stuck bw shit writing and procrastinatio

my headspace in written form ((header&icon belongs to @daisukirichard))

[vagabondneko]

Damn i forgot this account exists

[vagabondneko]

I am so tired of being so sad all the fucking time

[writeroftheprompts]

WriterofthePrompts Ultimate Ask Masterlist

I’ve decided to make a masterlist of asks I’ve done to make them easier to find for you guys (and for myself). I split them into categories as best as I could by genre and topic. Also, some asks have some helpful tips in the notes as well to check out (some are marked but not all) and if you have anything to add that you think would help, feel free to reply or reblog with your addition. I’ll try to keep it updated with future asks.

Now without further ado, the strangest and most wonderful list I’ve ever made.

World Building

Urban fantasy prompts/creating urban fantasy world (also linked under fantasy)

Links to help with world building

Creating a pantheon of gods

Things to research when writing a historical novel (also linked under Historical)

Using metaphors in descriptions

Too much world building?

Asking questions to develop a magic system

Wizard school ideas

Why magic would drain from a world

Tips for descriptions

Reasons for civil war

Character Development

Writing confusion in your character

Obstacles to character goals: traveling abroad

Reactions to sadness

Reactions to a devastating event

Showing a character’s anxiety towards something

Showing a character’s secret without revealing it

Reasons a character would die for another

Secrets in a character’s past

Culture shock with loss of rules

Growth of a trainee witch

Characters provoking other characters

Dealing with moving to a completely new place

Why a 19yo would allow a strange boy to live with her

Why a character would want a do-over in life

Showing a character going from good to bad

Possible good messages when the villains aren’t reformed

Kid growing up surrounded only by adults

Quirks for characters

Showing friendship with reserved characters

Introducing an antagonist

Introducing side characters

When you don’t think your character’s backstory fits

Writing Different Types of Characters

Writing antiheroes

The reluctant hero

Writing a violent character afraid of their mind

Making an immoral character likeable

Not a normal girl

Sympathetic villain

Making sure your character isn’t just a flirt

Writing intelligent characters

When your hero isn’t very heroic

Confident characters

Writing an antisocial character

Character Family

Visiting family for the first time

Showing closeness in siblings (opposite twins)

How a joker and a quiet character can become friends

Daughter of a party organizer prompts

Parent jobs where the kid needs to keep up appearances

The mom that left comes back…a vampire

Including character’s parents

Why a character would leave another

Sibling relationships

character with an abusive father (and how to show fear)

Romance

Writing a slow paced love story

love interest vs the ex revamped

Platonic male x female relationships

Random places to get married

Suspense and romance with a “different” male lead

sad relationship prompts

Asexuality and romance

Mutual pining

Romance with large age differences

Childhood friends falling in love

Fluffy unique first kiss

Ways of showing commitment in characters (vampire edition)

Friendship to romance

Small situations for a couple story

fantasy creature and human fluff

characters meeting and falling in love during war

Why best friends might fall in love

Unlikely soulmates prompts

Sci Fi

Using dreams as energy

Time travel prompts (asked for male x female protags)

Time travel: how saving someone can go wrong

Reliving memories

Android characters

Writing humanoids in post apocalypse

Consequences of growing a baby in an artificial womb (theoretical)

The evil AI that characters can’t (shouldn’t) destroy

Girl and guy get trapped in the same body

Rich people in post apocalypse

Discovering you have a doppelgânger

Superheroes

Teenagers, hormones and their superpowers

Weird superpowers

Superhero kids reluctant to be superheroes

Aliens

beings traveling to Earth

Why an alien wouldn’t be able to leave Earth

Reasons an alien would be sent to live on Earth

Human/alien team surviving on hostile planet together

Fantasy/Paranormal

Urban fantasy prompts/creating urban fantasy world (also linked under world building)

gods losing their powers

creations turning on their creators

How elemental powers might work

Why NOT to destroy the world when it’s your goal

Mistreated genies

Tropes of a fantasy (also linked under Writing Motivation/Tips)

Male character ideas in a fantasy

Immortal woman prompts

Beauty and the Beast revamp

How Death and a teenage girl become adventure teammates

Powers for magical beings writing down history

Girl meets demon from forest behind her house

Reverse fairytale prompts

Revamped fairytale prompts 2

Manatees being confused by mermaids

a princess befriends a baby dragon

Making a character believe in a cure for a curse

Egyptian gods living among us

A love between the sun and the moon

What fantasy creatures do on Halloween

Human and fantasy creature become pen pals

Creatures

Monsters and urban legends

Fantastic creatures

A little bit on dragons

Kind dragons

Magic and Witches

witch x wizard romance

witch prompts

Witch being protective over a human-turned-doll

magical boarding school

Ideas for curses

A young witch exploring the boundaries of her powers

Traps a wizard could set for a thief

Angels and Demons

Angels and demons

Angel as a human on earth

Jobs for angels and demons who fall in love

Physical impacts on a demon who keeps dying and coming back

Demons hunter prompts

Vampires

Human meets vampire 1

Human meets vampire 2

How to hide your vampirism from your family

Royal vampires

Vampire hunter gets bitten by a vampire

Reasons a locked up vampire would go after your character

Why a vampire and vampire hunter would work together

Vampire x werewolf forbidden love

Ghosts

Helpful ghost prankster prompts 1

Helpful ghost prankster prompts 2

Human and ghost solving mysteries together

1776 woman with supernatural abilities prompts

A medium whose friend is in a coma

Medium question Pt. 2: their fatal flaws

Battle Scenes

Writing Battle Scenes Tips

How to lead up to an action scene

Keep reading

[vagabondneko]

"Oh, what are men compared to rocks and mountains?"

- Elizabeth Benneth

[vagabondneko]

Ultimate truth is chaos with little certainty.

- Unknown

[littlefireflybigforest-deactiva]

side effect #32

my dreams are movies endlessly complex painfully vivid

sometimes i wake exhausted having lived a second life in my sleep

2.18.2019

note: Lexapro…in case you were wondering.

[promptsforthestrugglingauthor]

Writing Prompt #768

“Dude, your calves are killer. What’s your routine?”

“Running away from my problems, mostly.”

Well, that and jumping fences, but I didn’t need to admit that part.

[pens-swords-stuff]

How come people are so against "purple prose"? I like being a little more dramatic in descriptions and use ~flowery~ or "rough" language when delving into emotions and stuff. It's a style I like but someone mentioned it was purple prose?

Well, purple prose is bad! That’s why people are against it. There is no good purple prose — it’s literally in the definition that it’s a bad thing.

Purple Prose is defined as writing that is too extravagant, too flowery, too ornate, to the point that it breaks the flow of the writing, and takes away from it due to too much unnecessary detail. It’s usually difficult to decipher because there is too much, and focuses too much on something insignificant — it’s description for description’s sake, and doesn’t add anything to the story. Purple prose might use too many adjectives, adverbs and metaphors.

To be clear: Not all flowery writing is purple prose. There’s nothing bad about writing in a flowery language or style — it definitely has its place and can be done really beautifully and effectively. It’s just that if it’s too much and hinders the narrative, it can become purple prose.

Here are some purple prose examples, both famous and original:

The young, precocious child of elementary school age was commanded by his endearing and loving mother to put on a change of clothes. He lumbered up the crooked and creaking stairs to his massive wardrobe that could rival Narnia’s. It was very old and worn, made of a dark and foreboding walnut, reliefs of ancient Roman and Greek gods festooned its rough visage. He opened it gingerly and it creaked and groaned in ominous protest.

—Example by Lucille Moncrief from medium.com

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

—Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford

Her eyelashes flickered in a fast movement along the tops of her cheeks to reveal pupils that took in bouncing light, revealing the sight of the man across from her.

— Example by Stephanie Nolan from onlinewritingjobs.com

Her voluminous follicles cascaded down her blushing epidermis of the neck, catching his desirous eye. 

—Example from nownovel.com

All of these examples hyperfocus on details that aren’t super necessary, and spends too much time on it. Like, we don’t need three sentences to know what a wardrobe looks like, it doesn’t matter. Trying to describe a dark and stormy night is great, but this is really confusing and difficult to understand at first glance. There are so many extra words but the last one essentially says “She saw a man”. They also have a lot of adjectives and adverbs which don’t really ad anything.

The difficult thing about identifying purple prose is that it’s subjective.

There is no clear-cut rule that can definitively say “this is purple prose and its bad” or “this is flowery writing that isn’t purple prose.” It’s ultimately up to each individual person and their tastes. So while someone might think that your writing was purple prose, it’s entirely possible that someone else will think it’s great description that isn’t purple prose at all.

So is your writing style purple prose? It’s really difficult to say because it’s so subjective. I would say that if one person tells you that it is, but other people don’t have a problem, then you might not need to be super worried about it. 

But if you’re consistently getting feedback that it’s too purple, it means that you’re probably confusing people with too much extravagant detail, and it’s worth going through and asking yourself these questions:

Is my flowery language appropriate for the mood and tone of the scene?

Is it description for description’s sake, or is it important to the scene or the story in some way?

Is it difficult to understand what’s going on? Am I confusing my readers by having this detail, or am I helping them understand?

Are there unnecessary adjectives and adverbs that I can cut out, without changing the meaning of my sentences?

Why can’t I be more concise and efficient here?

There is definitely a difference between purple prose and flowery writing. Not all flowery writing is purple prose. Having beautiful description isn’t inherently a bad thing, and I think it’s really important to understand that: it’s beautiful, and it has a place in writing, and so many wonderful authors have used it so effectively.

Just remember that when it becomes too much, in a place that doesn’t need it, and it’s more confusing than anything, that’s when it becomes purple prose.

[vagabondneko]

So the stories I've been writing (most of it) up till now, we're all purple prose . . .

[writing-prompt-s]

Through a strange series of events, the entire world has been sent two weeks back into the past, and everyone knows it and remembers how things went before. You’re a newscaster just trying to keep up with the chaos as everyone tries to rewrite their next two weeks for optimal results.

[vagabondneko]

"Wait what? What?! I was about to fucking step in to the gates of heaven with Jesus greeting me. Why the fuck am I back in this hellhole?!", exclaimed Mr. Foster who's 80 year's old and died exactly 2 weeks ago-- err should I say today.

"Thank you, Mr. Foster for sharing your out of this world experience, I'm sure your family is happy to have you back in this world." I said in response.

Sigh

He's the 3rd guy that had woken up since this chaos started, oh and the other 2 came from hell and are in deep state of hysteria and just mentally unstable. Everything's been so weird and we haven't even yet comprehend what the fuck is happening. People from the dead are being brought back to life. Some are plotting their future for the better. There's already news about the apocalypse and the Christians have been praying non stop.

"I think that's it for today, I don't think I can even catch up to what's happening right now and we're here doing our jobs normally as if nothing happened, I- we should take a break. It's direct orders from the the big guys. I'll take it from here and head home, see you around Steve." Carl said anxiously.

Well I too wouldn't be in the right mind if I just cheated on my wife for a coworker of mine and the world totally resets before I even cheated, my what a luck. No, see you around Carl, If I ever, I guess. The reason why I'm quite calm in the midst of this chaos is:

1. The world just fucking reset and it's only been 8 hours since and it hadn't really sink in to my mind yet. I mean this is so insane but maybe because I'm one of those 'meandering' people.

2. It's weird how I remember those 2 weeks vividly and clearly and I'm starting to internalize my resolve to carry on as usual as if this whole thing never happened. Because those 2 weeks were the same old boring routine I do.

3. Lastly, I knew exactly how this "thing" started, but I don't know if should tell people about it when I haven't even comprehend it myself.

The future of the world rests on my shoulders. When I asked God for something interesting to happen in life, I didn't mean this.

[power-of-ages-writeblr]

Some writing tips I’ve picked up over the years

Characters are supposedly 1/3 you, 1/3 someone you know, and 1/3 made up - experiment with the different faucets of your personality, as well as which traits would mesh well together into a typically functioning personality

A probable impossibility is better than a possible improbability - it’s more believable that aliens exist and that they like the taste of human sweets then it is that when a character turns on the television the news is telling them exactly what they need to know for the story to progress

Working on multiple stories at once isn’t automatically a bad idea - if you’re an absolute madman/woman/person, having many WIPs will work to keep you writing, because when you get bored of one project you can jump easily to another (especially if they’re set in the same universe or something)

Just because something’s consistent doesn’t mean it’s good - as Michael Bay’s Transformers series has shown us, it is possible to be consistently mediocre/bad to the point where internet reviewers can accurately predict down to a tee what’s gonna happen in the film without actually seeing it

The idea “write what you know”, whilst good advice, isn’t totally accurate - you CAN write stories about things you haven’t personally experienced PROVIDED you research the absolute fuck out of it, and talk to people who HAVE experienced it (trust me, you’re going to need their help)

People are really that weird, eccentric, and stupid in real life - I once had a friend pull his tracksuit bottoms down below his butt to mimic the “chav” style of wearing one’s trousers, then pull them down to his knees and proclaim he was “chav squared”, and then lose his balance and trip and fall flat on his face; and this was all during a school sports session!

As long as you stick to the rules your universe sets up, you can do whatever the flying fuck you want logic-wise - provided you either provide an in-universe logical explanation, or establish them from the very get-go, you can absolutely have giant elephants that use rocket boosters to fly through space (…or something equally outlandish)

Music while writing is situational - the right tune for the right scenario can be baller, but if you waste too much time deciding what track to listen to for every scene, you’re gonna take way longer than you need to to get anything done

Writer’s block is a constant state, not a tragic happenstance - ride the waves of inspiration when they come, but in the long run it is best to find strategies to overcome writer’s block in some capacity, because you’re absolutely going to be dealing with it a lot

A story is defined by two things: intention and obstacle - in a typically structured story, the audience will root for a character based on a thing they desire, and conflict will arise based on what circumstances or antagonists prevent them from reaching said desire

It’s possible to be good at more than writing - make your own moodboards! draw your own fanart! make your own headcanons! working on your stories and characters beyond your actual writing is one of the best ways to keep yourself invested, in my experience

Have an outlet for stress - I box and also play the drums! honestly this is more life advice for anything else but if you’re not happy with your WIP then a way to blow of steam can be pretty neato

[vagabondneko]

Hey

Hey,

Remember the first letter you got?

You smiled so wide because it was your first time receiving one,

How your cheeks flushed with a shade of red as the ends of your mouth reached your ears.

Gushing to your friends asking to whom was it from.

That day, the sun shone its brightest and I felt its warmth from you.

Hey,

Remember the sunflower-rose boquet you got?

How the other girls squeeled at you with delight,

It was Valentine's and yours had the prettiest arrangement,

All the other guys were fighting over it,

You were speechless and pissed at the same time because you thought it was a prank.

But after your friends' constant gawking you finally gave in.

The moment you took it a letter fell and you tried your best to hide your smile,

But little did you know, I saw that smile

And thats when you knew that a third letter was coming

Hey

Remember the strawberry pudding you got on valentines?

You were already tired from declining all the other guys' chocolates,

because they didnt know that you were allergic to it

After class your friend gave you a strawberry pudding

You asked to whom was it from

But they didnt know

You took a bite on it and it brought you too tears

My heart ached

Hey

Remember the last letter you got?

A lot of mishaps happened to you just to get that letter,

It was the last day of school.

And everybody has their own errands to take care of,

And yours was to finish your late schoolworks

You were hastily writing.

When suddenly your name got called on the speaker

You nervously went to the principal's office and everybody's eyes were on you

They called the wrong student,

And when you got back an envelope was laying on your desk.

You look around and see everybody else minding their own business,

You opened it and was surprised to see it was empty.

Your face went pale,

And you suddenly stood up and left.

I was a about to go after you,

But I was too baffled to move

Because I was sure enough that I had put the letter there.

But then I realized it wasnt from me,

But from someone else.

It intrigued me because I thought I had put that letter there.

I was sure of it.

And that's when I realized that somebody else was also trying to kill you.

[books-n-quotes]

“We’re talking about the novel, right? But maybe we’re not. We’re talking about ourselves. And I guess that’s what can start to happen when you talk about a book.”

— Meg Wolitzer, Belzhar (via books-n-quotes)

[flowingpoetry]

What if we were never meant to make it

What if we were both fooled into the idea

Of “us”

What if our eyes met

but our paths did not

What if our hands touched

But our hearts did not

What if our bodies collided

But our souls did not

What if we had to part

Just like our lips had done

And come undone

To realize you and i

Will never be enough

To make you and i

Truly feel like an “us”

[nymeriaking]

To all my fellow writers out there who are feeling stuck, or what you’re writing feels daunting, or whatever’s going on:

Pick a scene you know you need to write

Write down a couple words about what immediately precedes this scene at the top a piece of paper

At the bottom, add a couple words about what the reader should take away from the scene

Put that paper and pen on your bathroom counter

Take a nice, hot shower with dim lighting, relax and let your brain do what it does

As soon as you get out and dry off, summarize how the scene opens, what happens in the middle, and how it ends

Now all you have left to do is spruce it up a little, and that scene is basically done ❤

[vagabondneko]

Daydream

the clock strikes twelve

and the night becomes a blur

no dowry in the skies,

nor sun in disguise,

just the lingering scent of broken dreams

drifting from people’s sleep

Ah, the tranquility

nonetheless, are just figment in broad daylight

[vagabondneko]

So imagine this

A human fell inlove with their guardian angel and the devil who's absurdly jealous keeps whispering evil acts to the human for him to do in full hopes of disappointing and shooing the guardian angel away but instead clings to him and wanting to be withhim more to guard him and protect him and stuff.

[vagabondneko]

You know what? Maybe the best things in life aren't all about late night parties and breaking the rules. Maybe it's the company you had with your important people on those moments and taking risks together.

excerpt from a book I'll never write