Rory Hume

SFF writing, SM Reine's Descentverse sidekick, pop culture opinions. (they/them)

[smreine]

Rory’s links #1

Maybe this’ll give me a reason to get more deliberate with my reading habits.

My sibling has started posting links to our shared blog site and they’ve got some good links in here I wanna read!

[localtransvamp-deactivated20241]

Y'all have no idea how shitty the wifi is in my gothic castle

[makomoriz]

DAVE K!!!!!!!!!

[leahsfiction]

[transcript: One tool I have that every screenwriter does is how you handle dialogue—specifically how you handle exposition. As soon as an audience understands that there are lines in the film that are for them, rather than for the characters speaking to one another, you start to have a sense of expectation that the film will tell you what you need to know and how to feel. I tried very hard to push against expository dialogue for the audience. The verisimilitude is heightened by that because the audience is no longer feeling a tutorial relationship with what they're watching. They feel just as if they're witnessing. Sometimes that means an audience could be confused, but a mild level of confusion to me is a sign that it's going well, actually.]

[roryhume]

apparently today was my tumblr’s seventh birthday

[superfluousbananas-deactivated2]

Writing begins with forgiveness. Let go of the shame about how long it’s been since you last wrote, the clenching fear that you’re not a good enough writer, the doubts over whether or not you can get it done. Sure, the nagging demons will come creeping back, but set them aside anyway, and then set them aside again when they do. Concoct a hot beverage, play a beautiful song, look inward, and then begin.

Daniel Jose Older, from a Nanowrimo pep talk, but good advice for most any writing. (via superfluousbananas)

[brittany-diamond]

I’ve been watching and reading craft advice for a long time now, and in my experience the writing community does not talk about clarity enough. Prose seems to take a back seat in general, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that one of my favorite writing Youtubers even talked about clarity.

Clear prose is everything. It’s step one. If you’re not writing sentences people can understand, that then becomes paragraphs people understand etc, you’re not getting anywhere. In fact, you’re failing in one of the few ways a writer can actually fail. But that’s okay, because conveying ideas clearly is a challenge we take for granted. We like to hop right to the complicated stuff and want to skim past the fundamentals as fast as we can. Guitarists have a similar problem–proper strumming technique and chord changes are sped through to get to the shredding part asap.

It’s not sexy, but if I was gonna tell absolute beginner writers anything it would be: forget that big, complicated world you’ve been daydreaming about, forget that huge cast of deeply developed characters you’ve been building, forget all the long, glorious, complicated, poetical sentences you’ve aspired to write. Forget all of that for now. 

Write something that makes sense on the sentence level. Work on communicating images and actions clearly. Work on basic cause and effect. Character A moves, Character B reacts to the movement. (Tons of new writers reverse the causal order more often than you think.) Clear motions, clear reactions, clear motivations, clear emotions, clear development.

The first thing Aaron Sorkin asks someone who’s just read his last work-in-progress is: “Did you understand it?” Not because he fancies himself such an intelligent/complicated/high-minded author, that’s not what he’s asking. He asks if they understood the story as he intended to tell it, if it made basic sense, and if any part confused them. Even after everything he’s written, he still prioritizes clarity.    

[mysticalspiders]

I love so much that Dracula’s death is only an afterthought on tumblr compared to Quincey’s death. This is why I love Dracula Daily so much. We loved the laconic, never included, technically-not-really-needed-for-the-story cowboy more than the iconic, titular character. 

[transmasc-wizard]

shoutout to writers who:

have chronic fatigue or brain fog

have memory issues

experience chronic pain

have focus issues

experience frequent malaise

have anything else that may make it difficult to type, come up with ideas, and/or stay motivated & working

you can do this, you belong here, and you deserve to treat yourself with kindness and care

[picklepie888]

I know Quincey did not die saving his friend's eternal soul and killing the world's most famous vampire just for almost every filmmaker to not include him in their Dracula films!!!

[roryhume]

tip your cowboy hats to quincey morris, who just yeehawed into the sunset

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

obsessed with the fact that mina is currently actively dying / descending into vampiredom and when she calls a house meeting during one of the 20 minute chunks of the day where she isn’t being mind-controlled into silence to get everyone swear to kill her vampire ass if necessary and then like the goth queen she is make her devastated husband hold her funeral for her right there and then just in case, she still takes a moment to be polite about the fact that 3/5 of the assembled party were in love with her dead best friend, which she knows that they know that she knows because they have all read each other’s diaries

[venowyn]

Jonathan is just sharpening his comically large knife and smashing the refresh button on his fedex track shipment page

[vickyvicarious]

#the fedex tracking page is his wife - @animate-mush

[insulindian-phasmid]

could've been a whole ass murder on the Orient Express and Jonathan doesn't give a shit

[roryhume]

i can’t believe i’m saying this, but i miss renfield

[animate-mush]

– Jack Seward

[calvinandhobbes]

i haven’t read my dracula emails since june so i will just receive notifications like this

& im like damn girl that sucks…… Anyway

[roryhume]

i can’t believe i’m saying this, but i miss renfield

[sparkylurkdragon]

Ah-ha, I see! We're at the part of the horror story where we're yelling at the protagonists!