SilverSongDraws

The Art of the SilverSongMonster

[lilhawkeye3]

Art advice 👀🎨

[silversongdraws]

I have more Shinies to share!

Fergus and Dearg are brothers. They’re half Scottish and half Japanese!

Fergus was born without his right leg and Dearg was born polydactylous!

Next is Johnny, he was born with dwarfism! He’s a horror actor and actually good friends with Donnovan since they’ve worked on different movies together!

After Johnny is Inga!

Inga is a trans woman with Gigantism! She’s not only a mother but a grandmother! She’s also an actress who plays the villain in a Power Rangers knock off series as Queen Chromatic!

After her is Steven!

He has a less noticeable variation of Marfan Syndrome like Donnovan does. He’s in college and is Mikey’s roommate. They’ve been best friends since they were 12 but never met until they happened to be assigned as roommates at their college.

And finally is my newest Autre brother, Rowan!

He has a version of Vitiligo that follows his Blaschko Lines

He’s a nervous young man who’s a massive introvert and is in college to be a botanist.

Bonus, Non Shiny!

This is Jean Jr.’s wife, Jewel!

She’s a professional hair stylist and she adores her husband!

[heywriters]

My collection of clothing references for writing. 

[floraone]

Ya know what , I’m adding. Here are more useful references that I use;

[silversongdraws]

Hi! It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on my art page!

I wanna introduce you to my Shiny Gijinkas!

Starting with my Shiny Eevees!

Jean Jr. or ‘Toast’ is the oldest of the Autre family!

He’s a 48 year old man with Hypertrichosis (aka Wolfman Syndrome), he’s happily married with four daughters. He’s a stay at home dad where he takes care of his girls while his wife is the breadwinner as a professional hair stylist. He lets her do whatever she wants since he’s never really cared about his appearance and his hair grows too quickly for it to really matter.

He’s very chill, a very positive, and the guy is usually the one his siblings go to for advice.

Billie is the second oldest at 45. He has Poliosis, which is a pigmentation disorder that often affects hair and occasionally the skin where the hair is growing from.

He’s a professional drag queen, his stage name being Neon Bright, and he’s happy living as a bachelor.

He’s loud, bombastic, and confident in himself. He aims to instill that confidence in his own younger siblings and cousins as the Cool One. And if anybody’s upset, he’s usually the first to come in and give them comfort.

Donny or ‘Blackberry’ is 42. He’s a quiet man, maybe a little on the nervous side.

He has Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that effects your bones, heart, eyes, and vascular system, as well as your connective tissue. This condition makes Donny very tall and thin with long arms and legs with a short torso and protruding chest. He doesn’t let his condition bring him down and actually became classically trained for Shakespearean theater.

Though he had a hard time finding work in that particular field, he found himself gaining a lot of work in horror films as a Costume Actor. Along the same lines as Doug Jones and Javier Botet (who also has Marfan Syndrome)

He’s not married but he is engaged to a man he’s very happy with, and he’s actually worked with on multiple horror films with.

Ophelia is the middle child of the large family at 30 years old. She has heterochromia!

She’s a bright and bubbly woman who’s still dating and not really looking for a serious relationship.

Her passion lies in her work as a kindergarten teacher. She loves little kids and thinks the world of them. She does everything she can to make her class one they’ll never forget and has been a teacher since she was 26.

And finally is Mikey or ‘Cupcake’

He’s the baby of the sibling group at 19!

He has asymmetrical vitiligo!

Mikey’s life revolved around one day becoming a professional football player and worked very hard to get to the college he wanted to play for.

But only a month into his first semester, he shattered his knee during practice one day and basically destroyed any chance of playing ever again.

Luckily for him, his roommate and best friend since childhood, convinced him to take up the culinary course after finding out he knows how to cook and does it very well.

So after recovering enough to use crutches to get around campus, he began pouring his heart and soul into his culinary classes.

Mikey is a very positive and ambitious young man who tends to push himself to the very limit on everything he’s passionate about.

[witchesversuspatriarchy]

Classic for a reason 🤌

[chicken-mc-nuggets]

i made another palette challenge! colors are fun :>

send me a character + a palette and i’ll draw them! or reblog and use them yourself :) (if you do that please tag me in the art you make! i love seeing it)

[gahdamnpunk]

A QUEEN

[bathroom-stall-musings]

Okay, I don’t normally add on to posts but in this case I’ve got to.

Rachel Ann Bovier is a Pittsburgh legend who has been publishing her poems in city newspapers for decades. In more recent years, she started putting up these bill boards along major roads. For what reason? I have no clue. But I would often pass them on my way to Oakland for therapy. They never failed to cheer me up.

As a young trans writer, they gave me this precious little spark of joy. There was someone like me, a writer, a Pittsburgher, a trans person, who was confident enough to put their face on a bill board! I would always smile as we passed by and my mom took note.

Fast forward a few years and it’s my 21st birthday. My mom has been super excited about my gift and teased me about it over and over again. She said it was the best gift she’d ever gotten me and in many ways she was right. It was a custom poem she commissioned from Miss Bouvier! It congratulated me on my birthday, my academic success, lots of little stuff. It was simple and sweet and perfect.

I’m still not out to my parents about being trans, but that poem serves as a reminder to me that trans people are every where, they are artists, they are all ages, and their visibility is essential. So thank you to Rachel Ann Bouvier for being a great poetess and a Pittsburgh treasure!

[darhak]

Seriously, where did Steve find that armor? I hope he didn’t steal it from an aggressive warrior or something…I don’t want him to get in trouble, ya know? It’s been a year since this tutorial is on Patreon, so I’ll post it for everyone now! (I have to work on a reptile scales or transparent materials tutorial one day tho)

Fire tutorial: https://darhak.tumblr.com/post/186828219798/thats-my-first-and-probably-not-last-art

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[ruimtetijd]

None of the people he showed look like each other and yet he looks like all of them

[thecaffeinebookwarrior-deactiva]

The Dos and Don’ts of Beginning a Novel:  An Illustrated Guide

I’ve had a lot of asks lately for how to begin a book (or how not to), so here’s a post on my general rules of thumb for story openers and first chapters!  

Please note, these are incredibly broad generalizations;  if you think an opener is right for you, and your beta readers like it, there’s a good chance it’s A-OK.  When it comes to writing, one size does not fit all.  (Also note that this is for serious writers who are interested in improving their craft and/or profession publication, so kindly refrain from the obligatory handful of comments saying “umm, screw this, write however you want!!”)

So without further ado, let’s jump into it!

Don’t: 

1.  Open with a dream. 

“Just when Mary Sue was sure she’d disappear down the gullet of the monstrous, winged pig, she woke up bathed in sweat in her own bedroom.”

What?  So that entire winged pig confrontation took place in a dream and amounts to nothing?  I feel so cheated! 

Okay, not too many people open their novels with monstrous swine, but you get the idea:  false openings of any kind tend to make the reader feel as though you’ve wasted their time, and don’t usually jump into more meaty action of the story quickly enough.  It makes your opening feel lethargic and can leave your audience yawning.

Speaking of… 

2.  Open with a character waking up.  

This feels familiar to most of us, but unless your character is waking up to a zombie attack or an alien invasion, it’s generally a pretty easy recipe to get your story to drag.

No one picks a book to hear how your character brushes their teeth in the morning or what they’d like to have for dinner.  As a general rule of thumb, we read to explore things we wouldn’t otherwise get to experience.  And cussing out the alarm clock is not one of them.  

Granted, there are exceptions if your writing is exceptionally engaging, but in most cases it just sets a slow pace that will bore you and your reader to death and probably cause you to lose interest in your book within the first ten pages.  

3.  Bombard with exposition.  

Literary characters aren’t DeviantArt OCs.  And the best way to convey a character is not, in my experience, to devote the first ten pages to describing their physical appearance, personality, and backstory.  Develop your characters, and make sure their fully fleshed out – my tips on how to do so here – but you don’t need to dump all that on the reader before they have any reason to care about them.  Let the reader get to know the character gradually, learn about them, and fall in love with them as they would a person:  a little bit at a time.   

This is iffy when world building is involved, but even then it works best when the delivery feels organic and in tune with the book’s overall tone.  Think the opening of the Hobbit or Good Omens.

4.  Take yourself too seriously.

Your opener (and your novel in general) doesn’t need to be intellectually pretentious, nor is intellectual pretense the hallmark of good literature.  Good literature is, generally speaking, engaging, well-written, and enjoyable.  That’s it.  

So don’t concern yourself with creating a poetic masterpiece of an opening line/first chapter.  Just make one that’s – you guessed it – engaging, well-written, and enjoyable. 

5.  Be unintentionally hilarious.

Utilizing humor in your opening line is awesome, but check yourself to make sure your readers aren’t laughing for all the wrong reasons (this is another reason why betas are important.)  

These examples of the worst opening lines in published literature will show you what I mean – and possibly serve as a pleasant confidence booster as well: 

“As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand – who would take her away from all this – and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had.”

– Ali Kawashima

“She sipped her latte gracefully, unaware of the milk foam droplets building on her mustache, which was not the peachy-fine baby fuzz that Nordic girls might have, but a really dense, dark, hirsute lip-lining row of fur common to southern Mediterranean ladies nearing menopause, and winked at the obviously charmed Spaniard at the next table.”

– Jeanne Villa

“As I gardened, gazing towards the autumnal sky, I longed to run my finger through the trail of mucus left by a single speckled slug – innocuously thrusting past my rhododendrons – and in feeling that warm slime, be swept back to planet Alderon, back into the tentacles of the alien who loved me.”

– Mary E. Patrick

“Before they met, his heart was a frozen block of ice, scarred by the skate blades of broken relationships, then she came along and like a beautiful Zamboni flooded his heart with warmth, scraped away the ugly slushy bits, and dumped them in the empty parking lot of his soul.”

– Howie McClennon

If these can get published, so can you.

Do:

1.  You know that one really interesting scene you’re itching to write?  Start with that.

Momentum is an important thing in storytelling.  If you set a fast, infectious beat, you and your reader will be itching to dance along with it.  

Similarly, slow, drowsy openers tend to lead to slow, drowsy stories that will put you both to sleep.

I see a lot of posts joking about “that awkward moment when you sit down to write but don’t know how to get to that one scene you actually wanted to write about.”  Write that scene!  If it’s at all possible, start off with it.  If not, there are still ways you can build your story around the scenes you actually want to write.

Keep in mind:  if you’re bored, your reader will almost certainly be bored as well.  So write what you want to write.  Write what makes you excited.  Don’t hold off until later, when it “really gets good.”  Odds are, the reader will not wait around that long, and you’re way more likely to become disillusioned with your story and quit.  If a scene is dragging, cut it out.  Burn bridges, find a way around.  Live, dammit. 

2.  Engage the reader.

There are several ways to go about this.  You can use wit and levity, you can present a question, and you can immerse the reader into the world you’ve created.  Just remember to do so with subtlety, and don’t try too hard;  believe me, it shows.  

Here are some of my personal favorite examples of engaging opening lines: 

“In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.“ 

– Douglas Adams, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

– Iain Banks, Crow Road.

“A white Pomeranian named Fluffy flew out of the a fifth-floor window in Panna, which was a grand-new building with the painter’s scaffolding still around it. Fluffy screamed.”

– Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games.

See what I’m saying?  They pull you in and do not let go.

3.  Introduce us to a main character (but do it right.)

“Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.”

– Neil Gaiman, American Gods.

This is one of my favorite literary openings of all time, because right off the bat we know almost everything we need to know about Shadow’s character (i.e. that he’s rugged, pragmatic, and loving.)   

Also note that it doesn’t tell us everything about Shadow:  it presents questions that make us want to read more.  How did Shadow get into prison?  When will he get out?  Will he reunite with his wife?  There’s also more details about Shadow slowly sprinkled in throughout the book, about his past, personality, and physical appearance.  This makes him feel more real and rounded as a character, and doesn’t pull the reader out of the story.

Obviously, I’m not saying you should rip off American Gods.  You don’t even need to include a hooker eating a guy with her cooch if you don’t want to.  

But this, and other successful openers, will give you just enough information about the main character to get the story started;  rarely any good comes from infodumping, and allowing your reader to get to know your character gradually will make them feel more real.   

4.  Learn from the greats.

My list of my favorite opening lines (and why I love them) is right here.

5.  Keep moving.  

The toughest part of being a writer is that it’s a rare and glorious occasion when you’re actually satisfied with something you write.  And to add another layer of complication, what you like best probably won’t be what your readers will like best. 

If you refuse to keep moving until you have the perfect first chapter, you will never write anything beyond your first chapter.  

Set a plan, and stick to it:  having a daily/weekly word or page goal can be extremely helpful, especially when you’re starting out.  Plotting is a lifesaver (some of my favorite posts on how to do so here, here, and here.)

Keep writing, keep moving, and rewrite later.  If you stay in one place for too long, you’ll never keep going. 

Best of luck, and happy writing.  <3

[prophecydungeon]

that’s not………. how child speech works…………………………………………..

[prophecydungeon]

god okay in an attempt to be less of an asshole, here’s how child speech DOES work (or tend to work, at least)

kids tend to hypercorrect — this means that they tend to say things like “sleeped” instead of “slept,” “writed” instead of “wrote,” “goed” instead of “went,” etc

kids tend not to make errors such as omitting verbs (“i hungry”)

kids also tend not to make errors in the i/me, she/her department (“me am hungry”)

simplification of difficult sounds — consonant clusters especially, so things like st, sp, ps, etc., as well as f, v, th-sounds, ch-sounds, etc.

“babbling”-type utterances (“apwen” for “airplane,” using one babbly word for multiple objects, things like that) generally occur in children under the age of three and a half

say it with me: an eight-year-old child is not going to be saying “me hungwy”

do not confuse child speech with stereotypical learner english mistakes, that’s not only incorrect but also gross on the stereotypical learner english front (“me love you long time,” anybody?)

if you’re going to write kidfic please do some goddamn research

[prokopetz]

Totally. It can be helpful to remind yourself that young children tend to speak as though the English language actually made sense. Our brains are pattern-recognising machines: children are really, really good at puzzling out the implicit rules of the English language, but they don’t necessarily know all the silly exceptions and bizarre edge cases that break those rules yet - those can only be learned through experience and rote memorisation.

Basically, when children who speak English as a first language make mistakes, it typically reflects a tendency to treat English as more grammatically, syntactically, and/or orthographically consistent than it really is. In some cases, this can be compounded by the fact that some kids will get offended at how little sense “proper” English makes, and insist upon using the more consistent forms even though they know very well that they’re technically “wrong”.

[idiagroena-deactivated20160720]

for a long young portion of my life I insisted on pronouncing Sean “SEEN” because that’s how it’s spelled.

[pftones3482]

As someone who spends a good majority of her time working with kids, it irks me to no end when I see children written as if they’re babies.

Past the age of about five or six years old, children can have deep, intellectual conversations about the most bizarre of things. I HAD A CONVERSATION LAST WEEK WITH FOUR THIRD GRADERS ABOUT THE GAS PRICES AND TAXES IN HAWAII.

Were they entirely correct in the facts they were giving? No, because it was all from what they had heard from parents or on the news. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I was having a genuine conversation with four eight and nine year olds about taxes.

Just about the only speech problems most kids have, unless they have a speech impediment, is not being able to pronounce certain consonants (replacing ‘th’ with ‘fw,’ for example, and some letters are harder to form with your mouth than others) and doing exactly what the person above said: using the English language the way they know how, which isn’t always the way English works.

Kids aren’t stupid. Stop writing them like they are.

[iguessweallcrazyithinktho]

words to use instead of

as 

while 

when,

whilst

 even as

 just as

 just when

 simultaneously as

 so long as

 at the moment that

 at the same time that at the time that

 in the act of

 in the process of 

on the point of

during the time that

 at the same time as

 during the time

 throughout the time

 in the time

 during which

 during which time

for the period that

 at the same time

 meanwhile

 at the time

 as long as

 exactly when

 at the very moment that

at the very time that after

 as soon as

 immediately when

 immediately after

instantly when once

looked

glanced 

gazed 

stared

gaped

peered

focused 

 peeped 

peeked

took a look

taken a look 

watched

considered 

saw 

seen

observed 

viewed

regarded

marked 

checked out

glimpsed 

spotted 

eyed 

took in 

taken 

in ogled

eyeballed 

beheld

beholden 

before

ahead

back

previously

since

sooner

afore

aforetime

ante

antecedently

anteriorly

before present

ere

fore

former

formerly

forward

gone

gone by

heretofore

in advance

in days of yore

in front

in old days

in the past

past

precendently

previous

up to now

smiled

beam

grin

laugh

smirk

simper

be gracious

express friendliness

express tenderness

look amused

look delighted

look happy

look pleased

touch

brush

caress

feel

handle

hit

kiss

lick

pat

reach

rub

strike

stroke

tap

abut

adjoin

border

communicate

contact

converge

dab

examine

finger

fondle

frisk

glance

graze

grope

inspect

join

line

manipulate

march

massage

meet

neighbor

osculate

palm

palpate

partake

paw

percuss

pet

probe

push

scrutinize

sip

smooth

suck

sweep

tag

taste

thumb

tickle

tip

toy

verge

be in contact

butt on

come together

feel up

impinge upon

lay a finger on

exhaled

breathe

emit

give off

let out

discharge

eject

emanate

evaporate

expel

issue

respire

steam

vaporize

nodded

acknowledge

bend

bow

greet

respond

salute

acquiesce

agree

approve

assent

passionate

ardent

dramatic

eager

eloquent

emotional

expressive

fervent

fierce

fiery

forceful

heartfelt

heated

impassioned

intense

poignant

spirited

strong

vehement

violent

zealous

affecting

animated

blazing

burning

deep

fervid

flaming

frenzied

glowing

headlong

high-powered

high-pressure

hot

hotblooded

impetuous

impulsive

inspiring

melodramatic

moving

precipitate

quickened

steamed up

stimulated

stirring

thrilling

warm

wild

but

although

however

nevertheless

on the other hand

still

though

yet

gasped

choke

snort

whoop

blow

convulse

gulp

heave

inhale

inspire

pant

puff

respire

sniffle

wheeze

catch one’s breath

fight for breath

frowned

glare

glower

grimace

pout

gloom

lower

sulk

cloud up

do a slow burn

give a dirty look

give the evil eye

knit brows

look black

look daggers

look stern

movement

act

action

change

development

evolution

exercise

flow

migration

move

operation

progress

shift

advance

agitation

alteration

swirled

boil

churn

roil

twirl

whirl

agitate

coil

crimp

crisp

curl

eddy

purl

roll

snake

surge

swoosh

whirlpool

whorl

wriggle

[tenoni-references]

Library books art hack by @danarune on Twitter

[ghostlyapivorous]

:eyes:

[miyuliart]

Gripping a sword overview

[theclonewriter-blog]

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

[onewordtest]

“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement. 

[joehywheelah]

“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”

[tenoko1]

“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”

[cj-amused]

Things I didn’t know

[prismatic-bell]

“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”

[jawnwats-deactivated20160713]

You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.

[notesoftruth]

Okay, but someone please explain question marks when followed by a dialogue tag. How do?

[flootzavut]

“The speech tag is still part of the previous sentence,” she explained, ‘so it isn’t capitalised.“

“What do you mean?” he asked. “But there’s a full stop as part of the question mark!”

She nodded gravely. “I know!” she said. “A lot of people find this confusing. But the speech tag belongs to the line of dialogue, it’s still part of the sentence, so it’s wrong to capitalise it.”

She reblogged the post again, because she had recently read far too many potentially enjoyable stories marred by poor dialogue punctuation.

[dechart]

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots till now..

[eddiestarchild]

NOICE. Can’t wait to use this

[magpiefngrl]

“There are two more ways"—she pointed to the blackboard—“to punctuate interruptions. One is with the em dashes outside the quotations marks to indicate continuous speech. The action occurs at the same time as speech. The other—” she sipped from a glass of water “—is em dashes within the quotation marks to indicate interrupted speech.”

[wildsurvival]

[bear--hearted]

This is a beautiful graphic but it doesn’t explain the pros and cons of each fire type.

The Swedish torch is good for an efficient and contained fire, it’s controlled and good for cooking over and produces less light and heat than other fires. It can be difficult to keep going once you burn through the original log

The teepee is your traditional campfire. Good for heat and light not great for cooking, burns through fuel fairly quickly

The star fire is one of the slowest burning and not well protected but provides an even heat good for slow cooking and is excellent if you have limited fuel and need the protection a fire can provide

The lean to is a compact and efficient fire that evolves into a dense and hot bed of coals. The structure creates a good source of air flow which can help damp wood burn. A slightly better cooking fire that isn’t as bright. It also provides protection from wind on one side

The platform fire is incredibly hot and will create a very thick bed of coals but it doesn’t have a lot of air flow and is a little harder to get started.

The log cabin is big and bright and has lots of air flow which again is good for damp logs. You can also use this structure to start a smaller fire in the middle while drying out bigger logs. This fire will crumble into a messier bed of coals that don’t produce particularly even heat for cooking.

The modified leanto is excellent if you need it to perform multiple functions. The side with more fuel will burn bright and hot and the side with less fuel will burn less hot but more evenly and controlled, this gives you different cooking options.

[silversongdraws]

Meet Jenny!

This is my doll I made up to celebrate Pride Month!

Jenny here is based off the Bi Pride Flag!

I mostly chose this Rochelle Goyle doll because her hair is already pink and blue and I just added the purple streaks and ran her head under hot water until the nylon hair laid down flat.

This was my first time using nylon hair that wasn’t salvaged from another doll. I liked this a lot more than with Khione and the hair was a bit more cooperative here!

I have more nylon hair that I am working with so keep an eye out for my next doll!

I used doll clothes I already had and used watered down paint to make the colors match a little more and added hearts on her skirt.

I pierced her little ear/wing things with an awl and used jump rings as her hoops.

Her shoes originally belonged to the Skelita Calaveras I used to make the Light character for my friend last year, I just painted them to match her outfit.

I love her sweet sweet face, especially how her eyes turned out!

I love how she looks and she came just in time to finish off June!

Happy Pride month and love who makes you happy!