#heliojip

[friendcrumbs]

for writer ask game, 5, 11, 19, and 23?

5. what’s something you learned while researching a fic? sepsis treatment and the different kinds of surgical sutures! probably some more medical stuff, too, but it's already gone from my brain

11. what makes a fic 'successful' in your opinion? if i want to reread what i've written xd and having finished it in the first place, actually, since i used to have a terrible habit of never finishing anything and just letting fics rot on my google drive

19. how do you get over writer's block? i have a tragic answer to this: i don't really get writer's block. i can get sick of writing a particular story/tone/genre but not of writing itself. when i'm blocked on a particular WIP, i either switch to a very different one or do another part of the process (outlining, editing, beta reading for someone). if it still isn't working after a couple weeks, i either rewrite the outline completely and start from scratch, or put the WIP into my scrap folder to maybe recycle descriptions/ideas from. writing is the single hobby i've kept consistently since i was a kid, other than art, and it's a part of my daily/weekly routine at this point. keeping up with the habit is soothing, even if i don't like the final product in the end.

23. what’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet? i've had a timeloop idea knocking around my brain bc i love timeloops where dan gets a chance to re-do the runtime of the first movie until he gets it "right" (or so he thinks) but he fails every time. with each progressing loop, he stoops lower and lower to justify saving meg (including murdering herbert, hill, and halsey himself; using the 'doomed' loops to develop and 'fix' the reagent; generally becoming more and more ruthless and herbert-like) that ends with him saving meg but her becoming so terrified of him and repulsed by him that she kills him, assuming he went violent and crazy, possibly under hill's influence. and then he wakes up, back to putting the 'roommate wanted' ad up on the board :-) but it seems far too complicated to pull off for now also the hornycurse rabies fic but it has a paragraph or two written

thanks so much for sending these!!!

[heliopeia]

does it infuriate anyone else when u see good art in the banner of a favorited tag on here and then u try to find the art u saw and can't find it. like hello i would like to see the art that u advertised to me???

[waylaed]

i drew a scene from your danbert fic! its not very good bc i cant draw today, but i wanted to show u that im always thinking about that fic so, im rereading it! :-D

Oh wow, this is amazing, I love it!! Thank you for sharing it with me (and re-reading)!

[peitalo]

hey girl i have no electricity does kickflip♥️

so sad how do these type of things even happen. (kicks piles of chewed through electrical wires under the desk in front of me)

[heliopeiart]

stuff from my sketchbook!!!!! :-]🛻🛻🛻

[friendcrumbs]

oughhhh ur writing is so good!! and ur art!!! do u have any tips on how to improve writings? i feel like my fics ive written are very bland...if u have a process im very curious to hear what it is too!

thank you so much!! ;w; first of all, your fics probably seem bland to you because you were the one who wrote them -- you got used to the plot and prose, and maybe get caught up in the technical aspects of what to tweak/improve, so much so that the 'magic' of reading becomes lost. have a little faith in yoruself! when it comes to general writing advice, it will probably be super unhelpful and something you've heard before but: writing a lot helps. it doesn't have to be good/finished/"publishable," it's about getting words down on a page. i write between 100k and 300k words a year. most of them are utter garbage or ideas that don't go anywhere, but that's kind of the point, to get into the habit of not agonizing over it. the other unhelpful and generic piece of advice i have is to read/watch media criticism -- i know it won't work for everybody, but for me, seeing why something works or doesn't work in a piece of media helps with knowing how to "steal it" and include it in my own writing. if i may be pretentious about my own writing, cicadas leans heavily on everything i had to read on horror/the gothic and weird fiction as a genre -- seeing the elements of why these genres are successful in evoking discomfort/fear and what techinques they use in plain language makes it easier to put in plot points/descriptions that mimic it (for example, disrupted/stretchy/unverifiable time to get a confused, fever-dream atmosphere).

when it comes to the process itself, i highly recommend a beta reader/friend to bounce ideas off of. they don't have to be super familiar with the original media (hi @nullians who bravely soldiered on despite not liking these guys, i owe you my life) -- it's about whether the ideas you have translate onto the page. i would usually ask for a creepiness rating on a scale of 1-10 and whether certain parts were too short/dragged on too long and then adjusted accordingly. the other thing is an outline. my outlines are notoriously shitty, no matter if it's fanfic/ original fiction/non-fiction, so i'm perhaps not to be the best person to be getting advice from on the technical aspects. but to me, it's helpful to have both the crucial plot points and the "mood" i want in a given segment/chapter. it's so i don't forget where i was going with it after a few weeks, so i can see if the bare bones of the story work without being 'pretty', and lastly, to see if the pacing works. it helps to have an 'objective' to hit within a given segment so i don't get off track and spiral into talking about something that's only tangentially related but really, doesn't contribute much to the 'goal' (if you end up with these bits, save them! i have a dumping grounds document where all the rejects go to save me when i'm stuck)

anyways, this got VERY long, but i hope it's at least somewhat helpful!! and again, thank you so much, it's so nice to hear ;w;

[waylaed]

hi so i left a comment already on ur fic what youve tamed but i wanted to say here that your fic impacted me so much. i hope u write more reani stuff bc u get danbert so well!! and olivia is a wonderfully crafted character

Ah, thanks for coming to my blog and saying hi! All I really wanted from posting WYT was for it be meaningful to someone else, especially since it's so personal, so it's really affirming to hear it impacted you.

I'm really surprised that you (and others) like my characterization of Danbert- honestly I was worried they were OOC, but that was just par for the course with the premise being a kidfic. I'm glad to hear it worked out.

Finally someone mentioned Olivia! I've never written a child character and drew on my own childhood and family members for her, so I put a lot of care and love into writing her and that was just a special thing to get to do.

Thanks again for messaging (and commenting)!

[peitalo]

hi friend do u have tips for blending prismacolor pencils? i have some and when i try to blend them like u they dont turn out like it? also do u press on them hard or soft? and lastly, any tips on shading with them?

i only recently got a blender pencil & have yet to use it, so everything thus far has just been blended bit by bit— usually i start light/softer and then go in darker/harder, same applies with shading ^^! mostly i just use whatever color i think would look nice regardless if it makes sense, my best advice is to havw fun with it :-)