never enough writing blogs

[frangipane003]

please keep writing. write poorly. write shitty stories no one likes. have your characters be shallow and wooden and awkward. bite your mean commenters with your pearly white teeth. just keep writing.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

*takes the hand of a period drama writer gently* A queen consort is not a queen regnant. A dowager queen is not a queen regnant either.

There is very little intrinsic institutional power in queenship. The power a consort, dowager, or queen mother has depends mostly on how much the reigning sovereign (usually a man) is willing to grant her. Needing a queen to serve as regent is exceptionally rare, and the regent is more often a male relative.

I know this is a bit of a bummer. I'm sorry.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

For clarity:

Queen regnant: woman who rules in her own right, not on behalf of someone else.

Regent: Someone who temporarily assumes the powers of the monarch on account of the monarch being too young or too incapacitated to govern.

Queen consort: Woman who is married to the monarch.

Dowager queen: Woman who was married to the monarch. The monarch is dead, and she is owed support as his widow.

Queen mother: Woman who is the mother of the monarch. Usually the dowager queen, though there are exceptions if there isn't a straight line of succession.

[spiralatria]

this 'being really tired after work' thing is really getting in the way of this 'pursuing my artistic hopes and dreams' thing has anyone else noticed this

[digitalkiddo]

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

[prismatic-bell]

Speaking as someone who currently has an antagonist committing food forgery, that FBI one is going to be a GOLD MINE, thank you.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

i NEED people to realise foreshadowing is. in fact. a literary device. and not a Bad Thing. the audience picking up on your hints is a Good Thing. because. it makes the story and it’s conclusion make sense. and some people will not see those but enjoy seeing them on a second read through. red herrings are one thing but if your novel consists of nothing but red herrings it’s not a coherent story it’s just a collection of paragraphs that don’t actually plausibly link to one another. you're not fighting with the audience you don’t look clever you look like you don’t know how basic fiction works. be vulnerable for once in your goddamn life and don't treat writing like a game to be won where the audience losing is a good thing.

[ineffectualdemon]

Getting to the end of a story and going "THE CLUES WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME!" is always joyous for me whether or not I picked up on the clues leading up

If I saw the clues and caught the hints then yes! I am clever and me and the author/creator/artist etc were in on it together the whole time!

If I didn't notice the clues or got fooled but can clearly see them in hindsight then "Ha! You won this time storyteller! I am delighted by this game we play!' and then I enjoy putting the pieces together afterwards and enjoying how clever it was. I feel like the creator respects me as an audience

If there is a "twist" that comes with 0 clues or foreshadowing at all I'm annoyed. I'm pissed off. I feel like I'm being condescended to and patronised. It's not clever or interesting and makes me annoyed I ended up caring about characters and plot points that ended up meaningless.

Because it's not that these stories don't have foreshadowing or plot clues. They just abandon it for a "surprising twist"

A story that pays off the clues is letting me into the fun and makes a participant in the story

A story that just gives me a "shock" but no pay off is telling me not to engage or get attached or care. So why would I watch?

[s-n-arly]

OMG! THIS!

Random plot twists that don't connect to anything in the story are not clever. If we don't see it coming because the writer didn't provide any clues, they aren't clever and it's totally unsatisfying (and I will NEVER read this writer again). These clues need not be lit up in neon with a parade of elephants and showgirls. But they need to be present

I'm a writer and am rarely surprised. Often, if I am surprised it's because the writer was a dumbass and included a "twist" that makes no sense (and therefore isn't really a twist, it's just random bullshit). If a writer genuinely surprises me, without being an absolute dumbass, I am FUCKING DELIGHTED! I will tell everyone I know to read the book/see the movie/watch the show.

[ardentmystacina]

Foreshadowing is the reward for paying attention. It's the story letting you in on the secret like a co-conspirator because you're the clever little audience member who has been picking up on the clues the writer has been setting up.

It even makes watching/reading again more worthwhile because if you didn't notice the foreshadowing the first time you have the joy of being able to notice the things you missed!

[brainstreams]

C.S. Lewis' advice on how to become a better writer; 1959.

[nondelphic]

i’m not procrastinating. i’m allowing the story to ferment. like kimchi. or a crime scene

[pupucino]

follow your dreams at a sustainable pace

[alhilton]

500 words a day gets the novel written

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

please please please please reblog if you’re a writer and have at some point felt like your writing is getting worse. I need to know if I’m the only one who’s struggling with these thoughts

[yogi-bogey-box]

this is a common phenomenon. the better you get, the more you recognize flaws. the good thing is you can strive to get better. but the bad thing is that you see nothing but flaws. you are actually getting better, but your editing/critical brain is getting tuned up and can see more things to improve. someone post the graph, I can't find it

[yogi-bogey-box]

nvm I found it myself:

"art" can mean any creative endeavor and it definitely applies to writing.

[feathernotes]

if you're writing your story and you think 'hm, this might be too weird' Wrong. Make it weirder

[spookyboywhump]

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 🫡

[spookyboywhump]

I guess that the whole point of this post at the end of the day is that finding out smth weird and gruesome and fucked up was written by a woman makes me go YAY! YIPPEE! GOOD FOR HER! And I don’t think a person writing fictional things regardless of their gender means they inherently condone it in real life. Of course an author’s writing can expose their personal biases, that’s true of every writer, but given my own blog, I don’t think anyone writing anything means They Personally Want To Do It

[luna-azzurra]

I genuinely cannot explain to a non-writer what it feels like when a chapter suddenly clicks. it's not satisfaction. it's not relief. it's this horrible specific feeling like you just remembered something you never knew. like the story was already there and you finally stopped being in the way of it. i don't know what to do with that feeling. i just close the laptop and stare at the wall for a bit.

[gr8writingtips]

writing tip #4156:

if you have to use ai, make sure you... wait a second. why do you have to use ai? what possible situation means you cannot write it yourself? is there a gun to your head? 'have to' use ai. that's a good one. fuck off

[asynca]

Write that one-shot. Those 3 chapters will be the best 10 chapters you ever wrote

[striving-artist]

We need to fricking stop with this CinemaSins TVTropes style crap in fandom. Actually, we need to stop that attitude in all creative fields, but I'm talking about fic right now.

I have seen many posts ragging on over-used phrases in fanfic, and yes, I find 'cerulean orbs' deeply strange, but if I ever said anything hateful on the topic I wish I hadn't.

You know why we say 'smirk' a lot in fic? cause its faster than 'gave a tiny smile to one side with their lips closed, a little cocky and provocative' Smirk is an easy way of saying it. It's the correct word. We say it in fic a lot because people smirk a lot in real life. Go people watch, its all over. Also. Bring me a true synonym for smirk, and I'll use that instead, but these ain't it.

If you have a better way of saying 'took off his shoes without untying them, just levered the heel with the toe of the other' that isn't saying 'he toed off his shoes' I'd love to hear it. Cause that phrase is perfect for it.

'Huffed a laugh'? Yeah, they did. Cause I'm not going to spend extra words describing how they 'exhaled through their nose once, amused, but not enough to fully laugh aloud' Its a specific action. You think people don't do that all day? five bucks says its exactly what you do when you see a meme most of the time. You didn't lol. You huffed a laugh.

The idea that something that's been used before is inherently less valuable is ridiculous. Same with the inverse.

If the phrase you want to use is common or widely used, but is the best way to communicate it? Use it. Don't fall for this trap that is currently consuming hollywood. You don't have to have a clever twist just because 'they survived and were happy' is a trope. You don't have to use some insane alternate phrase just because someone thinks fandom uses 'smirk' too much.

And, as always, if someone gives you hell and you don't want to fight them? let me know, cause I volunteer.

[bucketofdeltav]

So my beta reader for the Big Fics is an astrophysicist, right. Who is currently also writing a hard sci-fi novel about the exploration of Phobos (more power to them, I cannot with the physics required for that, best I can do is soft sci-fi/fantasy and that reminds me I should finish that story).

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

It's still in the debugging phase (last error fixed: every planet wants to have a population of exactly 5000 regardless of other factors, turned out to be a missing equals sign somewhere), but I'm psyched for this and trying to gauge interest for how high a priority 'make this an accessible web tool' needs to be.

[melyzard]

[elodieunderglass]

@bucketofdeltav says the URL is here: http://tumblr.com/star-system-generator

okay it has its own blog now (@star-system-generator) on Tumblr

Follow @star-system-generator and get more of the good stuff by joining Tumblr today. Dive in!

[rozzed]

why not have the reader re-read a sentence now and then? it won't hurt him....