Dear Neil: I am in a bit of a pickle and wondered if you might have any words of wisdom for me. I'm 24 and all I've ever wanted to do with my life is write. I've been working on a novel for over ten years, and now I'm finally at the endpoint, and all I can do is worry. What I'm deluding myself? What if it's not good enough and nobody wants to publish it? I've sunk so much of my life into this book that the idea of having to give it all up and start from scratch is heartbreaking.
Just remember that this isn't the end of the road. This is the beginning. You've written your first novel, and that's wonderful, and you've finished it, and that's even better.
Now, take everything you've learned and start the next thing.
When I was about 22 I sent out my first book and short stories to publishers and watched them all come back. And decided that, given that I was a brilliant writer, it was just that I didn't understand publishing. So I became a journalist, specialising in publishing and Fantasy and SF, and I did a lot of interviews and learned everything I could and wrote a whole lot and read a whole lot, and pretty soon I'd sold a book, and then was hired to write another, and a few years later I was writing Good Omens and Sandman and...
That first novel. The one that didn't sell. It's in an attic in Wisconsin. It wasn't really good enough. Even the short stories weren't very good. But I got better the more I wrote and the more I learned.
Your book may be brilliant, or it may be the first step on a journey. But either way, take the next step.
As some of you might have already known, @tcstu‘s competition has come to a close after whole 47 months of running! And what a load of fun it’s been while it was active <3
Gotta admit to something here - ever since I’ve started joining this contest back in January 2019, I’ve kept track of all my entries. And if you know me, you would guess that quickly escalated to keeping track of every morsel of publicly-available data regarding this contest 😂 So, when I heard the competition was going to end, i thought to myself: would I really let all that data I’ve kept go to waste? The answer was no.
After a number of conversations with TCSTU and other artists and writers who have participated in this event over the years, I have created the infographic you can see above. Let me assure you, it is much prettier than the spreadsheet with raw data xD
So! To the artists who left the biggest impressions - @mnstrcndy, @hydraart, @mienar, @4threset - and the 37 others who’ve joined us once; to all the 60 writers who have ever participated, and especially those whose words landed them on the charts - @evanthenerd83, @daalseth, @moonlightchess, @winterrose42, @coppercreationcreator, @to-kill-a-procrastinator, @vanrambling, @the-art-of-honormancy - and, most importantly, to @tcstu:
Thank you for taking your part in this and bringing us all joy via this amazing contest! 💙
If you’d like to see the art pieces included in their full glory, I’m including the links right below:
By @mnstrcndy : “Bake-kujira” in May 2021
By @hydraart: “Scientia” in December 2021, “Hide and seek” in January 2021, “They are coming back to life” in January 2020, “Nightmare fuel” in May 2019 and “It wasn’t that long ago, apparently” in January 2019
By @mienar: “Reaching for the stars” in June 2020 and “Getaway” in May 2018
By @4threset: “But Maybe, One day, You might be able to move on. Just Maybe” in March 2020 and “And I Am Breathing in a Sinking Room” in March 2018
(make sure to check them all out, but especially the ones by the last two artists - the originals are animated!)
As some of you might have already known, @tcstu‘s competition has come to a close after whole 47 months of running! And what a load of fun it’s been while it was active <3
Gotta admit to something here - ever since I’ve started joining this contest back in January 2019, I’ve kept track of all my entries. And if you know me, you would guess that quickly escalated to keeping track of every morsel of publicly-available data regarding this contest 😂 So, when I heard the competition was going to end, i thought to myself: would I really let all that data I’ve kept go to waste? The answer was no.
After a number of conversations with TCSTU and other artists and writers who have participated in this event over the years, I have created the infographic you can see above. Let me assure you, it is much prettier than the spreadsheet with raw data xD
So! To the artists who left the biggest impressions - @mnstrcndy, @hydraart, @mienar, @4threset - and the 37 others who’ve joined us once; to all the 60 writers who have ever participated, and especially those whose words landed them on the charts - @evanthenerd83, @daalseth, @moonlightchess, @winterrose42, @coppercreationcreator, @to-kill-a-procrastinator, @vanrambling, @the-art-of-honormancy - and, most importantly, to @tcstu:
Thank you for taking your part in this and bringing us all joy via this amazing contest! 💙
If you’d like to see the art pieces included in their full glory, I’m including the links right below:
By @mnstrcndy : “Bake-kujira” in May 2021
By @hydraart: “Scientia” in December 2021, “Hide and seek” in January 2021, “They are coming back to life” in January 2020, “Nightmare fuel” in May 2019 and “It wasn’t that long ago, apparently” in January 2019
By @mienar: “Reaching for the stars” in June 2020 and “Getaway” in May 2018
By @4threset: “But Maybe, One day, You might be able to move on. Just Maybe” in March 2020 and “And I Am Breathing in a Sinking Room” in March 2018
(make sure to check them all out, but especially the ones by the last two artists - the originals are animated!)
As some of you might have already known, @tcstu‘s competition has come to a close after whole 47 months of running! And what a load of fun it’s been while it was active <3
Gotta admit to something here - ever since I’ve started joining this contest back in January 2019, I’ve kept track of all my entries. And if you know me, you would guess that quickly escalated to keeping track of every morsel of publicly-available data regarding this contest 😂 So, when I heard the competition was going to end, i thought to myself: would I really let all that data I’ve kept go to waste? The answer was no.
After a number of conversations with TCSTU and other artists and writers who have participated in this event over the years, I have created the infographic you can see above. Let me assure you, it is much prettier than the spreadsheet with raw data xD
So! To the artists who left the biggest impressions - @mnstrcndy, @hydraart, @mienar, @4threset - and the 37 others who’ve joined us once; to all the 60 writers who have ever participated, and especially those whose words landed them on the charts - @evanthenerd83, @daalseth, @moonlightchess, @winterrose42, @coppercreationcreator, @to-kill-a-procrastinator, @vanrambling, @the-art-of-honormancy - and, most importantly, to @tcstu:
Thank you for taking your part in this and bringing us all joy via this amazing contest! 💙
If you’d like to see the art pieces included in their full glory, I’m including the links right below:
By @mnstrcndy : “Bake-kujira” in May 2021
By @hydraart: “Scientia” in December 2021, “Hide and seek” in January 2021, “They are coming back to life” in January 2020, “Nightmare fuel” in May 2019 and “It wasn’t that long ago, apparently” in January 2019
By @mienar: “Reaching for the stars” in June 2020 and “Getaway” in May 2018
By @4threset: “But Maybe, One day, You might be able to move on. Just Maybe” in March 2020 and “And I Am Breathing in a Sinking Room” in March 2018
(make sure to check them all out, but especially the ones by the last two artists - the originals are animated!)
coming to realize for me growing up is just more and more growing into the understanding and compassion to leave people be. nothing is about you. everyone is communicating their own projections and working through things and coming into their own understanding. it’s a projection and you can extend your own grace to people to work through and grow at their own pace and just mindfully accept them where they’re at just like you’d want other people to do for you. it has nothing to do with you. you don’t have to always make it a fight, because it’s not an attack. their outlook says nothing about you and there’s no reason to be defensive. you can be secure and grounded in yourself. get to point where you can trust in your own self and the people around and that you care about to understand as well. it’s letting go. giving up the struggle because you’re solid in your self. turning away from the instinct to project.
I was writing this cheat sheet out for a friend recently, and figured - hey if it's useful to them, it may be useful other people too. Basically, this goes into places where you probably should add a paragraph break in order to help keep readers grounded in what's actually happening, creating emphasis where you needed, and help break up larger/harder to read walls of text.
Note that this list is more about base readability/understanding. There are always going to be exceptions, especially when taking into account writing style - like any advice, these are more of guidelines than actual rules. (cue pirates of the carribean)
Always add a paragraph break for:
State of motion is changing
Ex: character is switching from observing surroundings to running for their lives
Basically, if you’re switching from being still to moving, or moving to still, break paragraphs
Why: mostly, it helps keep the reader grounded. A paragraph break is almost like a signal of "okay we're doing something different here" which can be useful when your protagonist is doing an array of smaller actions in a scene.
Thought shifts
Ex: character is thinking about their dead mother, to thinking about what caused the explosion that killed her
Each topic gets its own paragraph. When in doubt, add a new paragraph
Why: if a character is lost in their own thoughts for a while and you don't break, it will result in an impenetrable wall that most readers will skip because.... no. Transitions between ideas are just natural places to break, and again, they help with grounding readers.
(several more list items below the cut, and when to do a double paragraph break)
New character is talking
Yes, every time.
Only exception: two characters say something at the same time, and you indicate as such
But other than that. ALWAYS break for a new character's speech
Why: firstly, it's standard, meaning most readers are going to expect it, and will likely get confused if you aren't paragraph breaking. But other than that, it helps to break up giant walls of text that might happen in a conversation, for example, and it makes conversation followable, so that you don't have to put dialogue/action tags next to each new line of dialogue for it to be clear who's talking
New setting
Ex: character exits a building.
Any time you enter a new setting, spend some time establishing it. If it’s a setting the characters already know, you don’t have to do as much - just let readers know where the character is in relation to it at the very least. If it’s somewhere new, describe things as your characters notice them.
Why: a break helps establish a transition. Without it, it can grow confusing where the characters are, and if you're confused about where they are, you're almost certainly going to get at least a little bit lost about what's going on overall.
New time
Ex: switching from summarizing the characters day to showing what’s happening now
Ex: switching from what’s happening now an hour ago, to what’s happening now, now.
Why: same as above, but for time. Rather than getting confused about where characters are, it's just as easy to get confused about when they are.
Emphasis
Don’t do this too much or else it loses its impact - paragraph break for emphasis is a very strong beat. More so than making something it’s own sentence.
Why: the more spacing on the page you have surrounding something important, the more power it has. That's why important bits of dialogue will be split off from the rest of what the character is saying via a dialogue/action tag [ex: "yes, yes, you're right." She stared at him with those void-black eyes. "But you'll be too dead for any of that to matter."] - by splitting that last line from the rest of the dialogue, it indicates that it's important. Splitting a line from the previous paragraph has a similar intensifying effect.
Double paragraph break for:
Rather than just going to the next line, press enter twice, so you end up with a white space between paragraphs.
Emphasis
Same as above, but use extremely sparingly. Otherwise you run the risk of it coming off as super cliche. Again, by adding the extra distance between whatever the important idea is and everything else, you emphasize its importance. If you emphasize too much, you're actually emphasizing nothing.
New POV
If you’re doing one of those things where you can have multiple POVs in a single chapter, make sure you add two paragraph breaks and also use the new character’s name in the first sentence to ground readers. Otherwise it’s hella confusing
Larger time skips
If it’s more than a few hours, add two lines because otherwise it reads at first like it’s one event flowing into the next directly
Exception: You’re summarizing time, and you’re like “this thing happened 12 hours ago. This other thing was 8 hours ago”
hi, hello! formerly ecwrenn; maguayan, goddess of the water.
ABOUT:
Call me Aye (she/her)! I’m a Southeast Asian amateur writer of too many stories. Most of them are Fantasy and Paranormal, often laced with folklore and mythology; inspired by dreams and influenced by written and oral lore.
I listen to music when I write—by my favorite artists or ambient playlists on YT.
I enjoy a little of graphic editing and photography. Graphic editing, especially, has been part of my writing process. (Or an excuse so I could proudly say, “I worked on my WIP today.”)
When I’m not writing, I’m either watching films/tv series or trying to finish a book.
I am also [maguayans] across other platforms—Wattpad, NaNoWriMo, Instagram, and Twitter.
PROJECTS:
Kindly visit my pinned post to check out active projects. If interested, send an ask or reply to WIP Introductions to be added in the taglist or removed.
I obsess over mythology and the paranormal so expect otherworldly beings (deities and beasts), shamans and witches, things that lurked in the dark and the mind; stories influenced by tales as old as time. :)
does anyone else kind of.. enjoy spoilers ?? like they’re sort of a relief because then I know whether or not something is worth investing in watching or reading or not
I’m not gonna be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out how I want plus I’m not going to fast forward and skip through large parts of it to find out what happens, which I’m embarrassed that I do I just don’t have the patience
Is that just a me thing or do other people do that too? Is that an adhd thing?
I just do way better watching things if I already know the entire synopsis and can predict kinda when things will happen like landmarks in a movie that help me through
Please tell me this is an actual thing and not just me
ok so recently i wanted to read a book to my niece, who just turned 7, that I thought she’d like. but it had some scary parts in it, that might be too much for her. she’s tough, but she’s sensitive too, like any kid her age.
so what did i do? I spoilered it. I said “hey this kid runs into some monsters that are gonna try to eat him, and then they chase him and it’s very suspenseful. You think that would be too scary?”
She considered it. “Do they eat him in the end?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then no,” she said. And then, when we were about to hit the Big Reveal that this person who had helped him was secretly actually a man-eating monster, she lit up and was like “IS THIS WHEN IT HAPPENS” and I was like “SHH yes!” and she was like “AHH YEAH” and loved it.
I don’t think spoilers are just for kids, though. I’m now so Tired of conventional media’s endless race for The More Shocking Ending that I refuse to watch shit when I don’t know how it’s going to end. It’s not that I don’t have the emotional resilience to handle unexpected things (well, sometimes I don’t, honestly, and have no shame about that), it’s that if the unexpected thing is the “fuck you if you liked these characters ha ha ha!” plot twist, I just don’t have the time to invest in your fictional world. If you can’t respect me as an audience then I have other shit to do with my time.
Even my own writing– I dithered a bit in my latest series, which was going to hinge on a dead character being revealed to really be alive. I did my best to avoid spoilers as I was writing the thing, but now I’ve posted it and I figured, the thing to do is just to– tag it for the reveal. It’s not worth trying to be coy or people won’t know whether they want to read your shit.
I stand by my view that if knowing the twist ruins your story, your story is poorly written. Like, I appreciate that some people love the thrill of discovery, and as such, I support making sure people don’t stumble over spoilers without warning. But I’m sick and tired of stories that go “Ha, ha, tricked you!” or confuse shock value with suspense.
I’m also reminded of classic tragedies where the entire point is that the audience knows what happens, but the characters don’t, and there’s definitely a good amount of fun in frustratingly watching them careen towards doom, seeing all the signs, and not being able to do anything about it.
That’s also partly why picking up a piece of media you’ve already enjoyed again is so fun; seeing all the little hints the author peppers throughout the story you might not have picked up the first time gives you an entirely different, but still very much enjoyable, experience.
if the unexpected thing is the “fuck you if you liked these characters ha ha ha!” plot twist, I just don’t have the time to invest in your fictional world. If you can’t respect me as an audience then I have other shit to do with my time.
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
kaledo-art
gummygunk
areudirty
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
stormborns
