cherry valley forever
titsay
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#extradirty
Today's Document
DEAR READER
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du
JBB: An Artblog!
Game of Thrones Daily
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izzy's playlists!
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
pixel skylines
dirt enthusiast
Three Goblin Art
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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@spiritusrex
Memo to everybody :
Never be afraid to recycle an idea you had for a WIP you abandoned. Sometimes the idea needs a different set of characters or a different setting.
An addition:
Never be afraid to recycle an idea you had for a project you already completed. Sometimes ideas really are just that good and deserve to be used more than once.
Don't be afraid to use the same recipe to make a new cake
I've already said that my number one piece of writing advice is to read.
But my number two piece of advice is this: be deliberate.
Honestly this would fix so many pieces of bad writing advice. Don't forbid people from doing something, tell them to be conscious and deliberate about it. This could help stop people from falling into common mistakes without limiting their creativity. Black and white imperatives may stop a few annoying beginner habits, but ultimately they will restrict artistic expression.
Instead of "don't use epithets": "Know the effect epithets have and be deliberate about using them." Because yes, beginners often misuse them, but they can be useful when a character's name isn't known or when you want to reduce them to a particular trait they have.
Instead of "don't use 'said'" or "just use 'said'": "Be deliberate about your use of dialogue tags." Because sometimes you'll want "said" which fades into the background nicely, but sometimes you will need a more descriptive alternative to convey what a character is doing.
Instead of "don't use passive voice": "Be deliberate about when you use passive voice." Because using it when it's not needed can detract from your writing, but sometimes it can be useful to change the emphasis of a sentence or to portray a particular state of mind.
Instead of blindly following or ignorantly neglecting the rules of writing, familiarize yourself with them and their consequences so you can choose when and if breaking them would serve what you're trying to get across.
Your writing is yours. Take control of it.
It probably sounds like I'm preaching to the choir here because most of my mutuals are already great writers. But I'm hoping this will make it to the right people.
I like this advice. "you can do what you want, just do it with intention" applies to a lot of things.
like what if i go to the kitchen at night to get some water and an underwater cave system is there
Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):
“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.
“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.
“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.
“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”
“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”
“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.
And!
“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”
Reblog to save a writer’s life.
Memo to everybody :
Never be afraid to recycle an idea you had for a WIP you abandoned. Sometimes the idea needs a different set of characters or a different setting.
An addition:
Never be afraid to recycle an idea you had for a project you already completed. Sometimes ideas really are just that good and deserve to be used more than once.
Don't be afraid to use the same recipe to make a new cake
obsessed with stories where you can never go home
you can never go home because you fell asleep for a thousand years and when you woke up and returned there, your society had changed, your house had fallen and all of your friends were dead. you can never go home because you made a choice and were shattered into pieces and your home was destroyed in your wake. you can never go home because someone took you and changed you against your will and although your home is the same, the person who belonged there is dead. you can never go home because you committed a crime and your family expelled you and even as they extend a hand of reconciliation, you will never forgive them. you can never go home because your home was a person and someone murdered her and now you drift and grieve to the point of insanity. you can never go home because you never knew your sister but she gave you every opportunity you have and now she's dead and your parents see nothing but her in your eyes.
I don't think Tolkien is a good fantasy writer because he scored the highest at some objective Best Fantasy Book Test that every fantasy writer has to take, I think he's a good fantasy writer because he created a world based on things that he was interested in. I feel like a lot of fantasy writers think that they need to create a whole language for their world because Tolkien did and obviously his books are the best so they have to emulate him, but Tolkien did that because he was a linguistics nerd. I think the lesson to be learned from him is not that you have to include elves and deep history and new languages, but that you have to write endlessly about the things you are a huge nerd about and use those things to create your fantasy world
“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”
— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference (via mothersofmyheart)
Marie Howe:
I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.
Ms. Tippett:
Really?
Ms. Howe:
They really find it hard.
Ms. Tippett:
What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?
Ms. Howe:
Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.
Ms. Tippett:
It does.
Ms. Howe:
It hurts us.
Ms. Tippett:
You naming something.
Ms. Howe:
We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.
Ms. Howe:
It’s the this, right?
Ms. Howe:
Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.
Ms. Tippett:
In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.
Ms. Howe:
Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.
So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.
The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.
has a bad writing day: my creativity has deserted me forever. I will never create again.
has a good writing day: this is amazing, I am a literary giant and I will never die.
has a bad writing day: my creativity has deserted me forever. I will never create again.
has a good writing day: this is amazing -
concept to the room. two public youtubers/content creator-types who are frequent collaborators. like, they have hours upon hours of videos together, much of it public. so so much their relationship is recorded. and at some point, months or years into this arrangement, person A realizes "oh, fuck, I having feelings for person B." Person A also realizes "Oh, fuck, this sensation isn't new, how long have I had feelings for person B?"
Person A proceeds to obsessively rewatch/comb through their hours of public video footage attempting to find the exact moment they fell in love caught on tape and unknowingly posted publicly for the world to see. Is this anything. imagine your otp.
(they do, in fact, find the moment. naturally)
"theyll hate you for this" "but theyll be alive" is THE juiciest thing to me
i will ensure you stay alive above all else. even if what i do to make it happen is horrendous. even if it violates all your wishes or moral principles. even if you can never look at me the same way again, even if you hate me for it. because at least if you hate me it means youre alive
Okay, we got a new one, boys.
Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.
Prev you can’t bury this in your own tags
I also like the idea of showing something as a problem before it’s shown as a strength. Almost every character trait has two sides, and by showing the “bad” side first, it sets things up to not only make sense, but to also be very satisfying.
FACIAL MICRO EXPRESSIONS FOR WRITERS <3
I think a lot of writers might benefit from giving themselves permission to get weird with format.
Use second person, drop classic rising action and climax format, write backwards, just sit in a moment, tell all you want and refuse to show, make an entire book that’s just one run on sentence, reject tropes, use all tropes, cliche yourself to death, produce something that’s completely gibberish. Break all the rules of marketability. Become ungovernable.
Write a story that just takes place inside one pathetic little person’s head. Do it. It’s enrichment in your enclosure.
Do the writer’s equivalent of playing with finger paints. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it
It’s the middle of the night and I should be sleeping but listen. Listen. Just get weird with it. Open your soul up a little bit. Like actually don’t worry about it being palatable. I’m serious. Get weirder. Get weirder right now. I’m demanding that you get weirder right now. It’s not your responsibility to make your reader feel good. It’s your job to make art, goddamnit. Make art. Make weird art. Open up your third eye and eat an entire cheesecake.
The best piece of writing advice I can give is that you should strive to be sincere rather than original.
You can't force originality. Originality will arise as a natural consequence of sincerity. Make the story completely and apologetically yours, and originality will come by virtue of it being your story.
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Based on some rumblings I heard, I ended up quickly throwing together a fun little WIP bingo sheet! I'll admit I largely wrote the prompts for writing, but I think a good number of them should also apply to art!
Ultimately, the goal is to have fun, and finish whatever WIPs you can (without burning yourself out or having a bad time). If you needed a sign to pick up that project you've been putting off, the time is now!
