Soul-Crushing Perfectionism @teadrunkauthor - Tumblr Blog

I do really love it when women write graphic and fucked up things. I feel like so often people react to fucked up fiction with “of course a disgusting man would write this 🙄” and it often carries an unspoken (honestly sometimes spoken) message of “a woman’s PURE and DELICATE and FEMININE mind could NEVER think of something this VILE”. Thank you women in fucked up fiction 🫡

notebooks-and-laptops

Fucked up fiction by women you should 100% read:

ofgeography

okay this is a list of exclusively bangers, not even counting the fact that WE HEXED THE MOON is on here which obviously makes me feel joyous. but kushiel's dart fuckin RULES as did on sundays she picked flowers and patricia wants to cuddle. 10/10 no notes

novelconcepts

Hey, man, c'mere. Listen. Get in real close, this is important.

You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.

dappermouth

soft morning through heavy fog, gloomy in the best way, the trees falling away green-black into milky air—and then the sun presses through briefly to touch these million hanging molecules of water, some ecstatic ricochet of light, a lens made of a hundred lenses, all worlds turning over, reflected in each other—and i like being alive! i like to live!!

xiaq

One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.

p4nishers

one out of the many things i really love about discworld is how deeply unlikable the watch is in non watch books. that might seem a strange thing to say but if you've read the books you know what im talking about. its such a simple yet effective way of showing the multitudes any organization has, but especially one that's enforcing a system or law. i mean, think about it, when reading the watch books the only people you're rooting for is the watch themselves, everyone loves sam and carrot and angua, they're all our favorites!! but when you come to face w them in other books like, say, the truth or going postal or unseen academicals, you're suddenly not as keen on them. because why are they interfering w william, who's just trying to do the right thing and why can't they just leave moist alone, who's just trying to survive (albeit by not always lawful means, but if you choose to read a terry pratchett book im sure you've already gotten over that) and why are they so distrusting of trev, who was really just trying to save his friend? well, obviously, because it's their job. and when they're doing that job in the watch books it all seems justified and necessary, but when seen through civilian eyes, they're just annoying bastards with bad case of entitlement issues. and terry MEANT for you to feel that. lets look at another example. we like william very much in his book, he hasn't got the best background but he spends the whole book and after making up for it. but when we meet him in, say, monstrous regiment, he's kinda just pretentious and posh and when moist mentions him in making money he doesn't seem to be universally liked. terry is not precious with his characters, he doesn't coddle them, and thats what makes them so real.

rowanisawriter

write insane shit that’s way beyond your perceived ability and skill level even if you don’t finish it even if you think it sucks

apilgrimpassingby

Mesolithic Britain

@togglesbloggle commented on a post of mine expressing interest in hearing about the transition between hunter-gatherers and farmers in prehistoric Britain. Hence, I read up on the Mesolithic, the period between the Ice Age and the arrival of farming in Europe, and produced this post.

Mesolithic Timeline

The Early Mesolithic begins around 9300 BC, at the end of the Ice Age in Britain, and ran until 7900 BC [1]. Humans had been extirpated from Britain during the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000 – 11,000 BC), at the end of the Ice Age, when expanding ice sheets reduced the country to a polar desert [2] and were re-introduced in the Early Mesolithic through settlers following the coasts (in northern England) and the River Thames and its tributaries (in southern England) and left behind little but stone tools, with the exception of a deer hunting camp at Star Carr in the northeastern English county of Yorkshire (you will be hearing a lot about Star Carr in this post – it’s the best-preserved and best-studied British Mesolithic site). Then came the Middle Mesolithic (8300-6800 BC), marked by settlement across all of Britain, burials in Wales and southwest England and the appearance of hearths, pits and hazelnut shells in the archaeological record. Then we get the Late Mesolithic (7100-4500 BC), marked by middens (a fancy term for waste heaps), reuse of older pits, internal trade in stone, cave burials in Wales and cremations in southern England. Finally we have the Terminal Mesolithic (4500-3500 BC) marked by international trade – such as Danish stone axes in Scotland and Irish ones in northwest England – before farming, permanent settlement, pottery, polished stone axes, leaf-shaped flint arrowheads and the other marks of the Neolithic period began [3].

The Mesolithic Environment

After the ice retreated, for a period Britain looked like Alaska does today [4], but birch and pine soon sprang up, and hazel, lime, oak and elm followed as the climate became warmer and wetter [5]. Known mammal species in this environment include hedgehogs, moles, various types of shrews and voles, hares, beavers, red squirrels, dormice, foxes, wolves, weasels, stoats, pine martens, otters, badgers, brown bears, wildcats, lynx, wild boar, red and roe deer, elks and aurochs [6]. Rising rainfall levels also meant that bogs appeared [7], and from the aforementioned Star Carr we have a record of bog flora and fauna – a landscape mostly of reeds peppered with other species like water lilies and bulrushes and birch, willow, aspen and polar for trees, inhabited by aquatic insects like pond skaters and water beetles [8]. The temperature rose as the era wore on, with the Early Mesolithic having an average winter temperature of -4°C (24.8°F) and an average summer temperature of 12.5°C (54.5°F) [9], while the later Mesolithic was on average 2°C warmer than Britain today [10].

Mesolithic People

Human remains from Mesolithic Britain are rare – there are only 28 sites from the period with human remains, and 22 of them have had the skeletons broken into pieces [11] – but from genetic analysis on one of the few complete skeletons we have, found in Cheddar Gorge in southwest England and thus named Cheddar Man, we know that they had dark brown skin, black hair and blue eyes [12]. None of their clothing has survived, but it seems likely that it was made of leather, since Star Carr may have been a leatherworking site – it has a disproportionate number of scrapers and awls and evidence of collection of moss and bracket fungus, which may have been used in tanning – and Dozmary Pool in southwest England has a similar collection of Mesolithic hide-working tools [13]. We do, however, have good evidence for jewellery, with bone, amber and shale beads (a few with lines carved into them) from various sites, a shale pendant with lines carved into it at Star Carr [14] and a cowrie shell with holes in it found in a midden near Oban on the west coast of Scotland [15]. Mesolithic populations were extremely low, with an average population density of 0.02 people per square kilometre [16] and, based on surviving hunter-gatherer societies, probably consisted of small, highly egalitarian groups where authority was based on knowledge and experience, war was rare and violence was mostly used against would-be tyrants [17]. The role of gender in the Mesolithic has not been thought about much, and most writing about it has assumed a men-as-hunters and women-as-gatherers model which may not have been the case [18].

Mesolithic Technology

The standard Mesolithic toolkit consisted of burins (stone tools used for working bone and antler), barbed points made from bone and antler, stone axes used for dealing with trees and, in particular, microliths [19], small triangular flint blades which are the most common Mesolithic artifact [20] which are most likely arrowheads. In addition to those, we have the aforementioned scrapers and awls, used for hide work [21], and harpoons found in various places – including Carriden on the east coast of Scotland [22] and in the River Thames [23]. In terms of the stone used, flint is the one that probably comes to mind, and was dominant in some areas such as northeast Scotland [24], but other important tool-making stones included quartz, chert [25], bloodstone from the island of Rhum and pitchstone from the Isle of Arran, both on the west coast of Scotland [26]. An important stone source was the Isle of Portland off the south coast of England, which furnished chert used all over southwest England and (since it's only found at the largest Mesolithic sites) probably exchanged at feasts and meetings of tribes [27]. One of the main parts of Star Carr’s notability is its large collection of wooden artifacts, including a platform made of birch branches built over the water, wooden rods that may have been meant for basketweaving, construction (such as wicker fences) or making charcoal, a canoe paddle and rolls of birch bark [28] probably meant for extracting resin [29] in order to attach microliths to arrow shafts [30].

Mesolithic Settlements

The most notable Mesolithic settlement is Mount Sandel in Ireland, a settlement in Northern Ireland excavated in the 1970s [31] consisting of a set of pit-houses formed by circular arrangements of postholes (as wooden posts rot, they discolour the soil they stood in – this is how archaeologists can detect them) around hearths, with radiocarbon dates from the hearths suggesting they remained in use over decades, [32] and with a probable population of 8-12 people [33]. Other known Mesolithic houses in Britain, such as at Howick in northeast England and Criet Dubh on the west coast of Scotland, follow the same pattern [34]. We also have a stone structure, in the form of a possible windbreak from Rushey Brow in northwest England [35].

Mesolithic Food

Isotope analysis (chemical analysis of the ratios of isotopes of different elements in bone, in particular carbon and nitrogen, to determine things about that person's diet) suggest that Mesolithic people had a level of meat in their diet similar to carnivores [36], with the most important animal being red deer [37], which people gathered together to hunt in winter and disbanded in summer when resources (particularly plants) were more plentiful and thus cooperation less necessary [38]. Mesolithic people had domesticated dogs, whose job was probably to aid with hunting [39]. The other major source of meat was fishing, and what was caught varied greatly from place to place; on the Isle of Portland it was mainly crabs [40], on Caldey Island off the south coast of Wales it was mainly seals [41], on the Scottish island of Oronsay it was overwhelmingly fish [42] and the aforementioned midden near Oban was mostly made of limpet shells [43]. By contrast, Irish Mesolithic people lived by hunting boar and catching freshwater fish, particularly eels and salmon [44].

For plant resources, hazelnuts are the most common, being found in virtually all Mesolithic sites [45]. Interestingly, hazel was probably deliberately cultivated by Mesolithic people by lighting forest fires - many extant hunter-gatherer cultures start fires in order to send signals, drive prey towards traps, create pathways and open spaces or (relevantly here) cultivate certain types of vegetation [46], hazel has a high resistance to fire and the appearance of hazel pollen in soil layers often correlates with charcoal [47] - in spite of this, there doesn't seem to have been any substantial anthropogenic deforestation in the Mesolithic [48]. Other notable plants include water lily tubers at Star Carr [49] and Mount Sandel, apple at Mount Sandel and near Oronsay [50] and berries - including blackberries, sloes [51], crowberries and hawthorn berries [52] - at many sites.

Mesolithic Religion

One of the main sources of information for Mesolithic religion is looking at religious beliefs and practices of extant hunter-gatherer societies and looking for common themes. And there's an extensive list of common themes - rites of passage, sacred places, spiritual importance of animals, a three-tiered world (land, sky and sea or heaven, earth and underworld), shamans interceding with spirits, clean and unclean spaces [53], supernatural beings creating distinctive landscape features and being active within it, meaningful names given to landscape features, hearths as the places for telling stories, fire as a means of summoning and communicating with spirits [54] and so on.

For actual Mesolithic evidence of religion, the most famous is a set of headdresses made from deer antlers found at Star Carr. The two common theories are that they were used as deer disguises to allow hunters to creep up on deer, or that they were used in ritual dances - both are anthropologically documented, the former in North America and the latter in Siberia, and since the latter is more similar to Early Mesolithic England, the latter explanation is more likely [55]. Antler masks and headdresses are found in many cultures, since deer are an important food source and deer antlers are visually striking while the top of deer skulls are easy to place on top of human heads [56]. Other potential ritual objects include stone tools and harpoons dumped in the water on the same site, a shale carving - of a phallus, hips, or both - from Nab Head in southwest Wales and harpoons, and human remains disarticulated and mixed into middens on Oronsay [57], and the engraved pendant from Star Carr mentioned at the top, which may have represented a sacred tree (although of course this is highly speculative). For sacred sites, water was a major theme, with depositions of objects inside water such as at Bath Hot Springs in southwest England, and platforms built on water such as the one at Star Carr and ones at Clowanstown and Lough Moynagh in southeast Ireland - while they may be for fishing, they're more likely to be ritual sites, since it's far easier to build a boat [58], which we know Mesolithic British people had thanks to the aforementioned paddle at Star Carr and a probable boat fragment at Bouldnor Cliff on the south coast of England [59].

Burials are some of our main evidence for religion in most prehistoric cultures, and that holds true here. While there's plenty of diversity - cremation, disarticulation, individual and collective burials, burials with and without grave goods and even the burial of a dog - the standard was bodies being broken up (whether by dismemberment or being fed to animals) and placed in middens [60], which may reflect "dividuality", an anthropological concept where societies see humans as being constituted by their relationships rather than having an inherent identity. Finally, on Loughan Island in the River Bann in Northern Ireland, we have a harpoon tip made of human bone, which was likely done to channel the power of the person who the bone came from [61].

fellshish

a lot of writing is sort of watching the film in your head like oh sorry can’t write the chapter yet i have to repeat hallucinate the dialogue first

lizzienoodles

guy who's having gauzy idealized wife flashbacks for the whole adventure but it turns out she isn't dead or anything he just really misses her and wants to get home

alwri-tes

The emotional connection between a writer/artist and a really obscure song that they associate with their characters is immensely powerful and cannot be explained

thirdity

“You write the beginning and then you go back and rewrite the beginning, and you never got off page one. It’s kind of a syndrome, and I have a rash piece of advice which is — Go on, page two, page three, and never look back. Get something finished, no matter how lousy it is. […] Perfectionists cannot get going unless they kind of do violence to their own instincts, and just blast ahead.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations

deception-united

Writing Tips Master Post

Edit: Some posts may be deleted

Character writing/development:

Character Arcs

Making Character Profiles

Character Development

Comic Relief Arc

Internal Conflict

Character Voices

Creating Distinct Characters

Creating Likeable Characters

Writing Strong Female Characters

Writing POC Characters

Building Tension

Writing Grumpy x Sunshine Tropes

Writing Sexuality & Gender

Writing Manipulative Characters

Writing Mature Young Characters

Writing Disoriented but Capable Characters

Plot devices/development:

Intrigue in Storytelling

Enemies to Lovers

Alternatives to Killing Characters

Worldbuilding

Misdirection

Things to Consider Before Killing Characters

Foreshadowing

Story Structure (+ Addition)

Killing Many Characters at Once

Narrative (+ how to write):

Emphasising the Stakes

Avoid Info-Dumping

Writing Without Dialogue

1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd Perspective

Fight Scenes (+ More)

Transitions

Pacing

Writing Prologues

Dialogue Tips

Writing War

Writing Cheating

Writing Miscommunication

Writing Unrequited Love

Writing a Slow Burn Btwn Introverts

Writing Admiration Without Attraction

Writing Dual POVs

Writing Unreliable Narrators

Naturally Conveying Character Age

Avoiding Repetition of "I" in 1st Person

Worldbuilding:

Worldbuilding: Questions to Consider

Creating Laws/Rules in Fantasy Worlds

Book writing:

Connected vs. Stand-Alone Series

A & B Stories

Parts of a Book (Chapters, Scenes, Arcs, Story Beats)

Writer resources:

Writing YouTube Channels, Podcasts, & Blogs

Online Writing Resources

Outlining/Writing/Editing Software

Translation Software for Writing

Writer help:

Losing Passion/Burnout

Overcoming Writer's Block

Fantasy terms:

How To Name Fantasy Races (Step-by-Step)

Naming Elemental Races

Naming Fire-Related Races

How To Name Fantasy Places

Ask games:

Character Ask Game #1

Character Ask Game #2

Character Ask Game #3

Miscellaneous:

Writing Tips

Writing Fantasy

Miscommunication Prompts

Variety in Sentence Structure (avoiding repetition)

manicpixiedckgirl

the MOST frustrating part of writing is that sometimes you have to write it badly before you can write it good. and it'll be sososo obvious how to make it good after you're done, like, it should have been possible - easy, even - to just write it good the first time. it was all right there in front of you, jumping out from the page. but unfortunately the muses are kinky and demand that you humiliate yourself before receiving inspiration

mirkwoodest

One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal.

mirkwoodest

This just in: Eowyn and Eomer’s names actually start with the letter “L.” [source for other nerds]

mirkwoodest

#wait so they have hobbitish names and common names?

No, they have Westron names and English names.

What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us.

There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign?

“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”

Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down:

In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder).

“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing.

“Banazîr” is Westron for “half-wise, or simple.” In Proto Germanic, the prefix “Sam” means half, and wise is obviously a word we still use.

“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”

“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match.

Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine.

I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently).

The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn” is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss).

“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L.

The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron.

The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.

Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud.

Further Reading:

Rohirric , Westron

aviculor

I’m having a stroke

lotrheritageposts

LOTR Heritage Post

theeinkibus

The depth and breathed of JRRT’s understand of every aspect of language is biblical.

ckret2

some of the best writing advice I’ve ever received: always put the punch line at the end of the sentence.

it doesn’t have to be a “punch line” as in the end of a joke. It could be the part that punches you in the gut. The most exciting, juicy, shocking info goes at the end of the sentence. Two different examples that show the difference it makes:

doing it wrong:

She saw her brother’s dead body when she caught the smell of something rotting, thought it was coming from the fridge, and followed it into the kitchen.

doing it right:

Catching the smell of something rotten wafting from the kitchen—probably from the fridge, she thought—she followed the smell into the kitchen, and saw her brother’s dead body.

Periods are where you stop to process the sentence. Put the dead body at the start of the sentence and by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you’ve piled a whole kitchen and a weird fridge smell on top of it, and THEN you have to process the body, and it’s buried so much it barely has an impact. Put the dead body at the end, and it’s like an emotional exclamation point. Everything’s normal and then BAM, her brother’s dead.

This rule doesn’t just apply to sentences: structuring lists or paragraphs like this, by putting the important info at the end, increases their punch too. It’s why in tropes like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, the odd item out comes at the end of the list.

Subverting this rule can also be used to manipulate reader’s emotional reactions or tell them how shocking they SHOULD find a piece of information in the context of a story. For example, a more conventional sentence that follows this rule:

She opened the pantry door, looking for a jar of grape jelly, but the view of the shelves was blocked by a ghost.

Oh! There’s a ghost! That’s shocking! Probably the character in our sentence doesn’t even care about the jelly anymore because the spirit of a dead person has suddenly appeared inside her pantry, and that’s obviously a much higher priority. But, subvert the rule:

She opened the pantry door, found a ghost blocking her view of the shelves, and couldn’t see past it to where the grape jelly was supposed to be.

Because the ghost is in the middle of the sentence, it’s presented like it’s a mere shelf-blocking pest, and thus less important than the REAL goal of this sentence: the grape jelly. The ghost is diminished, and now you get the impression that the character is probably not too surprised by ghosts in her pantry. Maybe it lives there. Maybe she sees a dozen ghosts a day. In any case, it’s not a big deal. Even though both sentences convey the exact same information, they set up the reader to regard the presence of ghosts very differently in this story.

alabaster-moon

@megamindfandombookclub

concerningwolves

A book that covers this – and more – quite excellently is First You Write a Sentence by Joe Moran!

wafflewarrior111

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

missroserose

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how? How does he know it?” Interrogate your witnesses. Cross-examine them. Make them explain their reasoning. It pays dividends.

heck-in-a-handbasket

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

im-the-punk-who

[Link to the article for screen-readers]

pathos-logical

[ID: The full text of an article. It reads:

"Writing Advice": by Charles Palahniuk- In six seconds, you’ll hate me.

But in six months, you’ll be a better writer.

From this point forward – at least for the next half year – you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.

The list should also include: Loves and Hates.

And it should include: Is and Has, but we’ll get to those, later.

Until some time around Christmas, you can’t write: Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…”

Thinking is abstract. Knowing and believing are intangible. Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing. And loving and hating.

Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like: “The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave. Never his.”

Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.

Instead of saying: “Adam knew Gwen liked him.”

You’ll have to say: “Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it. She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume. The combination lock would still be warm from her ass. And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.”

In short, no more short-cuts. Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.

Typically, writers use these “thought” verbs at the beginning of a paragraph (In this form, you can call them “Thesis Statements” and I’ll rail against those, later) In a way, they state the intention of the paragraph. And what follows, illustrates them.

For example:

“Brenda knew she’d never make the deadline. Traffic was backed up from the bridge, past the first eight or nine exits. Her cell phone battery was dead. At home, the dogs would need to go out, or there would be a mess to clean up. Plus, she’d promised to water the plants for her neighbor…”

Do you see how the opening “thesis statement” steals the thunder of what follows? Don’t do it.

If nothing else, cut the opening sentence and place it after all the others. Better yet, transplant it and change it to: Brenda would never make the deadline.

Don’t tell your reader: “Lisa hated Tom.”

Instead, make your case like a lawyer in court, detail by detail. Present each piece of evidence. For example:

“During role call, in the breath after the teacher said Tom’s name, in that moment before he could answer, right then, Lisa would whisper-shout: ‘Butt Wipe,” just as Tom was saying, ‘Here’.”

One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone. Writing, you may be alone. Reading, your audience may be alone. But your character should spend very, very little time alone. Because a solitary character starts thinking or worrying or wondering.

For example: Waiting for the bus, Mark started to worry about how long the trip would take..”

A better break-down might be: “The schedule said the bus would come by at noon, but Mark’s watch said it was already 11:57. You could see all the way down the road, as far as the Mall, and not see a bus. No doubt, the driver was parked at the turn-around, the far end of the line, taking a nap. The driver was kicked back, asleep, and Mark was going to be late. Or worse, the driver was drinking, and he’d pull up drunk and charge Mark seventy-five cents for death in a fiery traffic accident…”

A character alone must lapse into fantasy or memory, but even then you can’t use “thought” verbs or any of their abstract relatives.

Oh, and you can just forget about using the verbs forget and remember.

No more transitions such as: “Wanda remember how Nelson used to brush her hair.”

Instead: “Back in their sophomore year, Nelson used to brush her hair with smooth, long strokes of his hand.”

Again, Un-pack. Don’t take short-cuts.

Better yet, get your character with another character, fast. Get them together and get the action started. Let their actions and words show their thoughts. You -- stay out of their heads.

And while you’re avoiding “thought” verbs, be very wary about using the bland verbs “is” and “have.”

One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone.

For example:

“Ann’s eyes are blue.”

“Ann has blue eyes.”

Versus:

“Ann coughed and waved one hand past her face, clearing the cigarette smoke from her eyes, blue eyes, before she smiled…”

Instead of bland “is” and “has” statements, try burying your details of what a character has or is, in actions or gestures. At its most basic, this is showing your story instead of telling it.

And forever after, once you’ve learned to Un-pack your characters, you’ll hate the lazy writer who settles for: “Jim sat beside the telephone, wondering why Amanda didn’t call.”

Please. For now, hate me all you want, but don’t use “thought” verbs. After Christmas, go crazy, but I’d bet money you won’t. End ID]

ringneckedpheasant

characters overextending themselves when using magic until they start bleeding from their nose/ears/etc >>>>>>

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