✨️Canyon Brightley✨️ @sharkboi42069 - Tumblr Blog

Posts

isabellebissonrouthier

I LOVE IT WHEN ENDINGS CIRCLE BACK TO THE BEGINNING!!!

I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS MIRROR EACH OTHER!!!!!

I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS SEAL THEIR FATES IN THEIR FIRST SCENES!!!!

I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS' GREATEST TRAITS ARE ALSO WHAT DOOM THEM IN THE END!!!!!

sourdough-seal

“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

orbitalmirror

"how did you get into writing" girl i've been tormented by the visions since i was eight years old

ao3commentoftheday

memes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made

ao3commentoftheday

This really connected with a group of people, and I'm glad to see that. But I also think that a lot of people stopped reading the middle stack when they saw the word "research"

I don't research for the kinds of stories I prefer to tell, but I still need that middle stack. That stack is where I'm deciding what happens next in a chapter. It's where I'm choosing which point of view will best get my point across. It's where I'm figuring out what tone of voice or expression a character has when they're saying a particular line. It's when I decide that one or more of those decisions wasn't the right one and I need to cut that part out and try it again.

Mostly, the middle stack for me looks like daydreaming because I write my stories in my head a million times before I ever type them out.

The point of the graphic wasn't to focus in on any particular activity you do. I was trying to capture all of the thinking you need to do, in a million different ways, in order to get from that cool idea to a finished product that does what you want it to do.

The middle stack is whatever process you use to get from idea to story. For some stories, that process is a hundred books high. For others it's only ten pages - but it's never nothing. The middle part is where the writing part occurs.

drowning-in-greed

Get inspired with our supernatural writing prompt generator! Explore fantasy, horror, and paranormal romance stories with just one click. Fr

valtsv

something i really enjoy in horror movies is when the victim(s) start to hunt the killer in return in order to kill them first, both because it's an interesting parallel that (if done well) asks the audience to consider the question of when violence and killing are a justifiable means to an end in order to survive and at what point it crosses the line from acceptable to abhorrent and condemns the perpetrator, and also because it's a little bit funny. like i can do that too bitch you're not special.

headspace-hotel

i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times

headspace-hotel

Gotta recirculate this post periodically just cuz

martinkhall

Just don't read the post too many times.

headspace-hotel

Oh god oh fuck

beiraswrath

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.

neil-gaiman

I don't really ever use Tumblr for advertising. But so many of the questions that come in about writing and plotting are answered in much more depth in my Masterclass. (Yes, you have to pay. They have also been answered here on Tumblr and over on my blog for free, but you will have to find them.)

It's been one of the most popular Masterclasses since its release in 2019, and these days I get to hear from people who published books and blame me, which is nice.

So consider this a rare commercial, mostly because it may actually make life easier for some of you.

Award-winning author Neil Gaiman teaches his approach to imaginative storytelling and creating vivid fictional worlds in his first-ever Mast

lakecountylibrary

Your library may give cardholders access for free through Hoopla. We do! Here's the link:

https://www.hoopladigital.com/television/masterclass-presents-neil-gaiman-teaches-the-art-of-storytelling-neil-gaiman/15484462

This link should work for any library that has Hoopla and offers the class :) If you're not sure just follow the link, click sign up, and search for your library (or, of course, ask your librarian!)

whetstonefires

I watched this series through hoopla (at 5 episodes a month, which is my system's cap, this took a while) last year, and experienced the extremely trippy side effect that I now read neil's tumblr posts in his actual human voice.

neil-gaiman

The comments on this are:

Which make me feel guilty and a bit unprofessional, because I really did mean to write stuff down, but true confession time, everything in the Masterclass is just me talking to the Director, who will have said something like "But how would you know when a story is done then?"

weaselle

yooooooo

neil-gaiman

Libraries are much much more important to me, so however the money works or doesn't, I'm good with you watching through the library Hoopla App.

comicaurora

there's a whole space of tropes where a solid 90% of the impact comes from the vagueness of them happening largely offscreen and I feel like I'm very slowly tumbling ass-over-teakettle down the rabbit hole figuring out how that works

comicaurora

Noodle Incidents are the most obvious one, since they're comedic and it's very easy to spot when a joke stops being funny. A Noodle Incident has to happen offscreen because not getting the explanation is what makes all the tantalizing details feel inspiringly absurd.

"Late To The Tragedy" is another one. You turn up somewhere you're expecting to be bustling and instead it's dead silent and chocka with skeletons and the horror of "what in the good goddamn happened here" is stored in the fact that we don't know that when we arrive, and we may never know the details before we have to leave at high speeds.

"And They All Lived Happily Ever After" is one of the subtler cases. Characters who ride off into the sunset to an implied and offscreen happy ending have a happier narrative future than characters whose future exploits get stories about them. Everything that tries to tell a story after Happily Ever After inevitably sabotages that implied happiness by dragging it into the onscreen zone and revealing that the OTP broke up again or the fun kid hero grew up to be a shitty parent or they had an endless parade of villains of the week to fight forever and ever and ever

yesterday this is something I barely thought about and today this is something I can't stop thinking about and it feels like I just figured out how to see in color for the first time

comicaurora

Offscreen Plan Guarantee. Showing the plan would ruin the impact so we cut from "here's the plan…" to the execution. If we showed the planning and then the plan getting perfectly executed there'd be no surprises, because the surprises are all hiding in the offscreen zone.

comicaurora

When a character gets captured or interrogated or something, it's much more harrowing to get that "take them away" moment right before the camera cuts to their allies trying to figure out how to get to them, because We Know Bad Things Are Happening Offscreen

macdenlover

it came to my realization that 99% of my fandom related headaches would be cured if everyone understood this

transman-badass

Here's to the people who can't get the words on the page. The people who are too tired after all life throws at them to write. The people who are blocked. The people who are burnt out. The people who can't write because of physical or mental illnesses. The people who don't know why they can't write. And the people struggling with all those other things that get in the way of writing and make it seem or be impossible.

You're still a writer, you're still an artist. And you matter. This world is better since you're in it. Thank you for wanting to write, even if you can't right now. I hope you and your words find each other soon.