writing blog

Find me on ao3 at ViciousVenin Feel free to message me for my main/other blogs!

[sonbunny]

best unholyverse quote

their eyes are big because they're looking at god

look at you, look at the way that he made you

im only human, frank

i dont want whats best for frank

when im with you it hurts. less

the entire interaction with xaphan

you have the immune system of a blueberry muffin man

other (add in tags!!!!!)

Voting ended onFeb 16, 2023

[homunculus-argument]

Hey btw, if you're doing worldbuilding on something, and you're scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it'll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don't want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Plot hole 1: If the vampires can't stand daylight, why couldn't they just move around underground?

Solution 1: They can't go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.

Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there's no vampires?

Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what's their point and purpose?

Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don't try to move around via the sewer system.

When you're just making things up, you don't need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won't bother to dig around for a 3rd question.

[bandombigbang]

Exciting news! Sign-ups for the 2022 Bandom Big Bang are officially open! We’ve laid out some of the most important information below, but all of the details of the challenge are available in the BBB22 Masterdoc.

Sign up here:

Writers | Creators | Beta Readers

Some important things to note:

Writer sign-ups close January 31. Writers provide the “source material" for creators.

Beta sign-ups close February 28. Beta readers not only edit their partners’ work, but provide support throughout the writing process

Creator sign-ups close March 31. Primary creators create art or a short story. Secondary creators create playlists, moodboards, edits, or anything that falls outside the primary creator requirements.

Please remember that BBB 2022 is an 18+ challenge and a bandom event, meaning the focus of your creations must be on the members of a band, their close associates, and/or closely related content, like the Killjoys comics or Youngblood Chronicles.

Email and an Ao3 account are required for all participants, and Discord is highly encouraged. These will be our primary modes of communication.

You are completely welcome to sign up for more than one role.

We encourage anyone who is interested to be involved. Remember that at the end of the day, we are all doing this for free and because we love it. You definitely do not need to be a professional to join!

Timeline

December 1 — All Sign-Ups Open January 31 — Writer Sign-Ups Close February 28 — Beta Sign-Ups Close March 1 - 7 — Beta Claims March 31 — Creator Sign-Ups Close April 30 — Rough Drafts Due May 2 - 7 — Creator Claims July 1 – 31 — BBB Posting Window

For the complete challenge timeline, rules, FAQs, and more, take a look at the BBB 2022 Masterdoc! All major information you need to know is compiled there. Please make sure you read through the rules—those for all participants and those specifically for the role(s) you’re interested in—preferably before signing up.

Community Spaces

BBB 2022 isn’t just about content creation; it’s also about connecting with other creators and building an online community. We encourage all participants to take advantage of our community spaces, where we’ll host events, do informal check-ins, and provide a support system throughout the challenge. You’re welcome to join the official BBB 2022 Discord server and/or the Bandom Creator Server, which is owned by one of our mods!

Contact

Follow our Twitter/Tumblr for updates. If you need to get in contact with the mods, reach out here:

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @bandombigbang22 Tumblr: @bandombigbang

Contact through the official accounts is preferred, but contact a mod directly if you must. We are greatly looking forward to hosting and participating in BBB 2022. We will continue to update you here throughout the challenge, and we can’t wait to see what you create!

[cedarbranch]

sometimes the best fanfics are written by middle aged adults with years of writing experience who simply know how to craft a good story. but also sometimes the best fanfics are written by a sixteen year old girl with something deeply wrong with her

[iridescentknees-deactivated2021]

Heard that from a lecturer in my university, and I think it’s such a good advice, and I’ve never seen anybody talk about it so:

It is called a reverse outline.

Basically, you write your entire 1st draft, take a good moment reading all of it, and then start summarizing each chapter one by one in single paragraphs.

It helps you to identify which scenes are not actually necessary, analyze if a scene is well placed in that moment of the story - and if not, it can help placing the chapter earlier or later in the story -, helps identifying plot holes etc.

I thought of that as really helpful, specially if you, like me, is a gardener writer but still needs organization!

[vanrambling]

I was just about to try something like this!

That's a great idea.

[bardicfool]

Can confirm that this is a tool developmental editors use all the time! It’s a great way to see what you’ve ACTUALLY written vs. what you THINK you’ve written. Plus, if you decide to move chapters/plot points around, you can do it in the outline before you actually touch the manuscript, which is nifty.

I usually write a summary of each chapter/scene on an index card and lay them all out so I can clearly see where there are gaps and where things flow smoothly. I color-code them, too (e.g., red = the scene needs major editing; green = the scene is pretty good as is).

Do recommend for my fellow plantsers who need a little organization but not too much!

[koopakeki]

Mcr: *Doesn't give us any new content*

Bexless:

[bringmoreknives]

I didn’t consider that maybe I was supposed to meet you… just because I was supposed to meet you.

1. x 2. x 3. x 4. mine 5. x + mary oliver 6. mine 7. x 8. x 9. x

[bandombigbang]

A Shot That You Can Chase by @stoplightglow

With ART by @venomwolves With a PLAYLIST by @viciousvenin

[Explicit, Frank/Gerard]

Summary: Gerard Way agrees to help Frank Iero steal a multi-million dollar painting in twenty days.

Their crew: a stripper, washed-up millionaire, online poker genius, failed film student, and crooked auctioneer.

Their odds: slim to none. And that’s only if Gerard and Frank make it to the job without killing each other first.

[wintersongstress]

wilf (wip i’d like to finish)

[bandombigbang]

Bandom Big Bang 2021

Folks – the BBB Collection is HERE!

Please give it up to all of the fantastic writers and creators who have been working for months to bring these stories to life. They are all absolutely amazing and inspiring, and the world – and this fandom – is so much better with them in it. 

Go forth and shower them with kudos and comments, likes and reblogs, and all the love and encouragement you can. Big Bangs are a labor of love, and let me tell you that a lot of late nights, hard work, and incredible creativity went into these.

Something new things to look for:

1) Writers had the option of splitting their works into multiple chapters. Every BBB story is complete and just needs to be posted. Enjoy those regular updates for weeks and months to come. I believe we’ve got just about every day of the week covered. :D

2) In addition to stellar art and moody playlists, creators were invited to write complementary one-shots to go along with stories. Some of these will be posted right away, and others will show up later, aligning with their mother-fics. Keep your eyes out for them!

3) We’ll be highlighting each fic and creation individually on this blog. Stayed tuned and help spread the love for all the hard work these folks put in.

Much love and see you all next year!

Pyr

[deactivated1053489]

happy pride from the new jersey gay couple meme specifically

[starpeace]

god this scene i haven’t written would be so emotional if it came with 50k words of context i also haven’t written

[fluoresensitivearchived]

do you have any advice in writing horror?

SHOW, DON’T TELL, BUT MOSTLY FEEL. This feels more like just generic writing advice, but I feel like it’s especially important when one is writing horror. It’s not enough to say that a woman is standing in a red room. You have to place the reader in the room, engage all of their senses. Talk about the texture of the walls, the floors, the smell (and, by extension, that gross back of the mouth feeling some smells give you), all that can be heard and felt against the skin and in the mind. Really put yourself into the room. If you as a writer can’t see it, your reader most definitely can’t.

FOCUS ON THE HAUNTING, NOT THE SCARY. A lot of horror flops, in my opinion, because the author/director/whoever is focusing on what makes people jump and not on what makes people shiver. A quick flash of a scary face is scary for that one second. Having a monster chase you is scary, a serial killer is scary, a ghost is scary, but what’s underneath it? Nothing, in most cases. Think, truly, about what terrifies you. What’s the sort of horrible, horrifying thing that sticks with you, that makes it hard for you to sleep? Change the focus from the scary face in plain view to the scary face just out of sight, lingering on the edges. With horror, the less you know is better (though, side note, can we not be like H.P. Lovecraft and just point to vague somethings that make people lose their minds? People want to see the horrible, maddening creature! Describe the creature!), and the more you write what makes you anxious instead of what makes you scream, the more your horror Hits.

Alfred Hitchcock sucks, like he was a terrible man, but he had a point with his bomb under the table quote.

GROSS OUT AND GORE IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR SUBSTANCE. This is the most important in my opinion. Lots of horror fails because there’s this huge focus on grossness and gore, violence without substance. Reading a Stephen King novel to read about minorities being savagely murdered is the norm. A horror film flashing near-pornographic images of white women and Black men being brutalized is what most people think of when they think of horror. While I do like to see a little gore in my horror (hello, who would ever turn down buckets and buckets of fake blood/the imagery of rooms awash with red!), mindless violence and gross-out shots of killing CANNOT and IS NOT a substitute for truly intriguing horror. If you have to lean on grossness to tell a story, the story is either a) not worth telling or b) you’re not the person to tell it.

BE MINDFUL OF WHO’S HAUNTING WHO. Oh, no, wait, this is the most important. Horror, historically, has been a very racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, and misogynistic genre. Up until recently, horror has been ruled by cishet white men (and cishet white women). Every “classic” horror novel and movie I can think of has some instance of overt anti-Blackness and misogyny. It’s a trope, at this point, that the Black person dies first, that the woman who has sex is the woman who gets cut to bits. The villain is always disabled in some shape or form, “crazy” in that vague way that punches down at the schizophrenic and people with psychosis.

So, be careful! Be mindful about what you write, be careful about who’s doing the stabbing and who gets stabbed. Is your villain an ableist trope? Do the people of color suffer for the sake of suffering? If a marginalized person read your piece, would they feel seen and safe, or would they feel targeted? Make conscious decisions with your writing because nothing exists in a vacuum, and every choice has a reason behind it, you feel?

[homunculus-argument]

One thing I’ve learned about writing is ”give everything a face”. It’s no good to write passively that the nobility fled the city or that the toxic marshes were poisoning the animals beyond any ability to function. Make a protagonist see how a desperate woman in torn silks climbs onto a carriage and speeds off, or a two-headed deer wanders right into the camp and into the fire. Don’t just have an ambiguous flock of all-controlling oligarchy, name one or two representatives of it, and illustrate just how vile and greedy they are as people.

it’s bad to have characters who serve no purpose in the story, but giving something a face is a perfectly valid purpose.

[tlbodine]

This is the real heart of “show don’t tell”

[dresupi]

200 Dialogue Prompts

If you like this, consider donating: Ko-fi || Patreon

A. ANGST:

“I think we should break up.”

“You aren’t who I thought you were.”

“I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

“Why can’t you look at me?”

“What’s wrong?”

“You want to be with him/her/them, don’t you?”

“You promised you’d change!”

“Am I not enough for you?”

“What is so wrong with me?”

“I’m sick of trying.”

“I don’t want to be just friends.”

“I can’t trust you anymore.”

“I can’t even look at you.”

“Your problem isn’t me, your problem is _______” (Fill in the blank)

“I’m always wrong, aren’t I?”

“You said this time it’d be different.”

“Please give me a chance.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.”

“I don’t love you anymore.”

“We can’t keep this up forever.”

“You make me feel so small.”

“Don’t leave me like this!”

“Don’t ever call me again.”

“Talk to me, please.”

“Don’t push me away.”

“This is your son/daughter.”

“I think I need a break from you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t promise you anything.”

“It’s better this way.”

“The baby… it’s yours.”

“After all this time, and you still can’t look me in the eye?”

“I can only blame myself.”

“I was only pretending.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“This is all because of you!”

“I don’t feel the same way.”

“Just go!”

“Please stay.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s okay, you didn’t know.”

“Don’t tell me to keep calm!”

“I’m keeping the baby, with or without you.”

“I need to be alone.”

“Stop calling me.”

“I can’t remember why I ever loved you.”

“Don’t apologize; I know you don’t mean it.”

“I can’t believe what you’ve done.”

“I don’t need you, I’m fine on my own.”

B. FLUFF:

“Quit stealing all the pillows!”

“You want a bite?”

“Give me a second and I’ll show you.”

“You’ll play this game with me, won’t you?”

“What should we name him/her?”

“Have you ever played in the rain?”

“Is it hot in here or is that just you?”

“Why are your feet so cold?”

“Ride the Ferris wheel with me?”

“There’s room for two/three!”

“Stop that, I’m ticklish!”

“Put your finger here while I go get the tape.”

“Here’s my number!”

“You want chocolate or vanilla?”

“Your hands are so warm!

“Are you sure you’re not tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind all day.”

“You’re sweeter than candy.”

“You smell really nice.”

“Your hair’s so soft…”

“You’re my new pillow.”

“Can I rub your back?”

“If nothing lasts forever, will you be my nothing?”

“I think I love you.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Hold my hand.”

“It’s not morning yet.”

“Stay for a little longer…”

“Of course I’m happy! How far along are you?”

“You’re so beautiful.”

“I’ll always be here for you.”

“You are my love.”

“You were right here all along.”

“Do you want my coat? It’s really cold out here.”

“You don’t need keys to drive me crazy.”

“Do you want to get dinner sometime?”

“Call me whenever… no really.”

“You’ve got flour on your cheek.”

“Sorry… your hair was in your face… thought I should move it so I could see you better.”

“You don’t have to leave so soon.”

“You could put your feet in my lap, you know.”

“I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

“We’re pregnant!”

“Are you science? Because I’ve got my ion you.”

“We could try cuddling.”

“Stop being so cute.”

“Are you okay?”

“Our relationship is the most important thing in my life.”

“You can sleep, I’ll keep you safe.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

C. HURT/COMFORT

“I came as soon as I heard!”

“Get back in bed, you’re not healed yet!”

“I’m not leaving your side.”

“I don’t care, I’m not staying in bed!”

“You can put your cold feet on me.”

“Want me to hold your hand?”

“Move as little as possible.”

“Hey… you’re awake!”

“Stay close, please?”

“Don’t look at me… I’m sick!”

“I think I’m going to puke…”

“I’ve never felt worse.”

“Does it hurt badly?”

“Don’t move, I’ll get help!”

“I’m so tired I can barely move.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Can you see me?”

“I’m coming for you, don’t move!”

“Want some tea?”

“Can you please stop eating that? The smell is making me nauseous.”

“Where are you? Tell me where you are.”

“Morning sickness isn’t always in the morning.”

“Eat your soup before it gets cold.”

“I want more noodles… that’s just broth and you know it.”

“Can I have a glass of water?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, I’m taking care of them. They’re coming home with me.”

“Do you want me to get more blankets?”

“Did you have another nightmare?”

“Can you come pick me up?”

“Just breathe. Breath with me.”

“Where did all those bruises come from?”

“Talk to me. You can’t take on all of this alone.”

“I think I have a band-aid in my purse…”

“I’ll need something stronger than this.”

“Stop telling me you’re okay.”

“The sight of blood makes me pass out.”

“I’m in the hospital.”

“Just keep pressure on it.”

“You should probably eat something.”

“Oh hey… you’re here.”

“Oh, don’t cry. I hate it when you cry.”

“You don’t have to sleep here just because I got admitted.”

“You’re burning up.”

“When’s the last time you slept?”

“Hey, hey… it’s just me.”

“Calm down…”

“Because I care about you!”

“I don’t know where I am!”

“How drunk was I?”

D. LEMONS (Under the cut)

Keep reading

[bandombigbang]

Bandom Big Bang 2021

Hi, Friends!  We are excited to announce that we will be holding Bandom Big Bang for 2021! With this year coming to a close (finally!!!), we want to start planning early for this challenge. For those who have participated in past challenges, please note that there will be some changes to better suit the state of our fandom:

First, writers will have the option to post chaptered fics instead of the usual one-shot if they chose to do so. This will give fics a higher chance of being seen on ao3 and gain readers.  

Second, we are expanding the “art” factor that usually accompanies fics in BBB. This year, creators will be able to submit artwork, a playlist, a gif set, or a companion one-shot that takes place in the fic’s universe.

Sign ups for writers and creators are open! 

Please continue reading under the cut for more information:

Keep reading

[moon-a-hole-of-light]