#ask lew

[asexualzoro]

Hi! Never watched one piece but I'm tempted to start! How many episodes does it take to "get good"?

chapter one

read the manga

[driflew]

Hiiii! I'm currently hyper fixated on the Yellow rose Au and was wondering if you plan to write a fic on the 'final' fight? (I imagine there would be something along that lines between Thorn and Frostburn) or if your planning to take a different route with the future of the AU? I imagine any route would be awesome :D

so uh. the final fight is actually sort of written already? the fight itself isn't but the whole finale is. actually a LOT of yellow rose au is written already, cherri and i wrote basically the entire latter half of it already like a year ago for fun lmfao. but bc we wrote just latter half scenes and no early scenes it's not publishable

whether that gets posted will kinda depend on how much editing it needs and whether or not the public stuff ever gets that far, but i would like it to get there!

i do like that you asked about different routes just bc fun fact, yellow rose au probs has the most alternate branches / aus of the au outta like, any of out aus. lots of alternate paths. classic hero villain is what i would eventually maybe post, but there's,,, how many alternates. true villain, swap, and double villain are some of the major ones i can think of off the top of my head but there's a lot

the sum total word count of all our various yellow rose au docs was over 100k when i last updated the folder w all the stuff we'd written in discord over a year ago, i dunno what it is now but i would imagine 200k+ tbh

[everyluffy]

Good luck with your finals!

thank you!! 

[asexualzoro]

have you ever written a fight scene? do you have any tips?

i've written a few, but i don't do it often. honestly, i usually try and write around them when i can, so im probs not the best person to ask. still, i can give you the little bits of advice i know

here's the big idea you want to keep in mind: your word choice, sentence structure, and punctuation control the breath of your reader. the way your sentences are built can, if only subconsciously, leave your reader breathless, even if they're reading in their head.

i can show you what i mean real quick with a short paragraph from tma:

Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!

reading a long chanting sentence without any punctuation in it like that makes you feel a little breathless, right? especially compared to the same paragraph again except i replace all the ands with commas

Bring all that is fear, all that is terror, all that is the awful dread that crawls, chokes, blinds, falls, twists, leaves, hides, weaves, burns, hunts, rips, bleeds, and dies!

you can definitely feel a difference in tempo from one to the other, right? when you're careful with your sentences, you can even control the beating of your reader's heart! with fight scenes, you want to keep your sentences feeling quick to keep their heart racing. leave your reader gasping for breath

for a fight scene—or, really, any action scene at all—your writing should be fast and direct (most of the time). you want short paragraphs, short sentences, and even short words when you can swing it. keeping things shorter makes them feel quicker and punchier, which helps keep the flow of a fight.

you also want to vary your sentence length and structure for this reason, because if your sentences feel monotonous, your fight will, too. use strong, direct words and especially verbs, ones with powerful or gritty or harsh connotations—slammed instead of hit, for example. things with oomph that'll make each word hit harder. you want your verbs especially to hit as hard as possible

paying close attention to your words and sentences is most of the advice i've heard and tried to follow with fight scenes. i still struggle a lot with them, esp choreography of them, but this is how i try and think of crafting rhem

this is far more niche advice but... fight scenes became significantly easier to write for me after i started fencing because it helped me understand the motions of a fight better. if you have the ability to try a combat sport, i'd recommend it, even if it's just a lesson or two—feeling the movements and motions of a fight with your own body really helps with understanding choreography. failing that, i would genuinely recommend reading up on the irl basics of a combat sport or watching videos of drills or fights, bc understanding the basic movements of a fight will help you know what actions you have to work with

i don't know how helpful any of this advice will be to you, but i hope it gives you something to think over!

if anyone else reading this has advice for writing fight scenes, please share. for more resources, i also have a blog for collecting writing references, @writefrence which has fighting references on there (tho you'll have to search bc the tag system is not even remotely up to date). you can also check @/howtofightwrite which is a blog entirely focused on advice for writing fight scenes!

good luck w your fight!

[asexualzoro]

hi it's me eclim i don't remember your discord and i think it's funnier to break into your tumblr inbox i'm here to lament about how you did evil cackles at cj too often over one piece and now she's gonna take it out on me. help me i'm not prepared they have so much love in their hearts and there's such a big world out there to explore and i haven't even gotten to any of the insanely tragic parts yet i'm literally two arcs in but FUCK i think i have forgotten the meaning of sanity and normality. i can't believe i'm messaging tumblr user asexualzoro about one piece this is going to end in you pointing and laughing isn't it (as you should) (i am walking up to a clown and crying over the circus) (at least it's not a literal clown. unlike cj) (you were right in diagnosing her with buggy)

hi eclim. this place is not a place of honor. no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. nothing valued is here. this message is a warning about danger.

get worse

[asexualzoro]

Who is on your Mount Rushmore of silly little guys?

probably Luffy+Zoro+Brook and whoever is my blorbo du jour. rotating Fourth Guy, which is maybe not ideal for a statue actually

[asexualzoro]

happy birthday!! FIVE MILLION BEAM ATTACK 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

thank y— AUGH!!!

[driflew]

Why do you write in present tense as opposed to past? /gen

honestly? i just like present tense more

most of the fanfic i write is from third person limited perspective (tho i also write first person sometimes in original works), and i feel like when youre reading about suspenseful/life-threatening/dangerous scenes in the past tense in 1st or 3rd-limited perspective, there's a little subtle implied assurance of like.... this event is dangerous, but it's already over, and the pot had to have survived it long enough to "tell" it to you.

like... i used to read percy jackson as a kid, and that was first person and past tense, and explicitly framed as if percy was telling it after it all happened. so i was never really worried percy would die, because he had to have survived to "tell me" the book

meanwhile in present tense, there is no promise your narrator has already escaped the danger, and they might not make it

...obviously this isn't how things actually work, and narrators die plenty in past tense stories and present tense doesnt mean you cant kill your narrator, but that subtle vibe thing did make me pick up present tense, leading me to find i just generally prefer writing in present tense anyway.

(also, present feels better in rp to me, which i write a lot of)