Kell Willsen @s-f-stories - Tumblr Blog

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s-f-stories

Well, time to move those Tumblr draft posts over to Substack.

Offensive ads on the dashboard are bad enough, but I'm not going to have them inserted into my blog, looking as if I chose to share them.

So long, Tumblr. It was fun while it lasted.

#Please ignore the ads below

bethanydelleman

One of the things that's just so amazing about Jane Austen is that she writes such a wide range of different character types and all of them come off as so human and genuine.

Her heroines are half and half introverts and extroverts (Fanny Price, Elinor Dashwood, Anne Elliot/Elizabeth Bennet, Catherine Morland, Emma Woodhouse). Her young heroines feel very different from her older ones, the difference between Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot is spring to autumn. She writes similar personality types in men and women but they come off very differently due to gender expectations (Mr. Darcy vs. Emma Woodhouse, Henry Tilney vs. Elizabeth Bennet). The level of intelligence, insight, snobbery, prejudice, and education varies between her heroines and you. can. tell. The tone of the novels changes along with the personalities of her heroines. Pride & Prejudice sparkles with Elizabeth Bennet, Mansfield Park cowers with Fanny Price.

Moreover, Austen makes main characters out of characters who would usually be minor! Emma Woodhouse should be the villain of Jane Fairfax's story, but instead she's the heroine. Catherine Morland has no right to be a heroine, what with her normal family and boring life, but she is the star and the true Gothic heroine, Eleanor Tilney, is in the background. A "washed-up" woman of seven-and-twenty, considered over the hill and unworthy of romance in two previous novels is the star of the most romantic of Austen's novels. Jane Austen sees the heroism and possibility for interesting stories in all women, even those who are chronically ignored and forgotten.

Who does it like her?

blindbeta

Hi, this is such an informative blog, thank you for running it. I enjoy reading your thorough responses!

Do you think cuneiform could be used similarly as braille? The scenario I’m writing is more in the time period and location of cuneiform, compared to those of formal braille. This would be the universe’s written language style, so as to be inclusive to all the characters, visually impaired or not.

Cuneiform Braille Variant - I Have No Idea

From what I can understand, cuneiform is concave. And according to the internet, it isn’t technically a writing system of a language so much as something else involving symbols for many languages ???

I’m not sure how easy that might be to read through tactile means. Although a blind person might be able to write in this way if they have a guide such as a signature guide. Although that is assuming the language would be written and read in a certain way, such as vertical or horizontal lines.

As far as concave goes, I do remember that when I used a Braille eraser, I was kind of able to read it still, although I would usually write over it.

I think clay tablets would hold up well over time, which is good for Braille in particular since it tends to wear down over time in real life, such as when pressed in big book pages.

However, I’m not sure how well this would work as it would be a concave Braille of sorts. It wouldn’t be as easy to feel. Additionally, if you’re using Braille cells as inspiration, the writing instrument used would need to be small because the writing itself would need to be small. Basically, actual raised print letters needed to be big. Reading with them took much longer. That was what they were using before the Braille system. Braille can be read with one or two fingers and is therefore much faster and easier to read. The same would probably need to apply to your cuneiform writing system. And I have no idea how big or small actual cuneiform is.

So the short answer is, I have no idea. Would it be possible to use a clay tablet like a slate and stylus? Turning the tablet over and pushing the stylus in so the writing is tactile on the other side? I really don’t know.

Maybe @askablindperson or @cripplecharacters can figure it out? Any cuneiform enthusiasts out there who can give their thoughts for a cuneiform-inspired system? Any ideas you have that might work for this anon.

Sorry I couldn’t help much.

askablindperson

Unfortunately, I also don’t really know anything about cuneiform. Of note though is that a very important reason why raised print alphabets needed to be so large when blind people did use it as a form of reading is because print characters are generally more complex in shape, and that level of complexity is hard to feel at the typical braille size because your fingers aren’t as high definition as your eyes. And even when they made them larger, as Bee mentioned the issue becomes that now the character can’t fit under a single fingertip, and so you have to spend time carefully tracing every single character in its full complexity, instead of being able to skim your fingers naturally in a straight line from left to right in one smooth motion without stopping and slowing down. So if cuneiform characters are more complex than the six dots of braille, it would likely face the same problems as the raised Roman alphabet in needing to become too large and cumbersome to be a tactile reading system.

That said, being blind I also can’t just look up images of cuneiform characters to understand what they’re complexity will look like, so that’s something you’ll have to assess.

Also like Bee mentioned, it being concave would be a significant issue. It’s well documented that the human fingertip can feel raised textures far better than indented ones, and I can’t imagine attempting to read any kind of engraved/indented alphabet and actually be fast at it. If it was engraved, I think that might automatically require it to be bigger even if the simplicity of the characters was good, because we just as humans aren’t as good at feeling depressions compared to embossed things. And of course making it bigger would then also inherently make it slow as well, so it just wouldn’t be great as a concave system in any form I don’t think.

That said, if the characters are extremely simplified and your world used it in a raised format instead of indented, then maybe it could work, but the characters would definitely need to be optimized to be shaped in a way that’s easy to distinguish by touch at small sizes, and not knowing anything about what it looks like unfortunately I can’t assess its potential very well.

For reference, standard braille is roughly equivalent to 29 point font size wise.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge of cuneiform can provide more contextual info.

blindbeta

All good points!

I also added that small writing, even for simple styles, might be hard for people to see if they have some vision and aren’t reading the tactile way. Unless there is another system for that in place.

I agree that it would really hard to feel concave writing that is either very small or bigger, but complex. Especially because you would need even more finger sensitivity than you do for Braille now and that’s an embossed system.

All that said, you can probably take these points and create your own embossed system with simple styles. Just because you have this actual system in mind as inspiration doesn’t mean you have to copy it exactly.

s-f-stories

I cheated a bit with The Avlem Burden by simply stating that a tactile system exists (used in the military for messages at night, and adapted by a blind character for her own use). I don't specify how it works, though, beyond being written in wax with a special stylus.

I leave the mechanics of the system up to each reader. How firm is the wax? How long can messages last, given that they likely lose legibility with each pass of the fingers? Does it use the same letters as print, or a separate system entirely?

It was VERY tempting to go down the rabbit hole of working all this out, but I was almost certain to get something important COMPLETELY wrong... so I left things vague.

#writing blind characters #perpetual research trap #the avlem burden #Fragments novel

brainstreams

Fanfiction has one of the most passionate, creative writing communities out there... and also one of the slowest learning curves.

Unlike visual art, you can’t just glance at a piece of writing and instantly think, “Oh. Yeah. This is terrible. (sets it on fire)” Writing is harder to judge at a glance. There’s no immediate visual comparison, no side-by-side reference that makes skill gaps obvious. A story can feel fine while still having glaring issues that are dragging it down.

And right now? We’re in a bit of a "comment recession". So feedback is rarer than my dad coming back with the milk. So a lot of writers are left guessing whether something works, what doesn’t, and why readers might be clicking off without a word.

It's not because you're a "bad writer". You just need decent advice and the willingness to learn.

I'm going to jump quickly between each point so you’re not stuck wading through extra fluff. Why? Because:

quick facts > an essay stretched to hit a word count.

sometiktoksarevalid

psykulor

"So you just refuse to use AI? What are you, some kind of Luddite?"

Me: Yes.

fullest-circlest

If you're writing 18th century dialogue, this website lets you search words and phrases to double-check whether they were in use & meant what you intend. It doesn't include every period-accurate use of a word/phrase, but it certainly helped me separate genuine 18th century grammar from the vague tangle of 💬old-fashioned fancy-speak💬 I've internalized from TV and video games.

my-deer-friend

Other websites that let you do this:

Johnson's Dictionary Online (thanks @yellowbelliedtoad!) – 1755 and 1773

Green's Dictionary of Slang – 1300s to today

A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – 1788

Feraud's Dictionaire critique de la langue française – 1778

zisurru

A dictionary of the English and Italian languages by Giuseppe Baretti is a bilingual dictionary from 1790!

fictionadventurer

I'm obsessed with this video. It's a half-hour program of Jim Henson on public television in 1969 showing children how to build puppets. If you want to recapture the joy of creativity, you need to watch this now.

I can't remember the last time I've seen anything like this. There are plenty of things today urging people to reconnect with physical creative hobbies, but a lot of those are still tied to a consumerist mindset--you need to buy these supplies and have these skills so you can make something that's worth the time spent away from screens. This is from a different time and has a completely different philosophy. This is not instructions. It's not a tutorial. It's purely a demonstration of creativity. No expensive supplies--just telling you to use what you have, giving you some ideas of what you can do with it, and encouraging you to play. You can draw a face on a spoon, put it through a piece of fabric, and you have a little guy! The possibilities are endless, even with simple supplies! It's one of the clearest demonstrations of creativity as play that I've ever seen, and it's inspiring.

It's like, in a world of AI, where the arts are tied to technology platforms owned by major corporations, and hobbies are beset by consumerism and perfectionism, the spirit of Jim Henson is showing up and saying, "Draw some eyes on an envelope and give it a stupid voice. Congratulations! You have a puppet! Now go make a show for your friends." Be silly, be corny, be amateur and childish, but get out there and create--and have fun doing it.

quasi-normalcy

The rookie mistake in fiction writing is assuming that short stories will be easier to write than novels because they're smaller. No. This is the equivalent to thinking that it's easier to make a pocket watch than grandfather clock. Short stories are complex engineering problems.

incomingalbatross

Thesis statement: The popularity of “found family” is a great thing, especially as it celebrates the importance of non-biological, non-romantic relationships. However, an overemphasis on this relationship model can lead us to undervaluing philia in favor of storge, in much the same way that an overemphasis on shipping can lead to undervaluing philia in favor of eros. It can also lead to an erasure of the differences between philia and storge, treating these two types of love as interchangeable instead of celebrating the distinctive aspects of each.

incomingalbatross

…Yeah, this could definitely be an Entire Literal Essay, actually. This is…not the short version, but it is the shortest I can manage.

So my main thought is that Friendship is the hardest form of love for our culture to see as distinct and important in its own right, and “found family” often (though not always) ends up as a sort of…middle ground between that point and the “Only Romance Is Important” idea. In a ship-dominated culture, Friendship is often reduced to Level 1 Romance, and—at least in some ways—a found-family-dominated fandom culture can end up reducing Friendship to Level 1 Family.

In practice, I think that….even when we know that we don’t see or want to see an important relationship as Romantic, a lot of us still struggle with the idea of Friendship by itself being equally valuable or important. So we equate “familial” with “important” (because family is undeniably as important as romance, right? Or at least it’s a lot easier to make that case—and also, there is the not-at-all-insignificant benefit that it marks your view of a relationship as CLEARLY platonic!), and then we try to fit every relationship we love into a clearly-labeled Family-Shaped Box, in order to affirm its importance and give it legitimacy that “just friendship” might not.

…which is, ironically, what shippers are sometimes doing when they seem to be putting every relationship they love into a Romance-Shaped Box for the same reason. That’s the highest-status box there is! Don’t you think this relationship deserves the highest Relationship Rank??

But Friendship—philia, using the Greek word (or at least using it as C. S. Lewis uses it—isn’t a weaker form or “first stage” of other loves. It’s its own form of love. Not lesser, but different. And if we keep following our instinct to “legitimize” it by conflating it with family/storge, we end up doing both kinds of love a disservice.

(And I am definitely including myself in the group of people with this instinct! There’s a fandom I’ve gotten into recently that—as not infrequently happens—has a central relationship you could easily consider “father-son,” “best friends,” or a mixture of the two, and there’s variance within the fandom. I personally view this relationship pretty much purely as “best friends” in my own interpretation, but…a few years ago, I would have been much closer to the “father-son” camp. And even though I’ve consciously changed my approach to character relationships over those last few years—mainly due to a variety of other fandom exposures over the past few years, and the pro-friendship opinions I‘ve formulated while thinking about them—I still have some of those pro-familial instincts I entered fandom with! They’re very much what I came here with, and even though I now like other approaches better, they’re still in my brain.)

The disservice to philia comes in the fact that we are still not celebrating it as a non-romantic, non-familial form of love in its own right—which stinks, because it’s great!! and important to humans!! and we should all appreciate how wonderful Friendship is without feeling like we have to turn it onto another kind of relationship once it passes some Importance Threshold. It’s also a less-important disservice to specific fictional relationships that we try to fit into a Family Box and maybe end up misrepresenting or oversimplifying in the process.

The disservice to storge comes in the fact that, with the label of “Family” so highly valued in itself, it tends to get overused and slapped on everything until it’s started to lose all distinctively familial meaning. It becomes harder for us to explore the depths and beauties of distinctively familial love when we’ve lost the verbal distinction between “relationships founded upon specifically familial roles, a strong shared background, and/or an unchosen yet unbreakable connection” (which is how I would identify storge relationships just off the top of my head) and the “found family” definition of “any group of people who love each other not-exclusively-romantically and aren’t related.”

Personally, I kinda miss alternative labels like TVTropes’ “True Companions” or “Platonic Life Partners.” Characters don’t need to be spouses or siblings to be important to each other. They can be solely and purely—though not “just!”—friends.

toliveanddieinstarlight

mckitterick

Sometimes victory belongs to mercy and looks like failure

had to share this brilliant discussion - source: X

At the most important moment in modern fantasy, the hero fails. Not quietly. Not ambiguously. He stands at the edge of the world, feels the full weight of evil loosen its grip, and chooses it anyway.

At the edge of Mount Doom, with the fate of the world balanced on a single will, Frodo Baggins does not throw the Ring into the fire. He claims it. The moment every heroic narrative has trained us to expect as triumph becomes instead a confession of failure. Tolkien does not flinch. He lets the hero break.

And yet the world is saved.

This is not a plot twist. It is a moral thesis. The destruction of the Ring happens not because Frodo earns victory, but because mercy extended long before the ending finally comes due. The quest resolves because of a chain reaction of restraint. The decisive force is not discipline, not optimization, not grit. It is pity.

This is where Tolkien quietly dismantles the moral machinery of hustle culture decades before we had language for it. We live inside a story that teaches us effort converts cleanly into outcome. That endurance guarantees reward. That suffering is a down payment on success. Tolkien offers a colder and far more honest truth. Sometimes you do everything right and still cannot finish the job.

Scholars have long noted that Frodo’s failure is not a betrayal of his character but the completion of it. The Ring is not a fair test of willpower. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote plainly in his letters, the will is not infinite. Power erodes agency. The closer one comes to absolute domination, the less freedom remains. Frodo is not weak at the Crack of Doom. He is human at the end of an inhuman burden.

By the time he reaches the Fire, Frodo has endured starvation, sleep deprivation, repeated physical injury, and sustained psychological terror. Modern neuroscience would describe this as cumulative trauma. Tolkien simply wrote it as reality. Expecting one last burst of perfect moral clarity from a nervous system already wrecked by suffering is not heroism. It is wishful thinking disguised as virtue.

The quest only succeeds because of Gollum. And even that rescue is not redemption in the sentimental sense. Gollum does not transform into goodness. He falls into the fire because of what he already is. The deeper truth is that Gollum is alive at all only because he was spared when mercy looked foolish. First by Bilbo. Then by Gandalf. Then most dangerously by Frodo himself.

The Ring is destroyed not because Frodo conquers it, but because Frodo once chose not to destroy someone else.

This is a devastating inversion of the moral economy most of us were raised to believe in. We are taught to look for visible proof that goodness works. Tolkien gives us an older logic. Moral victories are often retroactive. The most transformative decisions rarely announce themselves as such. They look inefficient. They look naive. They often look like failure.

In the medieval moral tradition that shaped Tolkien, mercy was not sentimental. It was strategic in a way power could never be. Mercy refused to close the future. It kept outcomes unresolved. It preserved the possibility that evil might one day undo itself. Tolkien does not sanctify Gollum. He allows evil to collapse under its own gravity because mercy refuses to force a premature ending.

This alone would be enough to unsettle the reader. But Tolkien goes further. He denies us the fantasy that salvation heals everything.

After the Ring is destroyed, Tolkien insists on the Scouring of the Shire. Home is violated. The saved world is not the same world. The victory does not restore innocence. Frodo returns permanently wounded. He cannot sleep without pain. He cannot fully enter the peace he helped secure.

The modern myth is that collapse will be redeemed by recognition. Tolkien refuses that lie.

We want the hero to stand at the end and receive the moral reward. Tolkien lets his hero sit down and admit he is finished. Frodo does not recover because recovery would falsify the cost.

This is why The Lord of the Rings remains psychologically modern beneath its ancient scaffolding. The story already understands what burnout culture would take another century to articulate. Some burdens cannot be survived without damage. Some systems demand more than one conscience can sustain. Sometimes the bravest outcome is not conquest but survival long enough to make mercy matter.

We live in an age that worships visible dominance. We measure virtue through performance. We reward leaders who claim they can bend chaos through sheer will. Tolkien issues a quiet warning instead. When power becomes the proof of goodness, goodness collapses.

Frodo fails because no one was ever meant to pass that final test.

The world is not saved by the flawless execution of the righteous. It is saved by the accumulated weight of restraint. By choices made without assurance of payoff. By mercy that looked wasted at the time. By patience that looked irrational. By hands that refused the easy kill and kept the future open instead.

The modern fantasy is not Middle-earth. The modern fantasy is that effort always guarantees justice.

Tolkien tells a harder truth. Sometimes the most important moral decisions you will ever make will feel powerless when you make them. Sometimes the victory will not belong to your endurance at all. It will belong to mercy that looked like weakness years earlier.

Frodo does not win.

Mercy does.

And it does not feel triumphant.

mariacallous

formerlyluckymanticore

Reblog if you will never. Ever. Use AI in your writing.

crystalis

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

bethanydelleman

How to NOT mis-attribute quotes to Jane Austen, on this, her 250th birthday (and the other 364 days of the year)

You know a quote! Is it really Jane Austen or from an adaptation? Time to check. Do not Google, there are many lists online that contain adaptation lines attributed to Jane Austen. Go straight to the source. Search "[Pride and Prejudice] or whatever novel and 'text'"

The first result is Project Gutenberg! Now use your F3 function or "find in page" and put in a few words from your quote

Not there? You can check her other novels as well, there are only six so it's quick, but if it's not there, it's from an adaptation (these are all from the 2005 movie)

Now there is nothing wrong with loving Jane Austen's adaptations, and they wouldn't even exist without her novels, so celebrating Jane Austen with movie quotes is totally valid! Just attribute them properly, "You have bewitched me, body and soul" - Pride & Prejudice 2005

Common Quotes NOT from Jane Austen's novels:

It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives. Jane Austen Persuasion (real quote from the novel: We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.)

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

You can use this method with any author whose works are in the public domain (roughly 50 years after their death).

Happy Birthday Jane Austen!

nerianasims

Also don't attribute to an author what a character they wrote said!

For instance, "How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!" is not Jane Austen. It's Caroline Bingley, a character written by Jane Austen, and Caroline says it while tiring of her book but trying to look good to the rich handsome guy she wants to marry. Very shortly after, "She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest of some amusement..."

This happens all the time with authors. Shakespeare put "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" in the mouth of a character -- that is no more him than "I would eat his heart in the marketplace" is.

bethanydelleman

This is such a widespread problem and I have no idea how to even start to push back against it because it's so rampant. But especially for authors with published letters from their lifetime, it can be very confusing.

I did a post about the way Austen's quotes get mistaken:

There are some Austen quotes that sound wonderful when presented alone, but their meaning in their respective novel is almost completely opp

brittanyearnestauthor

Writing Grief: Beyond the Stereotypes

Grief comes in many forms. We’re often taught that grief only follows death—but in truth, grief is far more complex than that. As writers, understanding the many faces of grief can help us craft scenes with deeper authenticity and emotional resonance.

In this post, we’ll explore different types of grief to help you write characters who feel real, layered, and human.

Grieving the Living

Grief doesn’t only come from death. You can grieve someone who’s still alive.

- A breakup, whether romantic or platonic, can leave someone mourning the version of the relationship they once had.

- Estrangement from family can feel like a living loss—especially when the person is still physically present but emotionally gone.

This kind of grief is often overlooked, but it can be just as devastating as bereavement.

Grieving While Alive

Sometimes, grief comes from within.

When someone is in a dark emotional or mental space, just existing can feel like a burden. They may grieve the life they thought they’d have, the person they used to be, or the hope they’ve lost.

It might sound strange, but for someone in pain, every breath can feel like a reminder of what’s missing. This kind of grief is deeply personal and often invisible—but it’s real.

Grieving a Part of Yourself

Another form of grief that’s rarely discussed is the loss of a part of one’s body or identity.

- Losing a limb, a sense (like sight or hearing), or even a career-defining ability can trigger intense grief.

- It’s not just about physical loss—it’s about mourning what you used to be able to do, and who you were before.

This kind of grief can lead to depression, identity crises, and a long journey of adaptation and healing.

Why This Matters in Storytelling

Grief is not one-size-fits-all. It’s messy, unpredictable, and deeply personal.

By exploring the many dimensions of grief, you can write characters who feel authentic and relatable. Readers connect with stories that reflect their own experiences—even the ones they’ve never been able to name.

Understanding grief in its many forms allows you to:

- Add emotional depth to your characters

- Create more nuanced, human stories

- Offer comfort and validation to readers who may be grieving themselves

Final Thoughts

Grief is not just about death. It’s about loss in all its forms—relationships, identity, ability, hope.

As a writer, your job isn’t to simplify grief. It’s to honor its complexity and give it space on the page. When you do, you create stories that resonate, heal, and endure.

I hope this helps you write with more empathy and insight.

Happy writing.

ellipsus-writes

If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)

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