How many seconds in eternity?

Tyne | writer of fantasy, drama & poems | any pronouns

[tyne-sharrow]

Writeblr Introduction

Hello all, I’d love to be a more active member in the writing community to motivate myself to write more, so I’m looking for some people to follow and reblog from! I love tag games and asks of all kind, so feel free to interact with this post!

About my writing:

I write mostly high fantasy, character-driven stories that focus on personal, morally grey struggles

Almost all of it is inspired by mythology & folktales, many characters have one (or multiple) literary allusions

Lots of influences from dark romanticism, horror, gothic novels, classical tragedies. Very much lost in the romantic yearning for the unknown. Facing the horrors, failing to conquer them, grasping for the hope between...

Some sci-fi inspirations, although I personally haven't written much for it yet. I especially adore all dystopian settings, whether that be steampunk, dieselpunk or cyberpunk.

Romance often isn’t the direct focus, but a nice little subplot that ties into the larger narrative. Overall focus is more on platonic relationships (esp. in ensemble casts & in a queer light)

About me:

My name’s Tyne, I’m in my early 20s and studying English. I harbor lots of love for languages, myths and classical texts, although ancient languages fascinate me the most. I also love drawing, painting, making music (soundtracks/leitmotifs mostly) and playing video games (mostly rpgs, simulations & strategy). I also often illustrate the characters in my WIPs :)

I hope to publish my current project Vestige someday, as it’s a story that’s very dear to my heart and has been floating around my head for years now.  I’ve been coming up with stories since I was little so I’m hoping to see a few of them realized someday.

WIPs:

Vestige:

high fantasy character drama;

a bereft grim reaper is ordered to solve a maiden's curse of immortal amnesia. Together they journey through an art noveau and steampunk inspired world with fey-like gods, divine contracts and punishments that have long been forgotten. As they rush to overturn fate, they gradually piece their broken selves back together. (Intro TBA)

[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.

[ineedthesons]

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

[tarysande]

Editor here.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

“It was rainy.” Versus: “The rain pounded against the roof.” Or “The rain howled like an injured animal.” Or “The rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.” All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.

[the-haiku-bot]

This is also where

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[aridante]

Michael Kinnucan, The Gods Show Up

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Dunno how to put it properly into words but lately I find myself thinking more about that particular innocence of fairy tales, for lack of better word. Where a traveller in the middle of a field comes across an old woman with a scythe who is very clearly Death, but he treats her as any other auntie from the village. Or meeting a strange green-skinned man by the lake and sharing your loaf of bread with him when he asks because even though he's clearly not human, your mother's last words before you left home were to be kind to everyone. Where the old man in the forest rewards you for your help with nothing but a dove feather, and when you accept even such a seemingly useless reward with gratitude, on your way home you learn that it's turned to solid gold. Where supernatural beings never harm a person directly and every action against humans is a test of character, and every supernatural punishment is the result of a person bringing on their own demise through their own actions they could have avoided had they changed their ways. Where the hero wins for no other reason than that they were a good person. I don't have the braincells to describe this better right now but I wish modern fairy tales did this more instead of trying to be fantasy action movies.

[beaft]

"In [fairy tales], power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness - from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sown among the meek is harvested in crisis."

-Rebecca Solnit

[geryone]

Poet Ocean Vuong sifts through the aftershock of grief in 'Time Is a Mother'

[papenathys]

Absolutely insane lines to just drop in the middle of an academic text btw. Feeling so normal about this.

[ A Critical History of English Literature, Vol. 1, Prof. David Daiches, first published in 1960 ]

[arcanetrivia]

[Transcript of image text:

The tragedy of Hamlet, as in some degree of Othello, is that moral outrage demands action when no action can be of any use. In a sense, we can say that the ghost was at fault in appearing to Hamlet in the first place and setting him--for what might be called purely selfish reasons--a task which. even if accomplished, could do no pssible good. When Hamlet's whole nature was outragd by his mother's and then by the news Of his father's murder, he naturally felt that something must be done. But what? What could be done that would make any difference--any at all to the things that really mattered? Would a dagger through Claudius' ribs restore Hamlet's shattered universe? Would it restore his earlier idealized image of his mother or renove the "blister" that had been set on his innocent love? This is a tragedy of moral frustration. What are you going to do about past crimes which have shattered your preconceptions the nature of life? There is nothing you can ever do about the past, excwpt forget it. And yet, of course, Hamlet could not forget. Revenge is no real help--what sort of action, then, is of help? None that is directed toward undoing the past: only purposive action directed toward the future can ever help. And that is at least one explanation of Hamlet's long delay in carrying out the ghost's command: he wanted action that would undo the past, and no action could do that, revenge least of all, for that would only re-enact the past. The punishment can never fit the crime, for it can never undo it.

/end transcription]

[jgmartin]

i don't know who needs to hear this, but 'perfect' writing is a trap. all writing is subjective. what we create today, we may see as flawed tomorrow. what we see as flawed today, we may see as perfect tomorrow.

writing is the act of transmuting the human experience through words. and the human experience? it's a messy, chaotic thing filled with rough edges and uneven lines and mistakes and failures. you can erase all of that. you can. but then you're left with something sterile and artificial. you've effectively squeezed the soul out of your work, and i can think of nothing less appealing.

this isn't to say don't edit your work. please do. but keep it within reason, and make sure you're moving forward and not backward. momentum is key.

don't sit on an idea for three decades waiting for that dance with inspiration, or that dynamite first line, or that eureka plot twist, or the words to flow like magic from your fingertips. because it won't happen. and if it does, it'll strike like lightning and disappear twice as fast. the only surefire way to finish a story is to start.

so write. for the love of god, just write.

along the way, things will fall in line. i promise. and if they don't? then they already have. the magic of art is that everything we create is a snapshot of who we are at the time of creation. it's like a time capsule of human experience, and there's a beauty in that authenticity-- in the mistakes we make and the wrong turns we take. don't run from them. embrace them.

let their lessons flow through you and channel them into something tangible. if it's hard, then start with one word and keep going. don't erase it. don't start over. don't let yourself believe your story isn't worth telling because if you don't tell it, then no one else will. and that'd be a damn shame.

so one word a day. one sentence a week.

whatever it takes.

it might be tough letting go of the idea of perfect. silencing your inner editor. your inner critic. it might be tough realizing that your story will never meet your standards, not completely, but it won't be half as tough as looking back and wondering where all the days, weeks, and years went; that in the pursuit of perfection, you forgot to ever write a story at all.

so leave perfect behind. readers don't want it. why would they? they can't possibly relate to perfect-- none of us can.

instead, give readers a window to your imagination, stormclouds and all. you'll be surprised by how many stick around for the rain, how many relish the sound of your thunder, and how many cherish the worlds that only you could bring to life.

[metanarrates]

genuinely think that most bad takes on fiction online stem from the fact that people don't engage with fiction as a constructed art form and instead view it as somehow generated from the ether

[metanarrates]

a TONNNN of fandom people particularly begin and end their conversations with "[character] or [event] is problematic" or "[character]'s actions make no sense] or even "wow I love [character!!!]" without analyzing in the slightest what literary devices were employed and to what effect. this is kinda okay if you're just talking about a character you like, but it can still lead to pitfalls in your understanding of the overall story, and that's ESPECIALLY apparent with some "criticisms" i see of certain characters in stories.

bc guess what! characters are storytelling tools! they're fun, sure, and if you know me you know i LOVE to rotate some little guys in my brain. but characters, just like everything else, are elements of a broader story. and it can sometimes be a very reductive criticism to be like "[character] is a bad person" if you don't grasp that they were constructed by an author.

like okay, WHY are they a bad person? does the narrative condone their actions? are they presented uncritically as a good person? did the author intend for them to be seen as a bad person? are there biases, good or bad, in how the author presents this character, especially compared with other characters?

also: what role do they play in the broader narrative? do their actions have thematic weight? what about tone? is this work intended to be comedic or dramatic? does that make their actions have different weight due to that? why?

a story is not (usually) just a simple retelling of events that happened in an author's dream. characters and events are intentionally written. and sometimes they can pack quite a lot of unintentional baggage with them! but you have to start at base 1 of understanding that characters often exist in conversation with a work's themes before you can get to the real juicy criticisms

[antigonehappy]

character who is sun-coded but not in the traditional ray-of-sunshine way. character who is sun-coded in the sense that they burn hot and bright and powerful, that they're a raging fury of fire and passion, and that maybe, just maybe, they are destroying themselves as they do so.

[sam-glade]

[write-on-world]

[theplottery]

8 useful websites & apps for writers

Notion

Desktop app for organizing your notes with tons of views and functions - works like a mini personal website.

Ommwriter

A peaceful writing program with focus options and ambience settings - complete with typing sound effects!

Reedsy

A massive website for writers with tools, generators, prompts, programs, tips and services.

Figma

A free-form editable and collaborative mind-map interface, for laying all your notes out visually.

Novlr

Free online writing software with goal setting and thorough tracking options, now with in-app courses as well.

Freedom

Distraction-muting app that blocks attention-sucking websites for a set period of time.

Milanote

Another visual board organizer for your notes and plans.

Wordtune

Editing app to rephrase your sentences depending on length or tone.

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[deniselavestal-deactivated20231]

To my writers~

I see this all the time, so I’m here to remind you that your writing IS in fact worth it. YOU are worth it. Your STORIES are worth it. Your writing deserves love and you ARE good enough.

I know — we tend to be our own biggest critics. It’s a million times easier to doubt our own abilities than it is to boast about the things we’ve actually accomplished, but you’ve gotta cut yourself some slack.

We’re all equal here. Don’t you for a second think you’re not good enough to be considered a “worthy” writer. It’s not about skill. Just love for storytelling

[tyne-sharrow]

that moment when you find a song that fits your blorbo SO deep to the bone that you just keep looping it 24/7 as if that would extract them from your head onto the page if you listen long and hard enough

[romanceyourdemons]

i love when a character has something terrible happen to them and as a result they see themself as, essentially if not literally, a ghost. and so that means they only can (and have to) do what ghosts do, ie get revenge and then cease to exist. easy as that. but then halfway through this ghost vengeance they realize hey actually i might still be a human person. with human needs. that’s incredibly inconvenient, considering how much i’ve invested in this whole ghost thing

[sotrias-labyrinth-deactivated20]

I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.

[ellatholmes]

if you're an author I wish you a very bigolas dickolas

[tyne-sharrow]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! For a wip or wips of your choice: How different would your wip be if the main protagonist and the main antagonist swapped places? (--@space-writes)

So sorry for the delay in answering this, this was such a lovely surprise to receive in my inbox, thank you so much!

And this is a very juicy question, it's one I've thought about a lot before!

Because I haven't made a WIP Intro for Vestige yet, I'll try to keep this brief.

So, Vestige is a bit of a complicated case. I have a protagonist-duo, and in the first half of the story, there isn't really a "main" antagonist, at least not one that's a person.

The overall enemy / hindrance is the circumstance that hinders my protagonists from developing; for protag1, that's her curse that resets her memory, for protag2, it's his grief of losing his loved one.

Both are dire reminders and anxieties that are constantly looming over their heads. Those are their main obstacles in that arc, ones that both try to help each other overcome.

Now, if you were to swap these hindrances (curse<=>grief) among the duo while still keeping their roles...

You would end up with VERY different types of characters. A reaper that's cursed to be an amnesiac, and an immortal woman who's lost countless people in her life... This set-up suggests a very different type of plot as well, likely one that's less about breaking the curse and seeking hope, and far more about living with and exploring grief; about accepting fate rather than fighting it.

It would also likely be a far shorter novel, haha.

If you were to swap their roles entirely (bereft reaper <=> immortal amnesiac), then the original plot wouldn't change at all, just their characteristics. That's because their roles & hindrances in the story were determined first, and the type of person they are was a consequence of that.

Now for the second half of Vestige...I sadly have to shut my mouth here ;)