Sometimes, despite enjoying writing so much, something is not working for you. Maybe your well of ideas has run dry. Or your WIP has hit a corner and you can't find your way out to the end of the story. Or you need to go back to your finished draft and see if there are any kinks to clear up.
Fortunately, everyone at Writeblrcafé has experienced such, and to help you out, we have a bunch of links to helpful posts by fellow writers to help you along on your writing journey as well as some helpful links to other websites, resources and software.
General:
WHY IS WRITING IS SO FUCKING HARD? (@writers-hq)
Writer Block First Aid Kit (@isabellestone)
Websites for writers (masterpost @2soulscollide)
Writing advice (masterpost @theliteraryarchitect)
Writing resources (masterpost @stinastar)
One look thesaurus (a reverse dictionary where you can enter words or concepts)
Coming Up with Ideas:
97 Character Motivations (@theplottery)
Character Flaws (@fantasyfillsmysoul)
Character Profile (@mistblossomdesigns)
Characters Unflawed (@emptymanuscript)
Why Theme is More Important than Plot (@theplottery)
Weekly writing prompts on Reedsy
Drafting:
3 of the worst story beginnings (and how to fix them) (@theplottery)
Cheat Sheet for Writing Emotion (@myhoniahaka)
Creative Writing for Writers (@writerscreed)
Describing Physical Things (@wordsnstuff)
How to Craft a Natural Plot (@theplottery)
How to Write a Story? (masterpost @creativepromptsforwriting)
How to write: ethnicity & skin colour (@youneedsomeprompts)
What the F is Show Not Tell (@theplottery)
Writing advice from my uni teachers (@thewritingumbrellas)
First Draft: story outlining template meant to help with planning your next big writing project (@fauxriot)
The wonder/ discovery arc (@evelynmlewis)
How to structure a chapter (@theplottery)
How to pace your storytelling (@charlesoberonn)
How to write and research mental illness (@hayatheauthor)
Seven Blogs You Need To Read As An Author (@hayatheauthor)
Editing/Revising:
Eight steps in making the editing process of your book easier (@joaneunknown)
Chill Subs: biggest database for literary magazines and small presses; track your submissions and get your writing published!
5 steps to get your novel ready to self-publish (by @nanowrimo)
Resources for finishing and publishing your novel (masterpost by @nanowrimo)
For self-publishing: this page gives you the exact pixel count of a book spine based on its page count, and/or a template you can use for the correct width/height ratio.
Software:
Scrivener: one time payment of $60 or 70€ (macOS/windows), $24 (iOS; no Euro listed for iOS); used by professionals, many tools to write and organize your novel
Bibisco: free and "pay what you want" version; multilingual, world building, character profiles, writing goals, story timeline, mind maps, notes and more templates to write a novel.
Manuskript: free open source-tool; outliner, novel assistant, distraction-free mode
Ghostwriter: a free and open alternative which has a decent interface with some interesting features, like Hemingway Mode, which disables one's backspace and delete keys, emulating a typewriter.
NaNoWriMo: an international contest to encourage writers to finish writing their novel with many events, groups for exchange with fellow writers, helpful writing advice and help for self-publishing and publishing traditionally.
Campfire Writing: website, desktop app, and mobile app, with tools built in to help manage characters, magic systems, research, etc. It has a great free option, plus monthly, annual, and lifetime purchase options. It also has built-in NaNoWriMo compatibility and a catalogue of tutorials and writing advice videos (suggestion by @harfblarf)
Websites And Writing Apps Every Author Needs In 2023 (@hayatheauthor)
Let us know in the comments if there are any links we could add to it! Reblog this post to help a fellow writer.
Support our work by buying a cup of coffee on KoFi.
hlv casually saying “though in many ways, crossdressing would have been a wiser path for you” and then ending with “sherlock is actually a girl’s name” said in place of a love confession ok
Keeping in mind I’ve mostly seen Sherlock through gifs and stills… the more I think about it the more I’m convinced the writers’ kink was queerbaiting and they wrote all those scenes with one hand cranking it
"I havent actually watched the show so I have no idea what Im talking about but Ill still just believe the popular queerbaiting narrative and spreading that harmful narrative instead of watching it and making my own opinions I rather just follow groupthink"
Your tags are so true @crayycrayon I completely agree hope its fine i react here. People just take what is the popular opinion and run with it instead of thinking critically for themselves and making their own opinion. People make outrageous claims that its "homophobic" etc without even being able to actually tell why because they just absorbed that opinion from a bad take on Tumblr. Critical thinking becomes rarer sadly
And the show was made 14 years ago (god i feel old) and people tend to forget that it was a different time for media, especially queer media and that it wasnt in the public domain yet. Other Sherlock adaptions got into legal trouble for "making sherlock respect women and be emotional" so what kind of legal trouble would have that brought to the producers? Like nowadays you can make characters obviously gay and also let the characters say it out loud so its clear, but in the past subtext needed to be used. And sherlock even said girlfriends arent his area he indirectly came out but people still claim it was "queerbaiting" because he didnt loudly exclaim to be gay or shagged watson in front of the camera...just observe, people.
(Well The Game is over a year ago, if you want to be technical about it)
I finally took the time to write up my notes and reactions to the original BBC Sherlock Escape Room Experience! Sorry in advance if things are a little vague at points, we only played through the room once and am mostly running off of iphone notes I wrote 13 months ago. I hope to be able to go back to try out the new Mind of Moriarty room during its run, if this one was anything to go by, it should be a fun time!
My usual disclaimer that while this is a TJLC slanted writeup, I'm just playing The Game for fun at this point, I really am not expecting any of this to lead anywhere. Enjoy your television responsibly, don't idolize television writers, eat your veggies, etc. etc. etc. And spoilers for the room, obviously.
Oh, and huge thank you to @watermotif @betweendoctorsanddetectives and @647763 (and her girlfriend) for playing the room with me! I had a blast suffering with you all <3
The way I'm getting myself to finally actually write this up is by telling myself it's okay if my thoughts are a little informal, especially after this long, so this is going to be written the way I usually structure my outlines in the format of chaotic bullet points. Hopefully it's still readable!
I'm starting my recap of the experience outside of the escape room itself, which was located in what was, for all intents and purposes, a random, abandoned seeming mall in London (it wasn't actually abandoned malls are just like that now)
So imagine you are just walking through what looks exactly like your local, very dead, mall, when there's just this massive wall with dark damask wall paper and the most DFP Sherlock quotes you can conceive of plastered on it. Think "I may be on the side of the angels but don't think for a second I am one of them" "heroes don't exist and if they did I wouldn't be one of them" "I'm a high functioning sociopath" etc. It's already hilarious
You come around the corner from that and there's the gated off "Doyle's Optometrist" office, where you have to page in (I think we had to state our group name, I can't remember exactly how we got in)
Once you're inside the staff helping you are named Stamford. Yes like Mike Stamford. Yes all of them. If you didn't know you were in for psychological torment, you do now
[brief intermission here because some of us arrived early, so they actually let us through to the Mind Palace bar while we waited. It was pretty cool, apart from the guy working there being really pushy about ordering drinks. The bar is Victorian themed with framed pictures from TAB and the biggest one in the room, like by far, was a framed picture of Sherlock and Moriarty's little gun standoff, so you know, that was fun.]
[here we are trying to be normal about it]
[also I went to the bathroom at this point and there was a little sign in the stall which said that the Sherlock theme song was exactly the right length to wash you hands to which was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my life]
Anyway back to the intended order of the experience, Stamford led us back to the optometrist waiting room where we sat calmly while John Watson's voice read out random advertisements. (The only one of these I wrote down was "the eyes are the legs of the face" because it was so random, but there was a set of them)
Also as you will see in the following picture, the posters in here were Bananas
(In case you can't see it since it's small in dash, the purple one behind Mia says "Doyle's Audiographs: for those who hear but don't listen" very evocative of the "I did tell you but did you listen" motif, 0/10 very infuriating)
Stamford came over at this point and brought us back and gave us the rules, which included no photography so photos end here unfortunately
So we were taken to a projector room where John Watson addressed the players, saying that while it says the office belongs to Doyle, this is actually a front for one of Mycroft's plans (ha ha ha (deadpan)) and that he's coopted John into helping. (hah. do you get it? the author and the narrator? hillarious)
It was so clear that Martin did not want to be there. Like yes John in character also doesn't want to be there but Martin literally looked like he was being held at gunpoint. His eyes were dead. Poor guy.
Stamford led us through another room into the 221B living room! Being in here was surreal. Because there are a few groups lumped together at this point, we had a bit of time to look around the room. Rachel found a book about fetishes on the mantle, which was something.
We took our group picture, they let you pick from a few props. I went for the white queen chess piece for Dracula reasons and got bullied into wearing the deerstalker, which was homophobic.
Also the skull was the Yorick version, and I took a moment to stare into ACD's eyes, out of respect, as one does.
At this point the game proper begins! Sherlock's voice comes on (Ben is not on camera other than one brief exception which we will be coming back to later) and starts prepping us for our mission.
I don't remember the context but I think while telling us to be careful in the flat he told us "don't scrape your knees, or do." which was funny considering "the state of her knees"
Mycroft then addresses the audience (hah) only to be interrupted by Moriarty (hah) hacking the TV (hah hah hah)
The mirror above the fireplace? Also turns into a TV that Moriarty hacks. Ha. Ha ha ha ha.
Moriarty informs us that he has kidnapped Mycroft so the point of the game is to save Mycroft from Moriarty (I was fighting the urge to bash my head against the walls of 221b at this point, like I was expecting M Theory but like Come On you're killing me here)
You may be wondering how exactly Moriarty has kidnapped Mycroft considering he is dead. Great question! You don't get an answer apart from Moriarty saying "remember I am definitely dead" in the most sarcastic voice I have ever heard come out of Andrew Scott's mouth. Full psychological warfare at this point. Having a great time. The usual.
Also at this point, while talking about Mycroft, Moriarty compares him to Sherlock, and he definitely listed off a bunch of things but the part that most stood out was he said verbatim "Mycroft is like Sherlock without the fangirls or sex appeal" so uh. Um. Yeah. M Theory Time!!! All Aboard!!! Choo Choo!!!!
We were taken to the first of our three puzzle rooms: the morgue at St. Bart's. Moriarty is introducing the room and jokingly refers to the brief time he spent dating Molly, lets us know that our goal is to break into the computer system (a development which had me thrilled, you know I love the Moriarty as a Virus angle)
Not one full minute after Moriarty joked about Molly being his cover, Molly voice over talks to John (who by the way has a beard at this point, that I had not mentioned) and goes "nice beard!" Hah. Hah.
To get into the computer we needed to put in a date, I don't remember the context for this puzzle but the answer was 2012, the year of Season 2.
The case in the middle of the room then lights up and you're able to see the corpse. On the computer, a database comes in, and in order to get into the server, we need to fill out a series of questions about the identity of the corpse.
One of the filters is the relationship status of the corpse with three options, single, married m/f, and married m/m. I let out the most exhausted sigh of my entire life and hit married m/m without even looking at the corpse. (we briefly removed it because the room was giving us clues out of order that made us think for a moment that this was wrong, it was not, the corpse is gay, you have to not assume he's straight. Do you get it?) (war and strife on the planet earth)
So the clue for that is that the corpse has the name Stephen tattooed on him (really? of all the names? Stephen????) and you're meant to figure out that he wouldn't get a tattoo of his own name. Or just be so mentally exhausted that you intrinsically know the corpse is going to be gay because of course he is.
If that wasn't enough, the corpse was also a member of the Royal Navy who was left handed. Hi John.
At this point my friends in the room with me pointed me up to the TV in the corner, which was showing random news feed but the ticker tap at the bottom was advertising BBC Dracula, which was fun.
When we were finally getting into the cage the server was in, Moriarty kept ominously chanting "let me in"
Again, don't remember the context, but one of the clues in this room was identifying the heart
We discovered the corpse died of a horrific virus (hah) just as Moriarty hacked into the server thanks to us (once again was genuinely enjoying the code stuff, this is a 10/10 from me, makes fadow better for everyone who has done this silly escape room sdhgakjdsg)
The second room was Mycroft's underground office and our task from Moriarty was to locate where his agents were stationed throughout the world and once again send off his virus. I was giggling.
Flipping around with switches on Mycroft's desk, we found that the mirrors on either side of the room were actually windows! Because of course they were!
Sherlock comes in with a clue at this point and lets us know something to the effect of "Mycroft likes to hide clues in photographs" which was uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... normal.
Those are my only notes for this room and I don't remember literally anything else about it so sorry about that on to....
The final room: The Victorian Operating Theater! Oh boy!!!
Moriarty has been using us to access the genetic code (hah) for a virus (hah) last scene in the Victorian Era (hahahahahahahaa). He literally phrases it as "an old treasure brought into the modern day." Hillarious.
Then the absolute highlight of the experience: there's this giant console thing in the middle of the room that comes to life with all these screens, and on them including Moriarty taunting us and, the absolute 12/10 winner, footage of Sherlock wandering around 221B. This is the only Ben footage you get and not only does it confirm the "Moriarty is always spying on Sherlock" part of M Theory, it's very similar to the wall of monitors I came up with for fadow. Fellow Moriarty fan Mia and I were dying at this as much as we were able to while still trying to solve the room.
Moriarty freed Mycroft but had infected us with the virus (this is why I joke that Moriarty gave me COVID, because I caught it this day and it might as well have been from him)
His plan was to unleash the virus on the world unless we could stop him
This room was more physical puzzles than mental, and we had to cure the brain, the heart, and the lungs respectively. The brain and the heart are obviously big Sherlock meta staples so since then I've been like "why the lungs tho?" My best guess is it has something to do with breathing new life into an old story, but that's just a guess
While we were solving it and making progress Moriarty came on to rant something like "the game was over! You should have known when to give up!" Flames, flames on the side of my face.
When we won, Sherlock insulted us, but Mycroft then came on to compliment our efforts and talents, which was a great way to leave off.
Apparently only 20% of people actually solve the room, and we were in the top 20% of that, all while trying to take in the meta of it all, go League of Furies!!!
Final thoughts: this really was like if watching the show was a thing you could live through in real time. If you've ever wanted to be tormented by Mofftiss in a more visceral way, this room is exactly what you're looking for. Also shoutout to Andrew, who acted his absolute heart out, 15/10 thanks for all the M Theory, it was delicious
Also once again to reiterate, I can't believe James Moriarty gave me COVID, after all I have done for him, rest in pieces except he isn't even dead all the way.
I guess 4 months of not being able to breathe fully was the real lungs meta all along.
Can't wait for the Mind of Moriarty game next though for real, that's gonna be Bonkers, if one of the scenes is a virtual version of the waterfall scene from TAB I think I would combust on the spot
Thanks for reading!!! Sorry this took me forever only to be such a casual writeup in the end, but hopefully this recreation of my mental breakdown in a mall was entertaining.
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