Writing Stuff @stuffaboutwriting - Tumblr Blog

writeblr intro: stuffaboutwriting

about me

Hi! I’m Kelsey (she/her), and I’m 23 and live in the U.S. I’ve been part of writeblr for the past few years but my participation kind of faded over the last year, so I’m trying to get involved in the community again. I recently graduated from university and have a full time job, so I write when I can. One day I’d like to get my work published but for now I’m just writing for fun.

about the blog

This blog is mostly a writing resource for myself and my followers now. It includes writing-related humor, advice, sources on practical information like injuries and weapons as well as character related information such as writing characters with disabilities, etc.

Back when I was really active I first posted about my mmeib series (see below) and then the fanfic I’ve been writing, but I got overwhelmed with posting my writing, etc, hence why I’ve been a little quiet over the past year. At this point I’d just like to get involved in the community again, so aside from tag games I don’t know how much of my own writing I’ll post.

Mostly I’m looking to reblog cool writing resources, learn about other writeblr’s wips, and interact with writeblr in general again (related tags: writing stuff | not my writing | writeblr intro | useful info for writing).

Feel free to tag me in tag games (I can be slow to respond but I’ll do my best to answer) or reach out in general. I’d love to chat about other people’s wips! (Also this a side blog, so I follow from my main blog sleepyoceaneyes)

about my writing

#kelsey talks #about me #writeblr intro

luna-azzurra

Writers cannot watch a movie normally. we are sitting there going "oh that's the inciting incident" and "they introduced that object too early it's obviously coming back" and "this dialogue is doing three things at once good for them" while everyone else is just. watching the movie. having a normal experience. feeling feelings without labelling them. i envy that so much and i would never give it up.

#as soon as I think I would've done x it's over #writing life

electroniccollectiondonut

The question isn't "would this character ever admit to needing help or are they determined to be a totally stoic wall?" it's "what would it take to make this character who's determined to be a totally stoic wall desperate enough to ask for help?"

Scare them so bad they decide it's worth breaking their own internal guiding doctrine and facing the mortification of admitting to their friends that they're fallible.

#exactly exactly #writing tips #character stuff #writing stuff

rainintheevening

Okay, we got a new one, boys.

stud-yawgmoth

My analysis of "Asimov's Tail:"

It's the inverse of Chekov's Gun ("If there's a gun on the table in act 1, it should go off in act 3" or someone like that). Asimov's Tail is like saying "If a gun goes off in act 3, it should be on the table in act 1."

You don't need that for guns because we all know what guns are. A character in a modern setting pulling out a gun to win a fight on page 120 isn't going to bother the reader. But a tail is unexpected: You need the reader to buy in to and expect the tail before it becomes plot-relevant, or it'll read like a deus ex machina.

(Another comparison is Chekov was talking about the stage, and Asimov is talking about books. Asimov's Tail may not be as applicable to the stage, where the audience can all clearly see the character's tail in his costume.)

Separately, Asimov doesn't just say "You have to describe the tail," but "Someone has to step on the tail." Your character's trait or ability that will help them in a critical moment later in the plot must also have downsides. This will make the character feel more real, even if they're fantastical and alien.

curlicuecal

tbh, i think "it must have downsides to make the character feel more real" really undersells what this accomplishes.

You set up the tool of their victory as a personal *challenge* they must overcome. This makes the victory more surprising, character-building, and satisfying. The very trait, tool, or skill that was presented as a weakness becomes a strength.

#writing advice #chekov's gun #asimov's tail #writing stuff

avrablake

Attention Authors!!!

If you haven’t heard yet, Draft2Digital has made the decision to suck.

Beginning May 14,2026 new accounts will be charged a $20 activation fee. Going forward any account that makes less than $100 a year will be charged an annual maintenance fee of $12.

You can check your account status to find out when you are set to be charged. No one should be charged before May 14, but some authors have reported already being charged.

Check your account!

You can contact support here. Let them know you are not happy with this decision.

FYI you will be charged even if you have no books listed. You will be charged even if you delist your current books.

caranox

Gee, I wonder why D2D is experiencing a high volume of inquiries... 🤔

author-a-holmes

This is a Still Developing Situation

Most recently, the Admin for 20bookto50k on Facebook scored a Zoom Call with someone from D2D who has stated that as long as books are not being distributed, you won't be on the hook for the $12, HOWEVER accounts are still giving a date for the $12 will be billed, even on accounts not distributing books.

And NO PUBLIC statement has been made by Draft2Digital at this time.

My billing date isn't until August, so I have a bit of time to see what they do and if they make the smart decision to reverse this action, but whatever happens I will NOT be publishing Darkling via Draft2Digital and risking them taking that $12 straight out of my royalties.

I will still be publishing wide, but I will be uploading my files individually to each store front.

author-a-holmes

Brief, sort of, update - Still no "official" statement or update from D2D, however the Account Status page has had an update 🙄 I still think they're scrambling behind the scenes to try and make this "palateable".

It READS as though, WHEN you upload a book, you're charged the first $12 fee immediately, and your yearly payment date will be set to THAT date, every year, moving forward.

This is good news for people who have accounts only for royalty share payments, but still doesn't address the issue of targeting the smallest, newest, or most vulnerable authors in the community, imo.

#draft 2 digital #writing life

mcsiggy

genuinely, chatgpt could NEVER recreate the euphoria of FINALLY figuring out a middle section to connect major points in your story.

#anti ai #writing life

fuckyeahfightlock

I feel like I'm the last person alive writing in Word, but wanted to share this because it might save someone some heartache.

I am used to Word autosaving relentlessly; for the last few years it didn't really even have a "File>Save" command that I could see--it just autosaved like every five seconds or something. It took me a long time to get used not clicking File>Save at the end of every writing session, and I never really trusted it--with good reason, it turns out.

Apparently, when you turn off Word's new ai features, AutoSave is disabled and cannot be turned back on. There is toggle button in the upper left for it, but when I try to toggle it on, it says "Autosave is not available because of your privacy settings." I worked in my document yesterday, put my computer to sleep with the doc still open on the taskbar (my usual habit), and when I opened it today, the new work I did yesterday was gone.

This time I only lost about 300 words, which I had typed into my document from my longhand-writing in a notebook (so I guess I kind of autosaved them that way!), but if I'd really been on a roll, this could have been a disaster.

Be careful out there. Everything is terrible!

helloliriels

Yeah, they're baking it into essential compontents now so we'll stop turning it off. Noticed that in several programs. FFS I hate all of these tech bros.

#microsoft word #anti ai

homunculus-argument

in Finland, it is illegal to kill a bear when it’s hibernating. If you ask a hunter why that is, a number of them will tell you it’s wrong simply because it is the law, and they don’t make a distinction between what is right, and what is legal. Most people like that are perfectly normal, decent and respectable people, just like the rest of us.

But if you ask people who think about things, the answer is vague. Killing a hibernating bear would just feel… impolite? You can’t fucking shoot a man when he’s sleeping, that’s just fucking rude. It’s just not the right thing to do.

Long before hunting laws were established in Finland, you couldn’t kill a sleeping bear, and what commands you is something older than law: tradition. Even at a time when hunting was a matter of life and death, and a bear fighting for its life is mainly a matter of death, you just didn’t kill a hibernating bear, you have to wake it up first. Hunters risked their lives, the lives of their brothers and everyone in the hunting party, who were friends, family and men that they loved, to give the bear a fighting chance.

In the modern time, the hunting season of bears is in the summer, for the warmest summer months. There are many reasons for why they are allowed to tread safely in autumn and to sleep in peace through the cold months, almost all of which are rational and scientific, and do not touch the old traditions.

Old faith says a living thing has many souls - henki, luonto, itse. Plants only have one - the one that wills them to grow. Animals have two, both the spark of life and nature that enables them to act. A human being also has the third, one that makes them a person, personality, itse, literally “self”. But the soul that travels in your dreams is not the soul that defines a human - animals have that one as well. When your dog runs in her sleep, her soul is elsewhere, where a dog is needed.

One’s waking soul is elsewhere when they sleep and dream. A bear’s soul is somewhere else when they are hibernating - there are two words for “hibernation” in finnish, one of which is talviuni, “winter sleep”, and that is the one that bears have - and if you kill a sleeping bear, their soul is not in the body, it is still out there, and it can find you, and as a revenge for killing its body, Ghost Bear will kill your entire fucking family.

#traditions #hunting #world building #writing inspiration #writing stuff

aphractal2

horn ideas

free to use and open for more suggestions ^^

jawbone idea credit: apocryphoxx on insta

#dragons #art #writing inspiration #writing stuff

ivyblossom

casey-jane-lewis

Fanfic authors: READ THE WHOLE FUCKING PAGE

#writing advice #writing stuff #pacing

atsu-kinnie

Doomed siblings have me on a chokehold in a way no trope can ever achieve. Something so gut wrenchingly beautiful about two kids going through unimaginable trauma and coming out damaged forever. I always eat it up. Maybe they stay together and find solace only in each other, used and kicked out by society! Maybe they end up on opposite sides of the war! Maybe they end up betraying one another! Maybe one of them dies haunting the narrative forever! Maybe one of them destroys the world for the other! So many endless tragic possibilities!

#siblings #writing inspiration #character stuff #writing stuff

kjscottwrites

[X] <- psst click this

#writing life #funny

english-history-trip

Some five thousand years ago, a 27-foot high granite standing stone was erected by the Neolithic people of future Dartmoor. In the 12th century, a monastery was built on the spot, incorporating the stone into its foundations. The monastery became a manor house in the 14th century, then an inn in the 15th, which it remains to this day as The Oxenham Arms.

The standing stone remains in its place, unceremoniously part of the sitting room wall next to the radiator.

abluecoat

Saw your tags, prev;

And there is a word for it! It's called a palimpsest!

Originally it means a very old manuscript that has been written on and then scraped clean and written on again, but its also a theory used to describe the way an object can have multiple meanings and contexts from different times written on top of one another, like the layers of an onion. Its one of my favourite cultural history words!

#world building #writing stuff #bc insp

cee-grice

Beta readers wanted ‼️

I've been away for a while because of Life and Stuff, BUT!!! I finally have a version of A Case Study on Immolation I'm happy with enough to share with beta readers!!

now, what is it about? you can find the intro post here, but in short, it's a fantasy dark academia which has none of the regular cornerstones of dark academia LOL. we won't be solving mysteries, uncovering conspiracies, or joining secret societies, so I don't want you to expect any of that haha. instead, I offer you a heavily character-focused story told in a case-study-like narration about an academic prodigy's rise and fall, and so, so much intrapersonal and interpersonal drama. that's what the plot is, I fear. you can expect to find:

✨️ science-based magic (mostly biology and chemistry)

✨️ detrimental obsession with academic success

✨️ emphasis on the psychological toll of suffering from a life-limiting illness

✨️ negative character arcs

✨️ unhealthy relationship dynamics

✨️ questionable medical practices

and, I must emphasize, a bad ending. this I make very clear from the first page. the MC won't die, if that's a deal-breaker for you, but it will not end well for him regardless. that's the whole point of the story. it's not all doom and gloom throughout, of course, but I'm personally very picky with tragedies, so I wanted to warn people about that lol

trigger warnings include: life-limiting illness, extensive discussions about death, self-harm (one scene), medical procedures (including on-screen surgery), dissociation

some more technical details: the manuscript is 116k words long, and I would love to get feedback by the 17th of May (so, two months from now). in exchange, I'd be more than happy to look over whatever you might want :))

so, if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, shoot me a DM ❤️

#beta reader #writeblr

whenimgod

the god of death should really be depicted as fungal more often I mean come on they're life's principal decomposers they form symbiotic relationships with so many other organisms they adapt to whatever the planet throws at them to turn into food including recently plastic and more originally fucking trees keeping ecological balance like the goddamn avatar why isn't the god of death a fungus what are we doing here

#bc insp #gods #death #writing inspiration #writing stuff

xanaxfarts

Arches National Park, Utah photo: Elliot McGucken

#bc insp #writing stuff #nature #writing inspiration

luna-azzurra

Tips for Writing Poverty without being Insulting

✧ Being poor is expensive. You can't buy in bulk to save money. You pay fees for not having enough in your account. You buy cheap shoes that wear out fast instead of good ones that last.

✧ The math is constant. Every purchase is a calculation. Can I afford this? What can I skip? Is this worth it? Your character's always doing mental accounting.

✧ You get creative. Meals from whatever's left in the pantry. Fixing things with duct tape and hope. Making do because you have to.

✧ Shame is real. Your character might lie about why they can't go out. Make excuses. Hide their situation because poverty is treated like a moral failure.

✧ Small luxuries feel huge. A coffee from an actual coffee shop instead of gas station. Buying name-brand something. These aren't nothing, they're big deals.

✧ You're always tired. Working multiple jobs, irregular hours, the stress of never having enough, it's exhausting. Your character's running on empty.

✧ Future planning is hard. When you're worried about making rent, thinking about retirement or savings feels impossible. You're in survival mode.

✧ Other people don't get it. Friends who casually suggest expensive activities. People who think you're bad with money when really there's just not enough of it.

✧ The system works against you. Need an ID to get a job but need money to get an ID. Need an address to get assistance but you're homeless. Catch-22s everywhere.

✧ IT'S NOT A CHARACTER FLAW. Your character isn't poor because they're lazy or stupid. Circumstances, bad luck, systemic issues, poverty is complex and it's not about moral worth.

#character stuff #useful info for writing #writing stuff

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