the characters can build off of these differences. Taking advice from a friend who has more experience with something, a friend who sees things a bit different, or becoming more confident because of their friend's confidence.
More tips
Make sure to give the friends their own life. They are not just there to bounce ideas off with your MC. They should have their own goals and personalities. Make sure they could be their own character without the MC.
To have a friendship that the reader likes and roots for, you have to make sure that the reader can see why they are friends. The quite, nerdy kid is not going to be best friends with the loud, edgy, popular kid without a believable reason. Why would they hang out if they have nothing in common? Having been friends since kindergarten is not enough of a reason to still be best friends in high school if they have nothing to talk about and don't like to do the same things and if their personalities just don't match at all.
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Writing a novel can feel like a monumental task. However, one of the key steps to making the process smoother is creating a clear and detailed outline. The beauty of outlining is that it allows you to visualize your story from start to finish, saving you from writer’s block and disorganization along the way. While outlining typically takes weeks or months, it’s entirely possible to map out an…
(Or: How I turn a list of random ideas into a plot outline.)
Saw this question pop up elsewhere and thought I'd put together my method, as someone who doesn't necessarily write her outlines the way your middle school English teacher probably taught, but I get something workable out of it in the end.
This goes for both fanfiction and original fiction.
(Edited Feb. 4, 2026 to add example images.)
Step 1: Throw Ideas at the Paper
(Left: the start of the idea file for a short story in the Dragon Age fandom; info redacted to avoid mentioning another user out of courtesy. | Right: a more fleshed-out idea doc that's still in the "getting ideas thrown at it" phase.)
I don't start out by trying to write an outline, beginning to end. Very rarely do I actually know the story start-to-finish already at this point, and even if I do (for example, a fairy tale adaptation I've been working on since college), I'm more likely to get hung up on what comes next and forget important details I want to remember.
So instead, just like those people who write individual scenes of their stories out of order and worry about maybe stringing them together later, I just write down ideas. I don't even necessarily try to keep them in rough plot order. The most important part of this step is just getting those ideas written down so I don't forget them.
To this end, I make a new document. I write a 1-2 paragraph summary at the top of what the basic idea is. Then I start a bullet list. Each idea gets its own bullet. Sometimes I'll have more to say on one idea, or have related ideas, and use sub-bullets to group them together visually. Every idea goes on the paper so it doesn't get forgotten.
(It's also worth noting that I say "paper," but I actually do this in Google Docs so I can add to it on the go via my phone if I have an idea away from my PC.)
Step 2: Start Grouping Related Ideas Together
(Sub-bullets showing additional ideas added to a main idea.)
This is still in the "throw ideas at the paper" phase, technically, but was worth its own step in the list.
Once the document starts getting long enough, it's time to start grouping things together. I add in section headers to make things easier to sort. I'll group ideas together that are related. I'll refine ideas via further sub-bullets. I may even start figuring out a rough plot order at this point—acts, narrative arcs, subplots, what have you. I still don't delete any ideas. Everything is valid (for now, at least).
You don't need to know things like story structure at this point. You only need to be able to recognize which ideas are related to each other.
Step 3: Organize Everything by Plot Order
(The plot-order section of another story idea.)
This may have already been happening bit by bit leading up to this point, just by me grouping related ideas together or dropping new ideas into the list in their relative plot-position, but this is the point where I focus on really figuring out the order everything is going to go in.
Sometimes, my idea list is short enough that I can just cut-and-paste everything into a new plot order. More likely, though, I'll have to type it all up anew. When I do, I open a new document and move the old one to my other monitor (but you can also group the two windows side-by-side on a single monitor, or one-above-the-other on a phone/tablet screen, at least on Android). Then in the new document, I start re-typing all my ideas, but this time in strict plot order.
This means I need to figure out which idea makes for a good start to the story, or happens the earliest chronologically. That becomes the first bullet in the list. Then the next bullet is the next plot beat from the ideas list. Sub-bullets refine each beat. Ideas that don't work get left out. I end with the conclusion to the story (the climax and denouement).
This is where it's a good idea to have an idea of good story structure, but there are lots of articles on the internet about what makes for a good story, and there are a lot of different ways to go about planning one out. For the purposes of this guide, I would just suggest putting the events in chronological order. What makes sense happening first? What makes sense as the wrap-up to everything else? Would a specific event work better if it happened earlier in the story, before the other ideas, or does it work better if it comes after the other ideas?
Another important note is that I don't stress about breaking this into chapters yet, if it's a story that is intended to be long enough to have chapter breaks. I don't worry about word counts either. The only thing that matters here is that everything is in plot order so I can get to work on writing it (because I write in chronological order).
Step 4: Create a Chapter-by-Chapter Outline (Optional)
(The chapter-by-chapter outline for a story.)
It needs to be said, I don't always do this for every story idea.
I've got two fanfic WIPs right now. One has a chapter-by-chapter outline, and the other doesn't.
For the one that doesn't, it's written more like a Wikipedia-style plot summary, with section headers to separate each major event, and when I write it, I just work my way through that outline and put chapter breaks where it makes the most sense to me (going off of rough word count as well as each chapter's individual arc).
For the one that does, I have a rough idea of how much plot fits into a given chapter of the length I'm writing for the story. Like Step 3, I put my plot-order outline on my second monitor, and started the chapter breakdown in a new document, but this time, instead of bullet points, I put the chapter numbers as section headers. Under each, I write a 1-2 paragraph summary of the events of the chapter based on the bulleted outline.
This is not set in stone, by the way. As I write my way through the story, I may think of another event to slot into a chapter, or may realize I want two events to happen in a different order than I planned. I may realize I don't have enough content for a chapter the way I thought I did, and need to combine two. I may realize I have too much content for a single chapter, and need to split it. The outline is always flexible.
Step 5: Write an Outline for the Current Chapter (Optional, but Helpful)
(A single-chapter outline, handwritten in a notebook since its associated story is also handwritten.)
I'm ready to start writing after either Step 3 or Step 4, but I will frequently do this as well before I actually start writing.
If I have a chapter-by-chapter outline, I'll look at the chapter I'm ready to write, and then create a quick bullet list of the events of just that chapter. Any specific scenes or images I want to remember to include go on the list, and I write this list in chronological order.
If my outline is more general (the "Wikipedia summary" style or a bullet list not divided by chapters already), I'll start writing the chapter outline wherever I intend it to start, and include events until it seems like enough content for the chapter (or an event sounds like it would be a good end to the chapter).
In either case, I may not end up writing everything I've included in this outline in the chapter, rolling some of it over to the next one instead, but this essentially gives me a checklist to work through as I write the chapter to make sure I don't forget things I wanted to include (in case my characters go off the rails a little).
Step 6: Write the Story
(Should be self-explanatory.)
Now just write the story.
Hopefully this helps anyone who didn't already have an idea on how to turn random ideas into an outline. Full disclosure: this is also how I write other things (such as lesson plans or talks for church). I throw random ideas at the paper, then worry about sorting them into a coherent order and figuring out what my thesis is.
I will never understand how normalized it is to put cameras in your home now. I can recognize some scenarios where it makes sense- if I had a stalker for example, but like. It would have to be That Big for me to consider it. People today use it to tell their kids it's time to stop playing video games and do homework like. Like?? I do not understand how you don't understand how harmful it is to raise kids with the sense they're always being watched like why does anyone under normal circumstances invite this into their home
saw a video recently, recorded by a camera in a child's bedroom, of a toddler reading her favorite book after bed time. her mom went in and told her it was time to sleep, and she said, 'but i just love reading so much.' her mom laughed indulgently and told her to sleep once the book was finished. she agreed, but before the video ended, she said, 'you're so silly for watching me!'
she was smiling when she said it, but i found that one sentence so abysmal. that toddler knew her mom didn't just happen to come and check on her. she understands that there is a camera in her room by which her mom (and as far as she might comprehend, any adult) can access her in her private space, in her private time, at all times.
can you imagine? never on your own. can't sleep? too bad. you're a child and the grown ups are watching you. lie in bed in the dark. pretend to sleep. behave.
it's 10 pm and the rest of the house is enjoying winding down after a long day. your parents don't need to worry about putting on a professional face like they do at work. your older siblings get to be themselves instead of who they have to be at school. everyone gets to relax. but not you.
it's 10 pm, and you're three years old, and you must continue to do everything right, because they are watching you.
oh, and when you don't behave, if it's cute enough, your mother will post footage of you in your bedroom for millions of strangers to watch!
Steal from everything you love. watched a movie and thought "wow that scene hit different"? figure out why and use it. read a book where the banter made you kick your feet? study it. saw a tiktok that made you Feel Things? that's research. keep a notes app full of random lines you'll never use. screenshot tumblr posts at 4am for "inspiration." your influences should be obvious and chaotic. remix everything. that's not theft that's apprenticeship.
