Set In Ink @set-in-ink - Tumblr Blog

Blanket of my soul, cover my lover and keep them safe

Fabric of my essence, surround my beloved and keep them sane

Light of my being, enclose my dearest and keep them secure

Me: "Damn people are REALLY BAD at knowing when to tag their eyestrain art/images...either that or they just don't care about photosenitive epileptic people like me. I feel really sad now." Person: "But Allison, what if they just don't know or understand what qualifies as eyestrain and what doesn't?" Me: "You know what? That could be a factor...While it is always better to be safe rather than sorry (so YES people should always tag eyestrain even if they're unsure if it "counts" or not) maybe you've got a point?"

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

rightdownright

by the way this is medical. this could save somebody from a migraine all the way to a seizure. this has always been serious. treat this seriously.

krowfaced

People seem to like my hands, so, here’s my first "tutorial", tackling my approach on how to draw and construct hands! I hope to do more of these, and that next one will dive into hand gestures and applying it with this structure.

Hope you find this helpful! :D

ncalabby

little study for myself when I forgor how to hands

luna-azzurra

Tips for Writing Injuries

✧ Broken ribs suck. You don’t just “walk it off.” Breathing hurts. Laughing hurts. Existing hurts. Characters with rib injuries won’t be doing heroic sprints.

✧ Concussions aren’t instant naps. Dazed vision, nausea, dizziness, maybe even personality changes, but they’re not going to collapse neatly like in the movies.

✧ Blood loss is sneaky. It’s not just about dramatic pools of blood. It’s dizziness, confusion, and the body getting cold as circulation tanks.

✧ Adrenaline lies. Someone can take a serious injury and not feel it until the fight’s over. That “I didn’t realize I was bleeding until later” trope? Very real.

✧ Twisted ankles are brutal. One bad step and suddenly running is off the table. Even walking hurts like hell. Perfect way to ground a chase scene.

✧ Burns linger. Even small burns hurt more than most people expect. Blisters, infection risk, constant pain, it’s not just a cool scar later.

✧ Dislocated shoulders = useless arm. Characters can’t keep swinging a sword or firing a gun. They’re basically fighting one-armed until it’s fixed.

✧ Shock is a thing. Pale skin, trembling, rapid heartbeat, and eventually disorientation. A character might not even realize how bad their wound is.

✧ Stitches aren’t magic. Getting sewn up is painful and recovery takes time. They’re not instantly battle-ready after a needle and thread.

✧ Scars tell stories. Some fade, some don’t. Some stay sensitive forever. Don’t forget the aftermath when the wound becomes part of the character.

specialagentartemis

settings I would love to see more in fantasy:

Deserts, but like, positive. Deserts portrayed as beautiful places full of life and wonder. Desert as homeland, desert as a place of beauty and intrinsic value.

Mountains. Andean-style settings where the world is mountainous and the land is organized into altitude zones, where uphill/downhill are more meaningful than east/west

Island archipelagos. We’ve gotten a few in fantasy recently but 1) I want More 2) I want someone to do a Fantasy Kula Ring

Something inspired by Tiwanaku or Chavín de Huántar

Independent city-states. They all are unified by basically the same culture but they are all also politically independent variously at war, making alliances, happily trading, in a trade war, conquered and subordinate to other city-states, founding new city-states, travelling to the central temples of other city-states’ patron gods, etc.

Full of prehistoric animals that never coexisted with humans but they do in this fantasy world because they’re Cool

jureiblueeagle

the only issue with deserts here is that, deserts do have life, but it's hardy life that can handle the heat and lack of water. A desert, definitionally, just isn't a vibrant place of life and abundance with the exception of an oasis.

Because the desert would have to be altered to sustain more life, and that would mean it would be more of a grassland than a desert.

specialagentartemis

The Sonoran Desert looks like this:

The Chihuahuan Desert looks like this:

The Mojave Desert looks like this:

A desert can be and often is a vibrant place of life and abundance, and these deserts are home to plants, animals, and yes, people, and have been for thousands of years.

The partially excavated and restored Pueblo Bonito, the largest Great House of dozens in Chaco Canyon, the center of a social/cultural regional network that spanned hundreds of miles in the 900s-1100s.

The ruins of Paquimé, a cultural center full of royalty and ritual with settlements that radiated out around it for kilometers in the 1100s-1400s.

The remains of Casa Grande and its outlying adobe buildings, the largest remaining Hohokam platform mound great house, occupied in the 1300s-1400s.

I pull these out in particular because they were all at their height at roughly the same time as the European Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, which a lot of popular fantasy settings take their inspiration from. It's not only possible to live in the desert with Fantasy Kingdom levels of technology, it's possible to have complex societies with politics and intrigue there.

Of course the modern Hopi, Zuni, O'odham, Navajo, Apache, Yaqui, Yavapai, Havasupai, and Pueblos live there today, as well as of course the millions of people of various ethnicities and origins who live in greater Phoenix and Tucson and Albuquerque and Las Vegas and El Paso. Parts of the surrounding landscape have been converted into grassland specifically to sustain cattle ranching, not humans; but they are also still very much deserts.

I am saying I want to see more positive depictions of deserts as places of life and abundance because that's where I live and that's the vibrant, beautiful desert environment I've come to know.

fox-bright

A DESERT ISN'T A VIBRANT PLACE?

Immediately before this post on my feed was a video of a pair of mated Gambel's quail, and a bunch of their babies, running around together.

I grew up in a very rural area of Arizona's High Desert. I remember lying in bed at night and listening to the coyotes, their voices distant through the sounds of the night bugs and the calling of screech owls and poor-wills. If I held my breath, I could hear the bats; I can't tell you which species, as Arizona hosts twenty-eight of them.

In the morning, before the rest of the household was up, I would lace up my tennies and walk out to one of the areas of protected parkland, which was mainly discerned from the owned land by the lack of barb-wire fences, though I'd cross those if I had to. I'd have to be careful of snakes--I encountered diamondbacks and coral snakes on occasion, but more often they'd be yellow and black kingsnakes, harmless but I didn't want to step on them carelessly--and blue-bellied lizards would dart and skate across the sand in front of me while I walked. Grey-carapaced grasshoppers with secretly colorful wings, beetles dark and dun and jewelry-bright metallic, butterflies in shocking shades, moths that hadn't settled down for the day, the occasional scorpion. Wasps of all sorts, elegant and filigreed and interested in me every time I sat to drink from my canteen. If I spilled water on the ground, little things would fly over or run up to drink from it--lizards and insects, and once or twice a small desert mouse.

The sky was vast and full of birds. Golden eagles, turkey vultures, merlins and gray jays and cactus wrens, Gila woodpeckers and peregrine falcons, hummingbirds and cardinals and the intimidatingly-large ravens who would land in groups and turn to watch me as I walked past, occasionally croaking out calls that sounded very nearly like human speech.

If I was lucky, a grey fox might cross my path; if I was unlucky, I might have to book it to get ahead of a band of javelina, whose stink would usually announce them well before I noticed their sound.

Kangaroo rats and horned lizards were less common, in the hours that I was out, but some days I'd still get to meet them as I went.

A couple of miles overland through the desert would take me to the Verde River, which in many places would not be considered a river at all to a Northerner, but which nevertheless held brown and rainbow trout, sunfish and catfish. Usually I was more likely to be watching the tadpoles than the fish, though, and then the toads and frogs that they became, which the blue herons would come over to snap from the water. The dragonflies, as long as my hand was wide, would land in the cattails until I'd been sitting long enough to attract mosquitoes for them to eat right from the air before they could bite me.

I can't sum up the sheer incredible density of the life in that desert. I haven't even started on the plants, the low, grey little shrubs that would explode into flowers of electric brightness for a couple of weeks of the year, the deeply-scented scrub, the many sorts of cactus and succulent. If I started describing them, I would not know where to start.

Deserts are as important as forests. And at least as much to be respected.

derinthescarletpescatarian

I'm not gonna get sucked into the drama but I gotta admit that Hank Green making an incredibly popular phone app that uses knitting as its central gimmick, absolutely dominating the app store with it, and then immediately pissing off the online knitting community with something entirely unrelated is a little bit funny. Like, just the timing of it.

marlovestrees

There was some light ribbing about the knitting in the app already. It uses socks as the “basic” currency and scarves as the “premium” currency, which is completely reversed from the level of difficulty for each item.

I don’t think anyone was too upset about that, though.

derinthescarletpescatarian

He needed a random craft for his cutesy focusing app, whatever he picked was going to be inaccurate and bow to the necessities of the app. I've done a lot of fishing and cooking in games that clearly don't know a whole lot about fishing and cooking. Like that's fine, nobody's expecting a knitting lesson in the Step Away From Your Phone App That Randomly Chose A Textile Aesthetic.

An educational video about knitting made by professional educators and researchers that clearly broadcasts in every line just how unimportant the creators think one of the more important human technologies in all history is, though? Yeah, it's reasonable for people to have some expectations of that. If your (the scishow team, not necessarily Hank specifically, he was very likely just the narrator) opinion of a massive chunk of the main industry of women throughout human history, the thing that civilisations ran on and kept people alive and that people have constantly minimised as some silly hobby that women do in the background while Important Work like war and science and construction is getting done, is that it's so unimportant and boring as to not even be worth learning about for the educational video you're making and was just something people blindly stumbled through by "trial and error" until The Physicists discovered that it could actually do "important" work (never mind that trial and error is a major basis of scientific experimentation but it's somehow only important and technical if it's done in a lab I guess), then yeah. The knitters are gonna want some corrections made.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#oh i cannot wait to dig into this drama

It's not all that much drama tbh. General education channel made a video about something they didn't care about or bother to learn about with a dismissive tone, the people who knew what they were talking about were like "hey we love your work usually but your video's fucked up and wrong, can you make a correction so you don't keep misinforming people". Fork found in kitchen, soap found in bathroom. The timing of being so close on the heels of a breakout app that just happened to use a knitting aesthetic is just funny to me personally.

capricorn-0mnikorn

quoted tag:

#I would watch a whole series of videos about knitting and sewing and weaving and spinning and constructing garments

Do you know Sally Pointer's YouTube Channel? (long form videos mostly on experimental archeology, recreating ancient textile and cordage techniques, and adjacent skills)

Or Bernadette Banner's? (Costume analysis and fashion history; has lots of videos on period appropriate clothing reconstruction)

Or Abby Cox's? (Lately, a lot of snarky, comedic videos on fashion history and related cultural things. Here's a playlist from a while back, where she examines how antique clothes were constructed)

sworntovalor

Here’s a “life-hack” for you. Apparently concentrated Kool-Aid can be used as a pretty effective leather dye. I was making a drink while cutting the snaps off some new straps for my pauldrons and I got curious, so I tried it, thinking, “ok even if this works, it will just wash out.” Nope. It took the “dye” (undiluted) in about 3 seconds. After drying for about an hour and a half, it would not wash off in the hottest tap-water. It would not wash out after soaking for 30 minutes. It did not wash out until I BOILED it, and even then, only by a tiny bit and it gave it a weathered look that was kind of cool. Add some waterproofing and I’d wager it would survive even that. That rich red is only one application too. Plus it smells great, lol. So there you go, cheap, fruity smelling leather dye in all the colors Kool-Aid has to offer.

hammerhide

WELL THEN!

pomegranateandivy-deactivated20

this may be important to some of my followers *and certainly not just getting reblogged because of my costuming and my boyfriends desire for leather armor*

armeleia

When I was in middle school we used to use it to dye our hair. Potent stuff.

baedlyweathered

If you’re dying anything with kool-aid it’s best to use SUGAR-FREE ones otherwise the thing you’re dying might get all sticky

samthor

the flavor only packets where you are supposed add sugar are the best. they will dye any natural fiber: leather, wool, cotton, hair, flax, jute, silk and so forth. heat the dye water so it is more potent. let dry then rinse excess out in cold water. there’s a whole system to this.

mittensmcgee-deactivated2018033

Oh my god

triforceofdoom

This will prove very useful for any future cosplays I wanna do.

miyuliart

Some head related art notes. I hope some of these are a bit helpful. Patreon / Gumroad

luna-azzurra

When a Character is Hiding a Secret That’s Eating Them Alive

Secrets change people. Not just in what they do, but in how they exist. When a character’s carrying something they can’t say, whether it’s shame, betrayal, a buried truth...it changes how they move through the world.

✧ They get good at changing the subject. Every conversation has an escape hatch. They’ve practiced. A joke. A question. A nod in the other direction. They can’tlet anyone get too close to the truth.

✧ They seem distracted, but not in a dreamy way. More like they’re always watching the door. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’re in every moment and somewhere else at the same time.

✧ They start talking less. Not because they’re mysterious, but because every word is a risk. One wrong sentence and it could all come undone.

✧ They keep their emotions on a leash. Joy? Contained. Anger? Controlled. Grief? Managed. If they lose control of one feeling, others might follow. And that’s too dangerous.

✧ They lie, badly. Not always in words. In tone. In eye contact. In overexplaining. You can feel the desperation in how hard they’re trying to sound casual.

✧ They dream more and sleep worse. Secrets don’t sleep. They come alive in the dark. In dreams. In half-conscious whispers. Rest becomes another battle.

✧ They can’t stand silence anymore. It’s too loud. It leaves space for guilt to crawl in. They start filling it with music, chatter, background noise, anything to drown it out.

✧ They crave honesty from others. They’ll press other people for their truths. Their stories. Their pain. It’s not malicious, they just want to feel what it’s like to be free of what they’re carrying.

✧ They flinch when someone gets too kind. Because kindness is disarming. It feels like someone looking directly at the truth and loving them anyway and they don’t believe they deserve that.

✧ They want to confess, but don’t. Not yet. Not until it’s safe. Not until they’re sure the fallout won’t destroy everything. But they’re so, so tired.

ckret2

some of the best writing advice I’ve ever received: always put the punch line at the end of the sentence.

it doesn’t have to be a “punch line” as in the end of a joke. It could be the part that punches you in the gut. The most exciting, juicy, shocking info goes at the end of the sentence. Two different examples that show the difference it makes:

doing it wrong:

She saw her brother’s dead body when she caught the smell of something rotting, thought it was coming from the fridge, and followed it into the kitchen.

doing it right:

Catching the smell of something rotten wafting from the kitchen—probably from the fridge, she thought—she followed the smell into the kitchen, and saw her brother’s dead body.

Periods are where you stop to process the sentence. Put the dead body at the start of the sentence and by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you’ve piled a whole kitchen and a weird fridge smell on top of it, and THEN you have to process the body, and it’s buried so much it barely has an impact. Put the dead body at the end, and it’s like an emotional exclamation point. Everything’s normal and then BAM, her brother’s dead.

This rule doesn’t just apply to sentences: structuring lists or paragraphs like this, by putting the important info at the end, increases their punch too. It’s why in tropes like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, the odd item out comes at the end of the list.

Subverting this rule can also be used to manipulate reader’s emotional reactions or tell them how shocking they SHOULD find a piece of information in the context of a story. For example, a more conventional sentence that follows this rule:

She opened the pantry door, looking for a jar of grape jelly, but the view of the shelves was blocked by a ghost.

Oh! There’s a ghost! That’s shocking! Probably the character in our sentence doesn’t even care about the jelly anymore because the spirit of a dead person has suddenly appeared inside her pantry, and that’s obviously a much higher priority. But, subvert the rule:

She opened the pantry door, found a ghost blocking her view of the shelves, and couldn’t see past it to where the grape jelly was supposed to be.

Because the ghost is in the middle of the sentence, it’s presented like it’s a mere shelf-blocking pest, and thus less important than the REAL goal of this sentence: the grape jelly. The ghost is diminished, and now you get the impression that the character is probably not too surprised by ghosts in her pantry. Maybe it lives there. Maybe she sees a dozen ghosts a day. In any case, it’s not a big deal. Even though both sentences convey the exact same information, they set up the reader to regard the presence of ghosts very differently in this story.

midwinterhunt

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

narrettwist

Homie gonna share this

hacvek

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

olyia-stories

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

dragonpyre

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

serinos-kitt

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

dragonpyre

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

serinos-kitt

So what is a rain shadow?

lethalbutterfly

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

mindfulwrath

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

jeanjauthor

I do think this could be useful for writers! ...Caveat, if you're going to use this for making a map for anything published (digital or paper, even if it's only in a fanfic archive or whatever), please, please credit the creator and their program as how you made that map! The more ways information like this gets out there, the more useful it'll be to other writers, roleplaying game DMs/GMs, creators, etc.

oh-opossum

One of my favourites for mapping plates, biomes, etc is Tectonics.js. If you're familiar with how tectonics shape a planet, you can guess where the features go by toggling plates, crust thickness, etc. Between Mapgen4 and Tectonics.js, we've got some pretty sweet tools at our disposal.

brehaaorgana

More stuff!:

European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own

Reshaping Reality's Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding pasta's series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!

R/worldbuilding's Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.

Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff's Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.

Related: Worldbuilding Workshop's "Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook." Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.

Madeline James Writes's Worldbuilding Guide

Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there's like...everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...

Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...

Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...

Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.

Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

(Landscape Biographies is open access, as is Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. But I wouldn't try to read every essay.)

dedicatedfollower467

If you are like me and find it helpful to have video reference for a process/activity in addition to a written guide, Artifexian is a YouTube channel that does a LOT of world building stuff and specifically he's in the process of creating a world following a lot of Worldbuilding Pasta's methodology!

transmasc-wizard

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

transmasc-wizard

trope: 1) the use of figurative language for artistic effect; includes allegories, analogies, hyperbole, & metaphors, among others. 2) commonly reoccurring literary devices, motifs, or clichés. Includes things like the medieval fantasy setting, the Dark Lord, enemies-to-lovers, and the Chosen One.

theme: the reoccurring idea or subject in a work of art. Death, life, rebirth, change, love, what it means to be human, the definition of family, the effects of war, etc.

cliché: an element of an artistic work that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even becoming annoying or irritating. (Most clichés are tropes but not all tropes are clichés.)

motif: a distinctive repeating feature or idea, such as the green light in The Great Gatsby. May overlap with tropes and is often used to further explore the theme.

archetype: a constantly-recurring symbol or motif; it refers to the recurrence of characters or ideas sharing similar traits throughout various, seemingly unrelated cases in classic storytelling. E.g. rags to riches, the wise old mentor. Again may overlap with tropes, clichés, and motifs, but they're not the exact same thing.

callitgoodwriting-deactivated20

How I Modify My Google Doc for Outlining and Drafting

I previously talked about setting up my document to look like a formatted paperback book to help writing not feel so daunting.

Today, I bring you a different way I change my document that is more appealing to me than the standard Doc.

For Drafts

first, go to Page Set Up

this is what the default is

For my setup: Margins will change to .5" for top, bottom, left, and right.

this is the page color I chose but it's totally optional.

Then, I change my default font. Here is how to find the ones I like. Go to the font option, then click More fonts.

These are the fonts I love. You can search them or browse for ones you like.

next, i change my first-line paragraph indent to .25"

For Outlining

(and also character profiles, world-building, etc.)

You are going to follow the same steps as above first. The only difference is you don't need to mess with any of the indent settings.

I use boxes as dividers and organizers. To do this, go to Insert > Table > 1x1.

Then, change the border thickness to 2.25pt. I usually have a color palette for these, so I'm choosing a darker brown than the background for the borders. But white paper and black table lines work just as well and are more print-friendly ;)

Next, I change the Headings, Subheadings, and Subtitles. To begin, I am changing my Title heading. I choose my font, how big I want it to be, and then I like using a highlight color as well. Here, I'm using a standard light/pastel color and 18pt font.

Highlight to select this new title. Go to the dropdown menu that says "normal text", hover over "Title", then choose "Update 'Title' to Match". Now you can click that every time with no hassle. And it will begin an outline for you to the left.

Let's make that box within a box! Make sure you are typing inside the first box. Then insert another table. I am going to use a 2x3.

Because this table is more than one cell, you can go to the three dots up top and click "Table Options" to change every table border selected at once. Again, 2.25pt with the same color as before. The cell background color says white but you don't have to change it to match the page color.

You can save both your Heading preferences and page setup as your default style. Every new document you make will use these settings automatically.

I really hope this was helpful and/or interesting!

As always, take what you want and leave the rest. Happy writing!

[call it good] writing

emphasis-on-the-comfort

😶 Possible non-verbal indicators of a character who isn't feeling well:

Drinking tea when they usually don't

Taking over-the-counter medicine

Shivering under a blanket

Having a slow processing time

Swallowing hard

Rubbing their temples

Picking at their food

Stepping outside for fresh air

Holding their stomach

Eyes brimming with tears

Sucking on peppermint

Falling asleep in weird places

Frequent trips to the bathroom

Changing into sweatpants/comfy clothes

Neglecting chores they're usually compulsive about

Not bothering to comb/stye hair

Getting winded easily

Splashing water on their face

Leaning forward with head bowed

Eyeing the nearest trashcan frequently -----------------------------------------

Fanning themselves excessively

Leaning on tables/chairs/walls for stabilization

Rolling down the window in the car

Having clammy hands

Breathing in through their nose and out through their mouth

Getting a ride when they'd normally walk

Showing up late to an obligation

Pulling at a tight collar

Shifting uneasily in their seat

Covering their mouth

Having their hoodie up

Resting their head on a table/desk

Getting caught looking at WebMD

Legs shaking underneath their weight

Dark circles under their eyes

Being covered in goosebumps

Forgetting things that are usually second nature

Wearing sunglasses indoors

Unsteady hands

Zoning out -----------------------------------------

Blinking dazedly

Seeking out physical contact

Going pale

Increased clumsiness

Decreased strength

Flushed cheeks

Yawning excessively

Stomach gurgling sickly

Tension in their shoulders

Pinching the bridge of their nose

Tripping over their own feet

Being quiet when they're usually talkative

Squinting at bright lights

Sweating profusely

Glossy/Bleary eyes

Holding their chest

Poor posture/Hunching into themselves

Clenched teeth

Stifling burps

Having a sickly smell about them/change of odor -----------------------------------------

Rolling their shoulders back

Rubbing their stomach

Running their hands through their hair

Shuddering breaths

Resting their head against a friend's shoulder

Finding a bucket and keeping it close

Coughing harshly/frequently

Wheezing breaths

Sniffing wetly

Resting their forehead against cold places/things

Arms hanging limply

Having red nose/eyes

Legs pulled up to chest/Hugging themselves

Wobbly knees

Tissues stuffed into their palms/pockets

Washing hands excessively

Sitting on the bathroom floor

Sighing heavily

Neglecting working out

Avoiding meals -----------------------------------------

Hands on knees

Drooping eyelids

Spitting out excess saliva

Quick, panting breaths

Having bad breath

Wringing their hands

Being heavy-footed

Head lolling to the side

Rubbing arms to try to warm up

Pressing palms to eyes

Having a grimacing expression

Mouth in a thin line

Puffy/Swollen face

White/Pale lips

Keeping to themselves

Holding head in hands

Unfocused eyes

Curling arms around their middle

Hiccuping on stale air

Restlessness during sleep

#long post

abalonetea

my writing fundamentally changed forever ten years ago when i realized you could use sentence structure to control people’s heart rates. is this still forbidden knowledge or does everyone know it now

dreamtofswallowingcoins

?????? *raises hand* I’ve been writing for years and don’t know this trick by these words! do tell?

abalonetea

Okay, so a few people have asked for me to cite the dark magics at them, and i’m super happy to share because it’s my favorite thing ever.

so, let’s see if i can explain this the same way that i learned. read a sentence out loud. you come to a full stop when you hit the period, and you take a normal, breath. but, when you hit a comma, you take a slightly longer pause. and when you hit a dash - you take an even longer pause.

this is a natural rhythm that we pick up when we’re first taught to read; we do it without even thinking. but when you start to think about it, you realize that it can become a tool.

think of your heartbeat. a period is badump. a comma is badump-dump. and a dash is thump badump. one breath. a longer breath. two breaths.

that means what you read automatically affects the rhythm of your breathing and your heartrate. which means that you can control the amount of physical tension your reader feels… by altering your punction and your sentence structure.

for fast paced scenes, you use short sentences. a lot of hard stops. mostly periods, with just a few comma’s thrown in for the full breath. your reader’s heartrate accelerates. their breathing is slightly and unintentionally, on their end, quicker. you hit the dramatic ending of the scene - and your reader’s body phsyically feels the gasp, the breath of fresh air, of these longer sentences.

now, read that paragraph again ant take note of your natural pauses, and how it subtly affects your breathing.

the same thing can be said of comma’s and dashes. while they can be used as a breath of fresh air, they can also cause a new line of tension as they lead your reader to hold their breath. during this section, you should use longer sentences; breaking up the harshness of the pauses by using variations of punction. read this paragraph out loud from the start and take note of how long you go between pauses and full breaths.

and then, comes the biggest trick.

the hard stop.

the paragraph.

because while the periods, commas, and dashes are variations on a short stop, the paragraph is a hard stop. you take a full breath. you pause for a moment, then move to the start of the next paragraph.

which means you can create an entirely new sort of dramatic tension. read the sentences that are in bold. see how you take a naturally longer pause at the end of each paragraph?

see how it makes you feel?

how it makes you breath different?

how doing it once, twice, or three times creates a different line of tension?

this little magic trick can be used to cause a reader’s heartrate to speed up during a fight or chase scene. it can be used to cause their breathing to slow down during moments of dramatic tension, sorrow, or softness. and it can be used to create hard breaks that add a new level of physically felt emphasis to your written work.

i hope these examples make sense! it’s my favorite writing trick!

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