Phanerozoic Writings

Writing blog of @phanerozoicfossilgardener, Ao3 PrehistoricMuffin. Icon Art by Yohaki on DeviantArt. Also a place where I rant about books I love!

[talesfromthephanerozoic]

Hi there! Welcome to my writing blog! Here I reblog writing specific memes and references as well as various details for my fics. I hope you find something you like!

If you’re curious about my stories or my writing process, please send me an ask! If you send me an ask and I have not answered, this is most likely because my inbox has eaten the question. Feel free to reply to this post with the question instead!

(No fundraising asks for this blog, please! Take those over to my main blog, @phanerozoicfossilgardener! )

You can find my fandoms and fics here, or my ao3 account here.

Have a good one!

[frownyalfred]

Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.

[panakina]

As someone who spent over a decade catering luxury events, let me add some back of house info:

These events are almost always open bar. They're not trying to make their money back on alcohol. They want you to drink and eat and donate generously.

If there are cocktails, there will be at most two on offer, pre-made in large tubs. You cannot order a different version, it is what it is.

There are two types of events: cocktail style or seated. The first includes roaming hors d'oeuvres or a fancy buffet with tiny plates called a grazing station. For a long night, the roaming food will get a little bigger throughout the evening and have a 'main' at some point based around a protein.

A seated event will usually be more structured and may include multiple courses. Silver service is not in vogue anymore. You are likely to get either alternating meals brought to you like at a wedding, or served banquet style. A good caterer can get a plate to everyone in a 300 person event in about three minutes.

Drunk people are the same no matter how expensive their suits. They still laugh too loud, spill their drinks and slip on the dance floor. They are usually less embarrassed about doing coke in the bathrooms.

A full scale event that starts at 6pm will have staff arriving at noon to begin setup. Earlier if there's a light show or pyrotechnics. Typically venues don't just have 30 tables and three hundred chairs lying around, let alone table cloths, chair covers, etc. It's all rented and brought in on the day. Bands and DJs will be running audio tests in the background throughout.

Most heritage buildings that host these things, like museums and manor houses, aren't really designed for them. They might put down mats so you're not walking in stilettos over two hundred year old wooden floors, the kitchens are weirdly far away, and there are not enough taps. There is never anywhere for staff to sit, so if you open the wrong door you might find half a dozen waiters sitting on upturned milk crates in a room full of million dollar paintings, eating the left over bread.

Really old buildings don't have enough bathrooms, which means the staff will be sharing with the guests.

Clean up starts the second the event ends, if not sooner. Unattended glasses will start to disappear first, then table decorations. When the timer ticks over, the lights come back on and exhausted staff strip the tables, pack up dirty glasses and unopened wine bottles and have to Tetris it all into the back of a van. The venue is booked for that day only, so everything has to be gone before anyone can go home. A large event that finishes at midnight might take until 3am to be cleared away.

These are very long and physically demanding nights for anyone working them. The staff all get to know each other, and will absolutely notice someone trying to sneak in wearing a borrowed uniform. They are not being paid enough to care.

[luna-azzurra]

I don't have writer's block I have writer's "I know exactly what needs to happen and I find it personally unbearable"

[talesfromthephanerozoic]

Ghosts update! Petal Time

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[oceangems85]

Me writing my goddamn novel

[oldcoyote]

if you ever doubt that your ao3 comments matter or mean something: i have been struggling with my writing for 6 months straight, crying myself to sleep afraid that i will never be able to write again, that the thing i love most in the world has left me, that my writing is just gone

this morning i got this comment:

and after i stopped blubbering over it, i picked up my writing notebook, and re-read all my fic research, and opened up my document again for the first time in weeks without being afraid of it

you have no idea how much writers treasure every single comment we get. you have no idea how big an impact you can have. sometimes, just sometimes, your one "insignificant" comment changes everything

[talesfromthephanerozoic]

Petal stop being so serious it makes you hard to write

[talesfromthephanerozoic]

Considering Vessel Crimes

[phanerozoicfossilgardener]

If you add 3 sentences to your work in progress and show me, I will add 4 sentences to my work in progress and show you.

Here you go! Ended up writing four, but I liked them all too much to choose–they go so well together!

"Sheo was right. Greenpath was a fount of inspiration. Everywhere he looked, there was more beauty to commit to canvas. The only setback was his need to make buckets and buckets of green paint."

[iamanartichoke]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but as a creator -

I am fine with "the audience" -

downloading my fics

printing my fics

copy/pasting or screenshotting my fics

sharing your saved copy of my fics with anyone else who might want them in the unlikely but never impossible case that my fics are no longer available on ao3

making a book of my fic(s) and running your fingers across the pages while lovingly whispering my precioussss

doing these things with anything I create for fandom, such as meta, headcanons, au nonsense like 'texts from the brodinsons,' etc

I am not fine with "the audience"

doing any of the above with the purpose/intent of plagiarizing my work or passing it off as their own in any capacity

feeding my work into ai for any reason whatsoever

Save the fandom things. Preserve the fandom things. Respect the fandom things.

Enjoy the fandom things.

[daily-daydream]

Non-spicy ways to show Intimacy

Intimacy isn't always just the spicy stuff! Here's a few ways to show it through your characters in a few, simple ways...

Kissing their S/O's hand, knuckles, wrist...bonus points for eye contact!

Speaking of which...eyes. Glances across the room, prolonged eye contact, staring at each other

Tending to the other's wounds/ injuries

Knowing the other's tiny habits

Reaching out to the other when in pain, trouble, ect

Whispering jokes to each other

Carefully wiping off a stain from their clothes or face

Taking care of each other when sick or hurt

Hand over the heart/ ear over the heart just to hear it beat

Pressing their thumb over the pulse point for the same thing

Tracing scars, tattoos, birth marks, freckles

Giving the other something tiny that means a lot, a picture, a shiny rock, a flower

In fantasy settings, helping the other put on/ take off armor...trusting the other to know where daggers, knives, poisons are hidden

Telling each other secrets/ thoughts they've told nobody before

Tucking back the other's hair

Putting a piece of jewelry on the other or letting them borrow clothes

Keeping each other warm in the cold

In cases with chronic illness, letting the other care for/ know symptoms

Brushing, braiding hair, applying skincare, etc.

Nightmare comfort

Wiping away tears

Proximity- sitting near each other, sticking close, standing beside each other while doing a task such as cooking, laundry, painting...

Sharing a book, sitting close enough to read it together

[andthepeople]

this is a weird question but do u have a tip for writing long stories where characters have a lot of sex without it turning into a long pwp? i love pwps theyre great the story is just a very long relationship study and it's gonna be e rated but idk how to uh keep it ... like -- you know moving forward in the arcs and stuff? sorry if this is weird

not weird at all!! I don't write a ton of long fics so beyond a certain length i'm probably not a great person to ask, but when I'm doing a story that is more character study i try to build it around a realization the character needs to have, or in the case of the relationship some hurdle they need to get over together, something that needs to be said that hasn't been said, some breakdown or conversation they have to have in order to move forward together. so then you can make the fic build and build towards that breaking point and sort of hang the structure off that. not sure if this is helpful at all but best of luck with your fic !!

[elumish]

The thing that I have realized from writing romance novels is that sex scenes are exactly as much scenes as any other scenes.

What I mean by that is that, just as you are trying to accomplish something with any given scene you are writing (whether that is moving a specific part of the plot forward, accomplishing a specific emotional feeling in the reader, revealing some information, etc.), you are trying to accomplish something with your sex scenes. Or at least you should be.

Are the characters connecting emotionally in the sex scene? Are they having sex to avoid connecting emotionally? Are they doing something they haven't done before, sexually? Does that mean something to their relationship? Are they having sex out of habit? Out of obligation? To accomplish a purpose? Does the sex go well? How are they feeling after it?

Whatever you are trying to accomplish with a given sex scene should impact future (sex and non-sex) scenes in the same way that a conversation or a fight scene or any other type of scene would. Sex scenes do not (or at least should not) sit outside of the arc of the story, but rather are part of it.

To that same end, if you have a 100k word fic and the characters have sex on the page 10 times in it, presumably something is different the tenth time they have sex from the first time. The relationship between the characters is different, something has changed in the story, and so they should feel like part of the arc that way as well.

[whatagrump]

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.

[thewritinggrindstone]

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.”

[pangur-and-grim]

@creekfiend was very kind in sharing some writing resources with me, and I thought I'd pass along the kindness by listing them down below.

N.K. Jemisin's article 'Describing characters of color in writing'

Mary Anne Mohanraj's article on approaching characters of colour

Renee Harleston's article How to 'Write Characters of Color Without Using Stereotypes'

Working with Colour, a resource site for writers

the book Writing the Other by by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, which had a description that cut deep, because I've definitely fallen into this trap out of fear:

and then a video recommended by @sheprd (thank you!) about pitfalls in descriptive language

if anyone else has more resources to add, feel free to reblog with them! this is something I want to learn more about.

[pangur-and-grim]

I was talking yesterday about how I should probably change the skin colour of a character in a not-yet-written book, because that character is a large, aggressive dragon-shifter and I was worried about her being read with unintentional and offensive subtext.

I haven't gotten my hands on Writing the Other yet (it's still in the mail!) but from reading my way through these articles and watching the Princess Weekes video, I now understand that 'white-ifying' a character you're worried about is a lazy and cowardly solution. so, if I do ever finish the book Eres loses Everything, I'll keep her as is, do my best to be thoughtful, and hire a sensitivity reader to pick out any blind spots.

thank you to everyone who passed on resources, I really appreciate it!

[pangur-and-grim]

here are a few more resources I've found, if anyone’s interested:

Writing Diversely FAQ

Writing With Colour blog

A conversation between many writers on writing diverse characters

Four Tips to Help You Incorporate Diversity and Inclusion in Your Writing

A Medium Article: "Yes, You Should Be Afraid to Write “Diverse” Characters"

[talesfromthephanerozoic]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Ghosts update!

[teaboot]

scars in fiction are always so angsty - and I UNDERSTAND- but as a writer with several, consider:

The weather is dry so this one scar is SO FUCKING ITCHY

“Hey I dare you to touch it”

Absently brushing your hand over a scarred anrea and going OH SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT- oh.

”Wish this one looked cool instead of like a stubby lil worm”

Got a cool tattoo but part of it went over an old scar and that part blew out and stretched weird :(

Having a scar that DOES look cool but it’s in a weird place where you can’t show it off

Getting to meet someone else who ALSO has a bunch of neat scars and getting to swap stories ad show off the gnarly ones

OK this one isn’t funny or cute but some scars stretch out pores n shit and develop blackheads or whatever Super easy and it’s annoying as hell and I feel like nobody talks about that

Scars missing pigment sunburn super easy and tHEN THEY’RE SUPER GODDAMN ITCHY AGAIN

I swear to god I don’t remember where that one came from. Yes it’s relatively large but I’ve lived a busy life, what do you want from me

Nice to have something to run your finger over and fidget with when nothing’s going on, like a worry stone but it’’s your you

Scars from happy silly memories where you were goofing around with friends or roughhousing or something

wondering what the fuck that weird seam in your clothing is before you remember

“Yes I WOULD like to get a tattoo there but it would cover this scar and I LIKE that one “ :(

Oh hey is that a scar I forgot about? Weird, I don’t remember that. NOPE FUCK, CATERPILLAR SURPRISE

[talesfromthephanerozoic]

Hey so

Those plants in Hunter's March

The ones near Beast Crest at least

Some look like cotton plants

OR

they could be Haunted