#berryserene

[feet4thought]

Love a foot scrunch that turns pink soles, white 🩷🤍👣

Credit/source: BerrySerene

[witterprompts]

Hey Witter! Love your blog! I was just wondering if you have some tips on coming up with prompts. You're one of the most prolific prompt writers I follow, so maybe you could give some advice?

//Heyo! Thank you!

Some general tips:

Don’t be afraid to look for inspiration. Our worlds are shaped by things we hear and see. 

Some of the prompts I post are from conversations I’ve had. They also come from conversations I’d sometimes think about my characters having or thoughts they might have had.

Test yourself one what you think when you see specific words. I started this blog by having people send me in single words and I’d fill them out that way- admittedly, they were very rusty at the time, but I like to think I’ve improved since then.

Don’t stop those fingers. If you’re typing, let them go! You might not like a prompt you’ve made, but it’s not because of the content it holds, then post it. Being insecure is a common experience, but it won’t get better if you don’t put it out there.

You can’t always wait for motivation, so get to work. I have a problem where I don’t like working and my best prompts usually come from my motivated moods, but I can’t always sit around for them, since they’re so few.

Read poetry and song lyrics or quotes. Sometimes sparks of inspiration branch from there.

Even if it’s basic, it’s something. “Hey, what are you doing?” is a very common question in most conversations, but you can spice it up. “Hey, what are you doing? That goes over there.” or even “Hey, what are you doing? Where’d my door go?” Just add on!

I hope this helps!

[witterprompts]

I definitely believe you should delete asks that violate your rules, especially #7. It's absolutely rude to you and your amazing blog. Non-gendered prompts allow everyone to use the prompt no matter who their characters are, and you providing them is excellent!

//Thank you for the support! I’ve been absolutely stressed about them and the backlash I might receive for deleting the requests, but it’s not like I said they couldn’t send their requests back in (fixed). It feels like a large weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. That’s why this blog has been set in a neutral tone from the beginning. If people absolutely need gendered prompts, they can swap the they/them in their works!

[yabbyabb]

berryserene

replied to your photo“I approve the new snap filter!!! 👍🏻👌🏼”

YOU ARE SO CUTE OMG

thank you, youre so sweet !!!!! ( ˊᵕˋ )♡.°

[powderwell]

blue, teal, purple, cinnamon, tangerine -- you're going to think I'm an idiot but I'm pretty sure I sent you the one for Meep first. *sigh* Fumbling over everything.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ omg sweetheart, you’re alright <3 I screw up all the time, trust me it’s allowed you lil cutie pie~ *Squishes ur lil face* I’mma have to adopt u now, sorry cutie I don’t make the rules

[yabbyabb]

@doemaarwiebele @abominus @berryserene these were popular questions!!! really good questions tho! ovo 

7. What is the biggest mistake they’ve ever made? For Dixie, her biggest mistake that has haunted her for so long was desperately trying to barter with a caravan worker to help her escape Brooke and Moose when she was still human. She was naive and thought they would take pity on her, and the small amount of ammo she smuggled from her abusive “parents” would be enough- but instead they laughed in her face and returned her to Brooke and Moose, joking with them how stupid kids can be. This resulted in the worst whipping she had ever gotten- and she had many, in the past. The result was her back covered in deep, swollen scars that remind her how cruel people can be, and to not blindly trust anyone.  As for Hatch, he feels his biggest mistake was not doing more to help his broken brother after their mother died. He knew Donald was having a tough time with the loss, and that it hit him very hard- they both were very close to their mother, and had become more and more distant from her after becoming more well known and popular with the settlements and towns around their home. They were away performing together most of the time, leaving their mother with the hired hands to help her with the farm, only coming back home every once in a while. Donald heavily blamed himself and Hatch for not being there sooner when she first became ill, thinking there might have been a way to reverse it or get help- he drowned his guilt with drugs and alcohol, trying not so subtly to hide it from Hatch. Hatch turned a blind eye, which he very deeply regrets now, since that caused his brother to sell them both to the raider group where they both had to endure years of torture and abuse.  15. How might they be ignorant or prejudiced? Dixie has a harder time trusting/getting closer to humans after turning into a ghoul. She is more wary and has her guard up around them more so than fellow ghouls/synths, not only because of the prejudice surrounding ghouls, but also struggling to outright trust them in fear of being hurt again. Depending on the human, Dixie comes off as cold/wary/distant when she first meets them, and is often suspicious as to their true intentions.  Hatch on the other hand....he is a very loving, empathetic, accepts-you-as-you-are kinda guy. But if he ever runs into raiders, or thugs/violent groups, his kindness is often short lived. Its more of a survival tactic, because trying to talk civilly to those people is a waste and he knows this- but his over abundant patience and acceptance goes out the window when he runs into them. He will try to avoid them at all costs, but wont hesitate to defend himself or his loved ones- especially when someone’s livelihood is on the line. 

[ghoulhugs]

Hey! How would I go about submitting a ghoul OC to you guys? (I love all your Abby and Neal stuff, btw).

Hey!

Totally go to @bestghoulfriends and there should be a ‘submission’ button! :D Submit through there and they’ll get posted up! ^^   You can also submit your character to the BestGhoulFriends wiki - http://bestghoulfriends.wikia.com/wiki/BestGhoulFriends_Wikia

Hope this helps! <3

[theticklishpear]

Hey Pear! I'm having a rough time finding motivation, so could you talk about your writing process? :3

Hoping my process will get you motivated? I hope I can help, but I’ll tell you straight off one thing that you already know: Writing is very individual and my process will not be your process, and my process may not help you at all. That out of the way, thanks for a question that lets me ramble a bit!

My process most often starts with a line or a scenario. It’s a character saying something or an image in my head of something. “Why do you look like you stuck your face in a chicken coop?” An image of a grubby Victorian-era newspaper boy watching a city’s docking clamps release and the city lifting off into the sky and the boy watching all the reactions of people who missed their one big chance to get into the city. “You’re not going anywhere with 1,800 ducks.” An image of a girl sitting in a garden with the shards of a crystal the same color as a lake at dusk falling apart in her hands. “Why did you think jumping those tracks would be a good idea?” An image of a ship caught in the midst of a storm with a huge tentacle clutched around its mast. It could be anything, but 9 times out of 10, I start with something I don’t understand.

Next step for me is asking questions. Why did they stick their face in a chicken coop? Why was there a chicken coop in the first place? What’s so special about this chicken coop that they would stick their face in it? What can I do with a coop full of chickens? Where’s the story? Who are these people? Why 1,800 ducks? Who the heck walks around with 1,800 ducks? Where would they be going with 1,800 ducks? What kind of tracks were they? What’s the story with the tracks? Where do the tracks go? Is that even the relevant part about them? Why’s it matter that they jumped them? Was it the act of jumping that was the key to why it’s significant? What if they’d walked over them? Or ridden? Would that have changed anything? What’s on each side of the tracks?

That’s what I explore. I guess before all of that, I decide if I’m writing for fun, for a contest, for a series, and whether or not I’m writing with any kind of length in mind. The point of the story–the message–isn’t something I think about until about halfway through the story, when I start thinking about where I’m trying to go. I sit away from my technology, clipboard and loose-leaf paper and marker-pen in hand, or I lay on the floor with my cat staring me in the face, and I look at that page, and I recall that image or that line plus all the questions. Sometimes, if the line is right, I’ll start just by writing down that line. If it’s an image, I try to describe some intimate, small detail about it before growing out. I start throwing words at the page, most times without any kind of regard to whether they are logical within our own world. It’s not my world–this world, where I live right now–that I need to be concerned about. It’s the world of the story–that world, where these characters I’ve just listened-in on live–that I need to make sure has some kind of logic to it. Maybe it’s not normal in our world for someone to meander down the street with 1,800 ducks, but it’s clearly possible in that world, so why? The answers to all of those questions come out as I’m throwing things at the page.

Writing is experimentation. Maybe what I throw out first as explanation to one question doesn’t work later, as I’m continuing to go through and create this scenario. That’s okay. I’ll maneuver that piece into a more logical space for the world once I actually know more about that world. I’m experimenting with what I put down, manipulating the world until I’m curious about what’s out there. I care very little about coming up with a book of world facts to make sure I keep continuity throughout or doing any kind of world-building until I actually have an inkling of the world and an idea of whether I care about it or not.

Writing is planning. Once I’ve decided, “Yes. Good. I like this place. Let’s see what else is out there,” I take stock of what I’ve got. I reread what I’ve written (usually at the end of a first experimental short story) and I rework what didn’t go well, until I’ve got that first glimpse into that world and those characters to a place where I would be comfortable sharing it with others. From there, I decide, “Okay, is this right for a collection of independent stories, or is this part of a larger series-type work?” And if I’m committed to the world enough, I’ll sit my butt down and think about what I’ve written and start asking questions again. How does [Character A] get to this point? Is there anything that happened before this that should be told? Where does this go beyond this? Is this story really just the climax of some larger conflict that I need to go back and fill in? Where is [Character B] from, anyway? How does [Character A]’s people deal with ships? [Character A] doesn’t seem to do well, but is that a cultural universal or a character quirk? And it goes like that for a long time while I piece together this world and the cultures that populate it more in-depth than that first piece needed. From there, it’s a process of building the outline for a novel or series, or jumping into the next piece, whether that’s in the same world or a brand new place.

“You’ve got to go South to the port-havens, lest you lose your chance.” An image of a slender woman in priest’s robes leading a boy through the dark sanctuary, feeling all the urgency of an imminent explosion. “I got snot all over your dress.” An image of an old house on a hill, leaning, its windows and posts covered in cobwebs and a mermaid still visible in the fading scallop-edged roof tiles. “I don’t think you’ve thought this whole left-at-the-crossroads-then-just-jump-the-fence thing through all the way.” An image of a man facing a tower that grows from the rocks of an island far enough away that the land doesn’t even cast a shadow on the horizon when the lightning flashes down.And I start asking questions all over again.