Once Upon a Novel

writing historical fiction with a twist📚 | querying 📨: Valhalla Calling | currently 👩🏻‍💻: TOSOH Draft 1 & VC Book 2 | hit that ➕️ button to keep updated

[onceuponanovel]

[catherinesboleyn]

Elle Fanning as Catherine the Great

The Great 2.03

[feldfrog]

Some people can rotate a cube in their mind. I can rotate multiple cubes. In my stomach. I swallowed some dice

[fictionadventurer]

One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!

[starfieldcanvas]

the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

[elizabethsinclair]

elizabeth s.

[ceruleanheaven]

[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over

[makyuread]

[bokujunanasai]

i actually 😭😭 love 😭😭 to write 😭😭 and create 😭😭 so much 😭😭 people don't appreciate literary n arts enough here

[floydsin]

ao3 wrapped [writers edition]

How many words have you written this year?

How many works did you publish this year?

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

What work of yours has the most hits?

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

Favorite title you used

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most?

Pairing you wrote the most for this year?

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?

What work was the quickest to write?

What work took you the longest to write?

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

What’s your longest work of the year?

What’s your shortest work of the year?

What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

Your favorite character to write this year?

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

Which work of yours have you reread the most?

How many kudos in total did you get this year?

Which work has the most comments?

Did you do any collaborative works this year?

Did you write any gifts this year?

Did you receive any gifts this year?

What’s your most common category?

What do you listen to while writing?

Favorite work you wrote this year?

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Biggest surprise while writing this year?

[gr8writingtips]

writing tip #4164:

why are you proofreading? just believe in yourself

[starryslyii]

Types of Fanfic Writers

Angst Dealer: If it doesn’t emotionally destroy their readers, did they even write it?

Slow-Burn Specialist: 100k words and they haven’t even touched hands

Smut Goblin: Plot? What plot?

Chaos Conductor: No one asked for a cross over between The Hunger Games and Divergent, but here we are

Canon Wizard: “What if this one tiny thing changed and everything was different?”

The Procrastinator: Has a playlist, Pinterest board, and outline for their fic but never actually writes

Which one are you?

[veronicaleighauthor]

Some Victorian sass!

[thephotoregistry]

Assault on Arnhem, September 17, 1944

U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps

[j-r-macready]

[writerswritecompany]

[kulluto]

every friend group should include a bimbo, a mean bisexual, an even meaner lesbian, she/theys and he/theys, a token straight that’s on thin ice, an astrology bitch who has everyone’s birth chart memorized, and a short king

[creativepromptsforwriting]

I do not write to be the greatest writer out there. I write because...

I LIKE it

someone else might LIKE it

it is FUN to do

I get those THOUGHTS out of my head

it's fun to look BACK on

have I mentioned it's FUN?

it's CATHARTIC

it's nice to see what I CAN DO

And also because I just like it.