It’s A Writers World @the-stories-i-write - Tumblr Blog

Master Post

This is the master post for all my works on this account. I’ll update it as I work on things and update them. I will add to it and alert any and all who follow it what has been updated. You can subscribe to this by following this post. This will allow you to get notified by Tumblr when I update anything.

Everything is under the read more in an effort to prevent this from becoming a stupidly long post.

#my writing #the stories i write

allthingswhumpyandangsty

reblog if you’re a writer who’s very terrible at responding to comments from your readers, but has read them all and loves and appreciates each and every single one of them very dearly

cckittycreative

Been a while since I've done some ACNH stickers so I did some girlies today; Ankha, Coco, Hazel and Ketchup. Not sure if I'm completely happy with ketchup, but it was a good first shot at drawing one of the ducks.

#look at my friends art!#it’s awesome

A New Year

Another rotation about the sun

Things have changed

Though not that much

We’ve learned we’ve grown

We’ve laugh and cried

Loved and lost

Celebrated and mourned

And now it comes again

For the cycle to repeat

Happy New Year one and all

#my writing #poetry #original work #Happy New Year

14muffinz

What "age range" do you like writing Danny as in crossovers?

Bruce

Dick

Jason

Tim

Damian

Older than all of the above

Younger than all of the above

Voting ended onJan 7, 2025

i've seen a WIDE variety of dp x dc stuff, so i wanna see how this goes

#in my head it tends to go #Bruce is the questionable adult #Dick is the eldest Child #Jason is the second #Danny with the folding chair #Tim and Duke are the same age #Damian is the youngest child

A Harry Potter Head Cannon

With a slight rant.

I personally have the head cannon that as romantic as it is for Lily Evens to have been muggle born she is actually from a squib line that had been cut off the main branch of the Slytherin family ages and ages ago.

Harry does not get his Parseltongue from Tom Marvolo Riddle junior, he gets it from his mother. The soul piece that would have been in Harry’s scar would have been far too small to transfer something so significant from Voldemort. 1/128th or .0078125 of a soul piece if the fannon theory that every time TMRjr made a horcrux he ripped his remaining soul in half and half again holds true. If Harry had been the first or even the third I could see something as significant as being able to talk to snakes transferring but he was the seventh. The only piece smaller would have been Nagini at 1/256th or .00390625 of a piece.

#harry potter #my writing #kinda a pet peeve I have about cannon explanation about the parseltongue thing

solhunder-old

Do you headcanon that LBM can speak?

Yes, and he sounds exactly like normal Danny

Yes, but he sounds like a two-year-old

Yes, but he only speaks in Animal Crossing gibberish

No, he can only make random funny noises

No, he can only make little trilling cat noises

No, he's silent

Other/show results

Yes, and he's voiced by chris pratt

Voting ended onSep 30, 2024

#he can talk #but it sounds like a fairy animal #all Soto and high pitched #almost like animal crossing gibberish but the words word

the-stories-i-write

Cracked

Forming 1.4

We did end up staying the night, Dad insisted he sleep on the floor so I could use the sofa, but I never did fall asleep. The events of the past two years kept turning over and over in my head with far more clarity that they’d had before I triggered. Eventually, I got off and wandered back towards the back of the house built into the strange statue. There was another door there that I’d seen Ms. Pearl Ms. Garnet and Amethyst go through somehow. I stepped onto the crystalline platform they had in front of their door and studied said door. It was odd and had opened differently for each of them.

I wasn’t rude enough to go snooping through someone’s room while they slept at least but still, I was curious. And I was afraid. I wanted to go somewhere else because dad had questions. Questions I really didn’t want to answer despite my promise to myself to talk to him more. To tell him the truth. I didn’t want to name Emma as one of the people who’d made my life such agony. I had no issues naming Sophia or Maddison, but Emma… she’d been my sister in all the ways that really mattered.

So caught up in my thoughts I didn’t notice the platform under me begin to shine. Nor the wall of light that enveloped me, when I finally came out of my thoughts I was alone, outside, in a field of the largest strawberries I had ever seen in my life. No, seriously, these things were bigger than I was tall in some cases, bigger than a house even; I’d also apparently wandered off the platform and was now rather a bit lost.

Wandering around more I found myself further lost and confused… was that a flying saucer? Quickly though I find myself distracted, there’s a scuttling sound, which I wouldn’t have realized had a noise. Spinning around I spot a huge centipede, yelping I dive back away from it going much farther than I’d realized I could. Right over the edge of a hidden cliff. I can’t help but scream as I fall and then the world goes away.

When I wake up I’m back in the light space. I feel calm and safe and everything feels like it makes sense. I don’t need to worry about dad here. The memories come and I can see what’s happened in the past twenty-four hours since I woke up. I smile at the memories of the kind people of this town and how they were willing to help. Steven and his Aunts, Mr. Universe, that dad had come to get me, it makes me realize that I’m really not alone in this anymore.

I find the stairs up and out again and start the climb that feels much shorter this time, and before I know it I’m in front of the mirror once more. On a whim I change my outfit and pull my hair back and up. It looks good. Stepping through the mirror, I wake up, at the bottom of a very deep canyon. Great, now how was I getting back?

#next waking obligatory reblog

Cracked

Forming 1.4

#story #Cracked #steven universe #Parahuman Series: By Wildbow #my writing #no beta

Why Halfa’s are Supposed to be Rare

Missing

*notes about this chapter, Vlad is very uninvolved and has only ever heard the kids names, well they were in the god parent papers he signed but he didn’t exactly read them like he should have. Jazzymyn is going to be spelt wrong in here but it is actually Jazzymyn not Jasmine. Danny’s Name is not Daniel, it’s Dan. He was five when he picked it and couldn’t think of a better boy’s name. He’s also wrong about their ages and very unaware Danny is FtM. Jazz I feel is going to be sixteen to seventeen in this chapter, Danny will be thirteen to fourteen. I haven’t quite settled on ages yet. Hopefully by the time I publish this, this issue will be solved.

Vlad Masters was very jealous spiteful man, who happened to care a surprising amount about his god children. Not that the man ever had much to do with them. However they were Madeline Walker’s children so that made them worth caring about in his books. All this to say that he did have Jasmine’s number saved in his phone. So when he saw her calling he answered wondering what could have prompted the unheard of contact.

“Hello?” A careful tone of polite inquiry was answered with sobbing from the other end of the call.

“Uncle Vlad? I need your help. Danny’s gone missing and mom and dad are apparently out of town and they don’t have their phones, so I can’t reach them for help.” To hear that his beloved Madeline had apparently left her home without informing either of her children was shocking but he saw an opportunity to shine in her eyes hopefully.

“Calm down Jasmine, I will be there as soon as I can. I will certainly help you look for and find your brother. It will be okay. Have you called the police yet?”

“Yes!” Comes the near wail. “They said he probably ran away and they won’t look for him cause he’ll come back when he gets cold and hungry enough. They wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell them Danny would never do that.”

That was definitely concerning. What in the world would have prompted the police to not look for a twelve year old? As far as his tabs on Maddie’s life showed the Fenton-Walker couple were considered strange but not generally disliked in the city of Amity Park.

“I will be there as soon as I can. I’ll arrange a flight and be out there by tomorrow at the latest. It will be okay Jasmine.”

There were more sniffles and sobs on the other end of the call before a soft but ernest “Thank you Uncle Vlad.” was heard. The call terminated and Vlad clears his schedule and texts his secretary that he’s going to be away on a family emergency and to email him anything important and that he’ll do his best to respond in a timely manner.

The secretary, a Whilma Goodes, for her part is just shocked that the man she called her boss had family. Looks like she owed Benji some money after all.

#no beta we die like danny #DP #danny phantom #my writing #story #Why Halfa’s are Supposed to be Rare

Why Halfa’s are Supposed to be Rare

Storms

It was rare for a portal to open on top of someone, and what happened to Valdimir Masters didn’t quite count. The proto portal blasted him with enough ecto-radiation that he was affected strongly but he was more alive than dead. Didn’t have a true obsession like a ghost.

Danny though, Danny in one reality walked into the portal his parents were attempting to build, and had the portal open on top of him along with so much electricity that it killed him and restarted his heart all at once. In this reality however, after the scare with their college friend the Fenton-Walker family had learned some about lab safety and rented out an old warehouse by the abandoned train station before the corn fields started and kept their basement a typical basement you would find in any home with two children. They did install their own home defense system but kept weapons out of it.

In spite of all this it wouldn’t change much about how the two children of the Fenton-Walker household grew up. Their parents would still spend more time at the lab than with their children. The elder child would still step up way too young and learn what she could to take care of the younger. And the parents would be very supportive if only because they couldn’t really remember having two daughters just that they had two children. And hey the boy had the right facial features!

Jazzymyn and Dan grew up in an arguably good home where they always had food to eat and no strange sounds came from their basement. However their parents still didn’t know much about them. Danny dreamed of the stars and what could be found off of their little blue green rock hurtling through space and Jazz in an effort to erase the anger at being parentified so young chased those thoughts away with how the mind worked and the defenses one would put in place to make the best of a bad situation.

Now with that background out of the way, let’s begin shall we?

Danny was out late, way past curfew but there was supposed to be an eclipse coinciding with a meteor shower and he was desperate to see it and record it. He picked his spot and set up his camera and telescope and was content to wait. He set an alarm on the phone his friend Sam had gotten him when she learned he didn’t have one with the blessing of his older sister and then sent said sister a text letting him know where he was in response to the one she’d sent him asking as much. It had been part of the agreement the two had had for ages, don’t lie to each other and keep mom and dad out of it. The two so rarely home neither were sure what the reactions would really be to any perceived rule breaking.

All that done Danny would sit in his bag chair and while waiting for the event to start he’d doze off. Which unfortunately explains why he misses the sudden storm rolling in and why he’s hit by lightning instead of climbing down to safety when the storm started. Now because this is Amity Park and his parents picked it to live in and to do their research in because of where it fell on the ley lines and the naturally thinner than most places barrier that wasn’t crime capital of the world it was this exact moment and this exact storm that heralded it, a natural portal opened right where the lightning was striking and between that and the lightning Danny died, but he didn’t. The effects of what just happened wouldn’t be immediate like what would have happened with the artificial portal his parents were still working on. And infact Danny barely felt or noticed any of it because it was over just that fast. The portal opening on top of him swallowed him into the Infinite Realms and thus Danny Fenton-Walker went missing.

#no beta we die like Danny #DP #Danny Phantom #my writing #story #Why Halfa’s are Supposed to be Rare

breannasfluff

DPxDC fandom, how old are you?

18 and under

19-21

22-24

25-27

28-30

31-33

34-36

37-39

40-45

46-50

50-55

56+

Voting ended onSep 17, 2024

Reblog for bigger sample size!

fanaroff

DP X DC Prompt: It’s In The Cave

There’s an animal in the cave. At least, that’s the closest approximation. It cannot be caught on the cameras and any noises made only translate into static. Dicks says it’s green. Tim says it’s black. Stephanie insists it’s white. But Damian knows it’s all three.

The others can’t see it as well as Damian can, for the moment. It’s not a cat, but cat-like. It’s not a snake, it’s snake-like. There’s big, shining green eyes with their color not dissimilar from the Lazarus Pits. Tufts of flowing white hair white a body black body that trails off into a tail and pointed ears that flatten and raise. It looks alien. It looks like an animal. It feels familiar. Damian keeps it.

When it first appears, it’s only noticed at first because a few things are moved around in its haste to find shelter. That, and the little spots of green that trail after its first entrance inside. The green spooks them all, at first, thinking it’s Lazarus water. There are similarities, but it’s not quite the same. After a time, the green fades to red. There’s no recognizable DNA from any creature in it. They settle on it being an “alien.”

It’s always watching, always peeking. Snacks left for it are eaten quickly and sometimes vanish into thin air right in front of them. The longer they go without attacking it or trying to root it out, the more it seems to become comfortable with them. (Not for Damian’s lack of trying anyways.)

Dick tells him to “pspspsps” at it like a cat once, softly patting at the ground. When no one is around, he tries it while crouched between the cave wall and a piece of machinery he saw a movement between. The little thing “pspspsps” right back. He even sees a tiny paw with tiny claws mimicking his motions from under the machine. Damian decides right then and there that this thing will be protected.

Eventually, it starts getting comfortable enough to start showing itself more and soon they’re having to scoot it off of the keyboards in the Batcave. It’ll drag itself about, climb, and sling itself around their shoulders and gnaw with little teeth and claws on their gloves. (They go through gloves much quicker once this starts.) even Batman melts when it starts purring.

Originally, they were worried it was injured but after the time it was there, hidden, it seems to have healed from whatever it was. (Or they get to fawn over the little injuries and fix them up best as they can.)

It will only take food from Damian’s hands though and he lords this over the others with immense pleasure. Often, it can be seen wrapped around one of his hands and forearms like a snake, wiggling away and batting at its own tail-tip. Its growls sound like little blips of static and gargled nails.

Damian names him Phavadi (Marathi meaning that could mean a pickle or a mess, let me know if this is incorrect, it’s not my language.)

They aren’t able to find out what Phavadi is, at first. The Green Lanterns don’t recognize it. Martian Manhunter has never seen it and states that he is unable to read its mind. Like there is nothing there to grasp. (This starts a round of the birds cooing at Phav, calling him brainless, no braincells between them big ‘ol eyes, no thoughts head empty.) Starfire doesn’t know what he is, but is absolutely enamored.

It starts floating. That’s surprising, but also not. They knew Phav has some powers, it could go invisible after all. Gravity has no hold and now it happily makes its nests on top of their heads. When Phav somehow floats his way into the manor, this starts a frantic chase through the mansion to catch it and Phav thinks it’s a game. Winking in and out of existence, waving its tail from a chandelier. When Dick makes it up there to grab it, Phav just plops to the ground scaring the shit out of everyone. Uninjured, thankfully. Phav scoots off into the kitchen and is caught by a heavily scolding Alfred.

Sufficiently cowed, Phav is returned to Damian and the little thing starts sleeping in his room.

They don’t know that this entire time Phav has been following them on their patrols. Staying out of sight but watching with glowing eyes to make sure they’re all safe. An in-grained confusing feeling.

It’s when there’s a big-bad that things come to a head. The entire Justice League is called in and eventually Justice League Dark. The Robins insist on helping as well, they need all hands on deck.

Mid battle, Damian is about to take a hit he can’t dodge.

This can go one of multiple ways—

Angsty: little baby man Phav takes the hit and gets pretty injured. Left limp and unmoving to the distress of everyone. Constantine, seeing this thing is like “Oh. Oh shit. That’s a baby eldritch. That is an INJURED baby eldritch we are so FUCKED.” Because he knows that with this happening, its momma is about to come soon. Phav’s form starts to destabilize, little body starting to goop into a puddle of green. Damian is distraught. All he’s left with is a light blue, cold, glowing orb the size of a marble.

Ghost King: Suddenly, tiny Phav isn’t so tiny anymore. He’s grown to the size of a two story house, hunched and hissing. Eyes wildly glowing, claws out and very large, teeth dripping green, tail long and curled around his bats and robins. Constantine, upon seeing this, shouts “YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU HAD A BLOODY FUCKING ELDRITCH??!”

Feel free to add more or use this!

the-stories-i-write

Both?: Phav takes the hit, melts away and Damian is left with a tiny glowing orb. The orb quickly freezes over prompting Damian to drop it. As he scrambles to catch it again it seems to turn into something similar to a black hole. Except it’s not exactly matter that is pulled in. It’s the fear the panic the pain from everyone. It’s the something toxic that seems to linger in the air of Gotham that never seems to let the city thrive despite Bruce’s best efforts to do something about the constant state of poverty and desperation that fill the city.

The orb is sucking in the death energy, and the painful emotions of everything and everyone. Jason is left feeling clearer than he has for a bit, but also very tired. Then once the orb has drawn in all it can reach it seems to explode and there you have a very large very angry ghost king snarling and going after the threat with claws out.

John Constantine starts cursing and screaming, “WHY IS THAT BABY ELDRITCH SO POWERFUL?! WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU HAD AN ELDRITCH BEING?! WHAT THE FUCK?!”

#my writing #dp x dc #batfam #Danny phantom

derinwrites

The Three Commandments

The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.

Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And

The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.

1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say

What’s your book about?

I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?

The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).

Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)

Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?

2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment

Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.

Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.

Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.

The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.

But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.

If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.

3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting

This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.

“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?

Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?

If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.

Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?

Hopefully these can help you, too.

neosatsuma

What was your first anime? (excluding Pokemon)

Naruto

Hetalia

Fullmetal Alchemist (either)

Bleach

Death Note

One Piece

Wolf's Rain

Ouran High School Host Club

Black Butler

Soul Eater

something else

Voting ended onMay 3, 2024

neosatsuma

you forgot DBZ

you forgot Inuyasha

Voting ended onMay 3, 2024

#sailor moon #you forgot Sailor Moon

A bit of a pet peeve I have in stories where students go to boarding schools and have dormitories of various levels that are sorted by the year they are in the school, side eyes HP and all its fanfics, for a school that was founded to primarily defend its students from outside harm, more side eye to HP and the various fanfics, when the school could have come under attack you would want your youngest students to be the furthest away from the danger. If your dorm are going up you would want them at the top level and as they age the number of stairs they climb goes down. Part of this privilege would be that they are expected to defend against anything that makes it to that level best they can. Your teachers and older students who know more should be the first obstacles not the last to over come.

Just like why?

#fanfic complaints #Harry Potter specific complaints #fanfic griping #still gonna read it it’s just a pet peeve I can re order in my head

avelera

Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.

bookishdiplodocus

Editor here. Can confirm.

"Two centuries later" just triggers a mental note to check if timing is consistent throughout the book, because it may mean more time jumps are ahead. "200 years later", or heaven forbid, "201 years later" will have me draw up a time line. The more specific the number, the more critical people become.

Strange phenomenon. Well spotted, OP.

longroadstonowhere

actually i think i might have an explanation for this from linguistics? i think folks get more nitpicky if you have specific numbers because of gricean maxims, specifically the maxims of quality and quantity

basically gricean maxims are a set of guidelines that we all carry in our heads that we expect other people to follow when having a conversation in good faith - i’m copying and pasting definitions from someone else because my attempts at summing up quality and quantity weren’t going so hot

The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

so basically, when you put a rough number in a text, people think subconsciously ‘oh, the exact number isn’t important, because if it was they would tell me an exact number, so i don’t need to worry about this’, whereas if you put something precise in, people’s brains go ‘wait, they think i need to know this information so i’ll remember it, but now it’s later and they’ve said something that contradicts it, so at least one of those times they were lying and i must figure out which time it was’

dduane

Also: don't specify data storage sizes. Just, you know, don't.

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