UnknownSprings

I'm just a rando who's reads lots of fics and fictional books. With a passion of creating art, poems, and short stories (well more like fics🤭)

[luna-azzurra]

Ways to Describe Hands!! <3

[livelaughwriteit]

What happens when your character realizes they're in love...

Here are some things that may happen when your character realizes they are in love with someone. These can be totally obvious or be super subtle. I think that can depend on your character's mannerisms and personality! Have fun writing!

Notice everything. They start to notice things about the other person. Have freak outs when they notice they notice. They notice nervous ticks, small details no one else notices, patterns.

Hyperawareness. They become hyperaware of their own bodies and what they are doing as well as the other person’s body. They are unable to think about anything other than how close the person is. What they smell like.

They may change their behavior. They may become mean, guarded or distant. They may embrace it, try to see how the other person feels. All that matters is nothing is as natural as it had felt like before. They may realize they want to share everything with that person or notice that they have been sharing everything and stop. Inconsistencies may occur where they are normal one day and distant the next while they try to make it appear like everything is the same.

Self-sabotage. Not all characters will do this, sometimes they will. They might think that the relationship will never happen and that it is doomed before it starts. It may cause them to pull away even more, stop hanging out and “protect” themselves but ultimately push the other person away. Silence becomes deafening and everything is a sign of whether the other person feels the same.

[ss-writess]

“You are not easy to love. You are intense, complicated, frightening sometimes. Unfortunately for me, that only makes me love you more.”

[that-blowncandle]

[literaryvein]

a typography edit of the piece, "Decomposition & Other Types of Poetry", from my debut writing collection [get a copy HERE] [or PDF]; animation from Castle in the Sky (1986) —L. V.

[livelaughwriteit]

Ways to describe your characters face

If I have to read about the perfectly angular face of the MMC I swear to gosh I will...continue reading it because I'm a sucker for a cliche. Anyways, here are some other words to use instead.

Bloated

Sharp

Bony

Chiseled

Delicate

Soft / feminine

Elongated

Pinched

Hawkish

Narrow

Ratlike

Round

Sunken

Square

Wide

Wrinkly

Are there any that you guys hate or wish you saw more of?

[literaryvein]

made a typography edit of "Quietism." from my debut writing collection [get a copy HERE] [or PDF]; animation from Arrietty (2010) —L. V.

[unknownsprings]

Just saw this in Twitter/X and I had to post it like-- LOOK HOW RAIDEN IS LOOKING AT LIU, AND THE CLOSENESS!? I REMEMBER THIS SCENE IN MK95 THINKING HOW RAIDEN JUST TUGS HIM CLOSE IN SUCH A TENDER WAY LIKE--AGHHEDGYEGDEW, HOW TF CAN I NOT SHIP THIS 😍😭🫶

[livelaughwriteit]

Character's Hair

To be honest, I don't want to hear about the characters doing complex hair styles. A lot of the ones I've seen are not realistic and seem silly to me. Here are some other options to describe hair:

Bald

Braided

Bristly

Cropped

Curly

Ringlets

Disheveled

Dreadlocks

Filthy

Matted

Frizzy

Greasy

Limp

Long

Short

Mohawk

Oily

Up-do

Pony tail

Half up half down

Silky

Topknot

Messy

Wavy

Wispy

Tussled

Poofy

[wishesbythesea]

Mahmoud Darwish

[bitesizedpoetry]

Sylvia Plath, "Three Women"

[elizabethsinclair]

elizabeth s.

[livelaughwriteit]

Writing Sexual Tension

Some tips and tricks I’ve seen on Tumblr, on Pinterest or have learned the hard way while writing. These are pretty basic but sometimes basic is good!

Realizing they can feel the person touching them. Maybe they’re not touching but they can feel the warmth.

Accidentally saying something flirty and both of you freeze. Or saying something flirty and the other person panicking and running away

Eyes dropping to lips. Eyes looking them up and down. Eyes unable to look away. Eyes unable to make contact without blushing. Eyes are you best friend.

Mirroring. When people have crushes or like someone (or want someone to like them) they do what is called mirroring. If character 1 crosses their arms and character 2 has a crush on them, have character 2 cross their arms too.

New Girl taught me about toes. If their feet are facing you, they want to stay. If their feet are pointed away, they want to leave. I’ve found its not always true but its something you can mention or use.

Unable to stop smiling. Unable to stop laughing.

Touching the other one when you laugh. Touching them to move them out of the way. Touching them and not moving your hand away

Hugging them when you see them. Sharing a bed. Trying to be near them at all moments.

Looking at their lips and fantasizing about kissing them.

Watching others interact in some way with them or how they act around them and being super jealous, wondering why they don’t act that way with you.

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Injuries! (AGAIN)

Your action hero just got shot in the shoulder, stitched it up in a motel bathroom, and is now running through a forest. I need you to know that a shoulder wound severs muscle, nerves, and sometimes bone, and the human body's response to that is not "mild wincing followed by full range of motion." here is what injuries actually do to peoplee...

⊹ Adrenaline is REAL and it does allow people to do extraordinary things immediately after injury, BUT it is a loan, not a gift. you borrow the function and you pay it back later with interest. Your character might genuinely be able to run for twenty minutes after being stabbed. and then the adrenaline drops and everything the body was delaying arrives all at once. the collapse is NOT weakness. it's biology collecting its debt. write the debt collection. it's more interesting than the heroic sprint anyway.

⊹ Blood loss changes cognition before it drops you. you don't go from "fine" to "unconscious." you go through a whole middle stage of confusion, poor decision-making, emotional dysregulation, a strange calm, tunnel vision, difficulty forming sentences. Your injured character making a bad call, saying something they normally wouldn't, becoming suddenly and inexplicably gentle--that's blood loss. use the middle stage. it's dramatically rich and almost nobody writes it.

⊹ Recovery has a timeline and the timeline is long and boring and inconvenient to plot. a broken rib takes six weeks and during those six weeks sneezing is a genuine emergency. a concussion means no screens, no reading, no bright lights, and symptoms can persist for months. a stab wound to the abdomen means weeks of infection risk, limited mobility, and a specific kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. Your character being sidelined and frustrated and useless for a long time is not a narrative problem. it's the story.

⊹ Pain also affects personality in ways writers skip. chronic pain makes people short-tempered and then guilty about being short-tempered. it makes concentration difficult. it makes intimacy complicated, both emotional and physical. a character who was patient and warm before their injury and is now snappy and withdrawn is not a character regression. they're in pain. pain is exhausting in ways that don't show on the outside. the people around them noticing and not knowing how to help is a whole story in itself.

[luna-azzurra]

Setting & Atmosphere Ideas!! 

𐙚⋆.˚ The smell that hits before anything is seen 

𐙚⋆.˚ How a room feels different at 3am vs. 3pm 

𐙚⋆.˚ The sound that's only noticeable when everything else goes quiet 

𐙚⋆.˚ Light quality, yellow and warm vs. cold and fluorescent 

𐙚⋆.˚ The thing that's slightly wrong about an otherwise normal space 

𐙚⋆.˚ Temperature as mood (the specific chill of a hospital, the thick heat of a fight) 

𐙚⋆.˚ What a space says about the person who lives in it 

𐙚⋆.˚ The background noise that tells you exactly where you are 

𐙚⋆.˚ Weather that mirrors without being too obvious about it 

𐙚⋆.˚ The one detail a character notices that reveals what they're looking for 

𐙚⋆.˚ How familiar places look different after something changes 

𐙚⋆.˚ The texture of things: rough, worn, too-new, cold metal 

𐙚⋆.˚ Empty spaces that feel occupied. Occupied spaces that feel hollow. 

𐙚⋆.˚ The way sound travels differently in grief vs. joy 

𐙚⋆.˚ Objects that carry history without explaining it 

𐙚⋆.˚ The specific ugly of a beautiful place when you're in the wrong mood 

𐙚⋆.˚ Noticing the exit first (what that says about a character) 

𐙚⋆.˚ The before-storm stillness applied to non-weather moments 

𐙚⋆.˚ How a space shrinks when tension fills it 

𐙚⋆.˚ The detail so specific it makes everything around it feel real

[luna-azzurra]

Ways to write Slow Burn Romance!!

┈୨୧┈ Give them reasons they CAN'T be together that aren't just manufactured drama. Not miscommunication. Not love triangles. Not arbitrary "I push people away" trauma with no real exploration. Give them REAL obstacles: they're on opposite sides of a conflict, timing is wrong, there are actual consequences to being together, they have incompatible life goals, there's a power imbalance they need to resolve first. The obstacles should be meaningful and require actual character growth to overcome, not just a conversation.

┈୨୧┈ Make the friendship foundation SO STRONG that readers ship them before the romance even starts. They should genuinely LIKE each other. They should have inside jokes. They should seek each other out just to hang out. They should trust each other. They should have fun together. When the romantic feelings start developing, it should feel like "oh no, I don't want to ruin this friendship" because the friendship is genuinely valuable. Readers should be able to believe they'd still choose to be in each other's lives even if romance never happened.

┈୨୧┈ Let the tension BUILD in layers over time. First they notice each other. Then they start seeking excuses to be near each other. Then they start getting jealous. Then they start having Moments. Then they start thinking about each other constantly. Then comes the almost-kisses. Then the accidental intimacy. Then the barely-hidden feelings. Each phase should have time to breathe before moving to the next level. Slow burn means SLOW - readers should be desperate for them to get together LONG before they actually do.

┈୨୧┈ Show how they change each other gradually. He starts smiling more because of her. She becomes braver because he believes in her. They adopt each other's habits and phrases. They start to see the world differently because of the other person's influence. Slow burn is about showing two people gradually becoming essential to each other's lives. They should be woven into each other's character development, not separate from it.

┈୨୧┈ Make the payoff WORTH the wait. After chapters or books of tension, the moment they finally get together should be EARNED and SATISFYING. A CONVERSATION where they're finally honest. A moment where they choose each other despite the obstacles. A confession that feels like a dam breaking. The first kiss should feel like the conclusion of a long journey and the beginning of something new. Readers have been waiting for this, so make it count. Make it feel like YES, THIS WAS WORTH IT.

[writersisland]

Things to do with your characters to flesh them out

Write fanfics / AUs about them

Answer personality tests as if you were them

Do various Picrews or other dress up games

Write AITA posts from their perspective

Build their wardrobe by creating/collecting outfits

Figure out their perfume/scent using the search by notes function on fragrantica

Put together a playlist of songs that they would listen to

Create a family tree for them on familyecho.com

Make a concept album for a singer au, with a cover and songs they would write and sing

Create a “What’s in my bag?’ for them

Design their home in homebyme.com

Fill out character templates

Roleplay as them with other people on oc social network (no ai involved or even allowed!)

Design (fake) social media pages for them (Zeeob for most social medias and texting, PhotoNote for fake instagram, Twinote for fake twitter, TweetGen for tweets and replies, Classtools Fakebook for fake facebook, …)