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titsay
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
oozey mess
we're not kids anymore.
if i look back, i am lost
cherry valley forever
Game of Thrones Daily
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Cosmic Funnies
ojovivo
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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
trying on a metaphor
pixel skylines
occasionally subtle
Today's Document
Discoholic 🪩
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@wearethestarsseries
Sometimes i get worried about how people will see micah potentially being that white-haired-dark-skin trope that's usually based in some sort of magical ability thing. And while they do have white hair and magic, those things are, in fact, Completely Unrelated.
Their white hair?
It went like that due to shock, which, while uncommon, is possible. Theyre just fucking grey at 33.
"Narrative distance"? Do tell!
Explain it in text? Without emphatic arm gestures or wine? Oh god. Okay. I’ll try.
All right, so narrative distance is all about the proximity between you the reader and the POV character in a story you’re reading. You might sometimes also hear it called “psychic distance.” It puts you right up close to that character or pulls you away, and the narrative distance an author chooses greatly affects how their story turns out, because it can drastically change the focus.
Here’s an illustration of narrative distance from far to close, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction (a book I yelled at a lot, because Gardner is a pretentious bastard, but he does say very smart things about craft):
It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
Henry hated snowstorms.
God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul
It feels a bit like zooming in with a camera, doesn’t it?
I always hate making decisions about narrative distance, because I usually get it wrong on the first try and have to fix it in revision. When I was writing Lost Causes, the first thing I had to do in revision was go through and zoom in a little on the narrative distance, because it felt like it was sitting right on top of Bruce’s prickly skin and it needed to be underneath where the little biting comments and intrusive thoughts lived.
Narrative distance is probably the simplest form of distance in POV, and there is where if I had two glasses of wine in me you would hit a vein of pure yelling. There are SO MANY forms of distance in POV. There’s the distance between the intended reader and the POV character, the distance between the POV character and the narrator (even if it’s 1st person!), the distance between the narrator and the author. There’s emotional distance, intellectual distance, psychological distance, experiential distance. If you look closely at a 3rd person POV story, you can tell things about the narrator as a person (and the narrator is an entity independent of the author) - like, for starters, you can tell if they’re sympathetic to the POV character by how they talk about their actions. Word choice and sentence structure can tell you a narrator’s level of education and where they’re from; you can sometimes even tell a narrator’s gender, class, and other less obvious identifying factors if you look closely enough. To find these details, ask: What does the narrator (or POV character, or author) understand?
I can’t put a name on the narrator of the Harry Potter books, but I can tell you he understands British culture intimately, what it’s like to be a teen boy with a crush, to not have money, to be lonely and abused, and to find and connect with people. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand (he doesn’t pick out little flags of queerness like I do, so he’s probably straight, for example), but he sympathizes with Harry and supports him. I like that narrator. I’m supposed to sympathize with him, and I do.
POV is made up of these little distances - countless small questions of proximity that, when stacked together, decide whether we’re going to root for or against a character, or whether we’ll put down a book 20 pages in, or whether a story will punch you in just the right place at just the right amount to make you bawl your eyes out.
There are so many different possible configurations of distance in this arena that there are literally infinite POVs. Fiction is magical and also intimidating as fuck.
*stares blankly with a look of sudden realisation*
I.. have been writing on and off all my life (though not professionally), and I’ve never actually put a name to thinking about this specific issue. Interesting! I think sometimes I struggle with keeping narrative distance consistent in what I write- tending to go into close focus on a character’s feelings and thoughts at the start more than later on, and more often when they’re feeling emotions like fear and anger than when they’re just.. thinking. Now I know that ‘narrative distance’ is a thing helps me better be on the lookout for that. Not that I’m saying consistency is necessarily best, but.. it would pay for me to be more conscious of what I’m doing.
We got this very quote about psychic distance in a story-writing course I took in college. Gardner goes on to say that it’s very jarring when the narration goes from one level of psychic distance to another that isn’t immediately beside it. Going from 2 to 3 is fine, but if you go from 4 to 2 without passing through 3 on the way, you don’t have a smooth narrative voice. (There was an example given that I can’t recall exactly, but it was something along the lines of “Ms. Jane Smythe had always disliked cicadas. Lord, she thought, they’ll drive me crazy! The young woman had never personally encountered any cicadas, but she knew what they were like.”)
OP makes some excellent points about other kinds of psychic distance, and now I want to think about how they apply to Steven King’s increasingly present narrator-voice over the course of the Dark Tower series.
I know adverbs are Controversial, but “said softly” means something different than “whispered” and this is the hill I will die on.
Everyone who’s commented “murmured” or some other word that means something different from both “whispered” and “said softly” owes me $20
So You Want Your OC to be Jewish
So you’re writing a story and you want to make a Jewish character—great! I’m here to help. I always want more Jewish representation but I want good Jewish representation, so this is my attempt to make a guide to making a Jewish character. What are my credentials? I’m Jewish and have been my whole life. Obligatory disclaimer that this is by no means comprehensive, I don’t know everything, all Jews are different, and this is based on my experiences as an American Jew so I have no idea, what, if any, of this applies to non-American Jews.
If there’s anything you want me to make a post going more into detail about or if there’s anything I didn’t mention but you want to know please ask me! I hope this is helpful :) Warning, this is long.
Keep reading
site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word
site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition
site that gives you words that rhyme with a word
site that gives you synonyms and antonyms
THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS
God yes reblog to save a writers life
For my fellow writers who also suck with words
i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage.
like, i didnt know about twitter pitch parties!! i didnt know about literary agents and publishers tweeting their manuscript wishlist, in hopes that some poor soul out there has written the book they really want to read and publish!! this isnt some shit you learn about in school! you really need to know the ins and outs of the writing community to be successful!
for anyone interested, here’s what i’ve learned so far in my quest for more writing knowledge:
1. Writer’s Market 2019 is a great place to start– it gives you a list of magazines and journals that you can send your work to depending on the genre as well as lists a shit ton of literary agents that specify what genres they represent, how you can get in contact with them and how they accept query letters. this is a book that updates every year and tbh i only bought it this year so i dont know how critical it is to have an updated version
2. do your research. mostly on literary agents because if you listed on your site that you like to represent fluffy YA novels and some asshole sends you a 80k manuscript about like…gritty viking culture, you will be severely pissed off. always go in finding someone who you know will actually like your work because they’re the ones who will try to advocate for you in getting published.
3. learn how to write a query letter. there are slightly varying formulas to how you can write an effective query letter. you’re also going to want to get feedback on your query letter because its the first thing the literary agent will read and based on how well you do it, it could be the difference between them rejecting you outright and giving your manuscript a quick read
4. unfortunately, you’re gonna want to get a twitter. Twitter is where a lot of literary agents are nowadays, and they host things like twitter pitch parties, where you pitch your manuscript in a few sentences and hashtag it with #Pitmad #Pitdark, some version of pit. a lot of literary agents and publishers will ALSO post their manuscript wishlists, which is just the kind of books they’d like to represent/publish, and they hashtag this with #MSWL (it is NOT for writers to use, only for agents/publishers)
5. connect with other writers, literary agents, publishers at book events. you will absolutely need the connections if you want to get ahead as a writer. thats just kind of the state of the world.
Wrote the line "her eyebrows increased" instead of "creased" last evening and almost didn't notice
what i meant
what i said
Happy indigenous peoples' day of rage, ratihnarà:ken (white) people paypal me 20$ im trying to get a new tablet to do my job bc mine is breaking
Https://paypal.me/cipheralart
Happy indigenous peoples day, im well on my way to the tablet but still need a good bit more!
HALFWAY THERE THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH????
It may not be indigenous people's day anymore but im still trying to get my tablet, and donations have all but stopped as of today. Any rbing or donations are immensely appreciated!
So my cat has a tooth or two that are bleeding now as well! We aren't sure how much it's gonna cost, but I'll be updating the amount I'm trying to raise once we do know.
The girl herself down below:
I forgot to mention but I also can do up to 3 cards for a tarot reading if anyone wants that after they donate! (These will have to wait until sunday the 18th when i have my cards again, but the offer is still there!)
There havent been really any donations the last couple days, so please keep spreading this around! Im still barely over halfway to reaching what i need for the tablet for my work
This is my personal/politics/queer blog, but to those who follow me here, please consider boosting. I can't work on my job (my digital art) without a tablet to do so.
The worst part about working on original fiction is u gotta wait like 5 years to get a book draft done in order to SHOW YOUR FRIENDS chapters. Ain't like fanfic where you can just....send em. Tis horrid.
like yes i worked incredibly hard on this 10 page chapter. yes in order to understand what the hell it means you need a 15 hour briefing on background lore. i apologize. this sucks for everyone.
support your original writer friends because they lack like, an established fandom to get validation from. encourage them. encourage people who draw fandomless OCs. give em ur lov.
To all the original writers out there:
You're doing a fantastic job!
Keep making your little universes come alive.
I'm really really proud of you
Look at all the words you've written, look at all those beautiful characters you've brought to life.
Thank you!
I hope one day I get to read your work and then I'll be part of your fandom too.
Words to replace said, except this actually helps
I got pretty fed up with looking for words to replace said because they weren’t sorted in a way I could easily use/find them for the right time. So I did some myself.
IN RESPONSE TO Acknowledged Answered Protested
INPUT/JOIN CONVERSATION/ASK Added Implored Inquired Insisted Proposed Queried Questioned Recommended Testified
GUILTY/RELUCTANCE/SORRY Admitted Apologized Conceded Confessed Professed
FOR SOMEONE ELSE Advised Criticized Suggested
JUST CHECKING Affirmed Agreed Alleged Confirmed
LOUD Announced Chanted Crowed
LEWD/CUTE/SECRET SPY FEEL Appealed Disclosed Moaned
ANGRY FUCK OFF MATE WANNA FIGHT Argued Barked Challenged Cursed Fumed Growled Hissed Roared Swore
SMARTASS Articulated Asserted Assured Avowed Claimed Commanded Cross-examined Demanded Digressed Directed Foretold Instructed Interrupted Predicted Proclaimed Quoted Theorized
ASSHOLE Bellowed Boasted Bragged
NERVOUS TRAINWRECK Babbled Bawled Mumbled Sputtered Stammered Stuttered
SUAVE MOTHERFUCKER Bargained Divulged Disclosed Exhorted
FIRST OFF Began
LASTLY Concluded Concurred
WEAK PUSY Begged Blurted Complained Cried Faltered Fretted
HAPPY/LOL Cajoled Exclaimed Gushed Jested Joked Laughed
WEIRDLY HAPPY/EXCITED Extolled Jabbered Raved
BRUH, CHILL Cautioned Warned
ACTUALLY, YOU’RE WRONG Chided Contended Corrected Countered Debated Elaborated Objected Ranted Retorted
CHILL SAVAGE Commented Continued Observed Surmised
LISTEN BUDDY Enunciated Explained Elaborated Hinted Implied Lectured Reiterated Recited Reminded Stressed
BRUH I NEED U AND U NEED ME Confided Offered Urged
FINE Consented Decided
TOO EMO FULL OF EMOTIONS Croaked Lamented Pledged Sobbed Sympathized Wailed Whimpered
JUST SAYING Declared Decreed Mentioned Noted Pointed out Postulated Speculated Stated Told Vouched
WASN’T ME Denied Lied
EVIL SMARTASS Dictated Equivocated Ordered Reprimanded Threatened
BORED Droned Sighed
SHHHH IT’S QUIET TIME Echoed Mumbled Murmured Muttered Uttered Whispered
DRAMA QUEEN Exaggerated Panted Pleaded Prayed Preached
OH SHIT Gasped Marveled Screamed Screeched Shouted Shrieked Yelped Yelled
ANNOYED Grumbled Grunted Jeered Quipped Scolded Snapped Snarled Sneered
ANNOYING Nagged
I DON’T REALLY CARE BUT WHATEVER Guessed Ventured
I’M DRUNK OR JUST BEING WEIRDLY EXPRESSIVE FOR A POINT/SARCASM Hooted Howled Yowled
I WONDER Pondered Voiced Wondered
OH, YEAH, WHOOPS Recalled Recited Remembered
SURPRISE BITCH Revealed
IT SEEMS FAKE BUT OKAY/HA ACTUALLY FUNNY BUT I DON’T WANT TO LAUGH OUT LOUD Scoffed Snickered Snorted
BITCHY Tattled Taunted Teased
reblog to save a writer
Reblog because the titles for each category are comedy gold.
Hahaha @saidebanks feel like this fits you.
Writing gold
Announcement!
So! As those following this blog are aware, I've been working on a novel. I've been wanting to publish traditionally for some time now, but recently have been looking into other options.
What I've found out is that I'd much rather publish online for free, while running a patreon that gives early updates, bonus content, and potentially giveaways once I have gained enough traction to do so.
So my announcement is this:
Once the next draft of Ashes to Atoms, the first book in the We Are The Stars series is completed (likely by December 2020 or January 2021), I will be starting to work harder on gaining traction! I may start a Kickstarter up for this, as I'd love to be able to 1 pay my friend who has been so fucking graciously been editing my writing for a while now (go check out their blog! @sol1loqu1st! They also have been working on a novel and deserve the interest in their stuff even if they don't post about it currently like a coward!) and 2 print some stickers, postcards, etc as merch for monthly patreon giveaways! Once there's a more solid plan regarding the potential Kickstarter and the patreon page, I'll come back with more information on this, but until then, hit that follow button, turn on post notifications, and check out the content I post here! You can also feel free to message me on my main (@cipheral) or shoot me an ask here if you have any questions!
“Mystical white hair” trope but it’s just premature greying. The character DOES have magic powers, but her mom went grey at like twenty-five and wasn’t magical at all, so it’s just genetics.
having writer friends is being like in the world’s tiniest fandom except to get new content you have to beat it out of the author with a stick
idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com
this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there
k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:
1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?
because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.
happy indigenous history month. solidarity
donate to the navajo nation relief fund
I know I don't represent the consumer market fir books, but it makes me unspeakably happy that you're writing books with an aro perspective (especially YA fantasy, that's my favorite!), because despite how much I read, I've never once read a book with a main character that was aro, and just knowing at least one person is out there writing it makes me wanna cry with happiness. please post if you ever release your book bc I will buy it on the spot. im sure im not the only aro feeling this way too
I'm so so happy that people are interested in my books oh my!! I absolutely plan on posting about my novel as it comes along!
I actually just got it ready for the first batch of edits, so I'm hopefully going to be able to start sending queries out for publishing once it's come along a bit more! Even knowing there's a few people that are interested in this makes me so happy!!
Some stuff from my twitter.
I'm getting pretty close to finishing one of my novels finally, and it's pretty anxiety inducing. I'm afraid of the responses I'm going to get when published, as well as the potential lack of responses. It's a long process and I'll be real when I say that I'm terrified to release my work to the public.
(Image Description:
A tweet series from Inigo Craig @cipheral that reads "Sometimes I wonder how I'm gonna be in the world as an aromantic author who is romance repulsed and whose works reflect that. I have absolutely no romance (plot or subplot) in any of the works I create. And while that goes over well for the people I know (1/?)
I have to wonder how it will fare in the market. Competition is huge, especially in Y.A. fantasy, and it's not going to be easy for me to make a breakthrough with a large percentage of people when most if not all of my characters will never date in canon (2/?)
And how people will react when I state certain characters are aromantic and aplatonic in canon and in WOG situations. I know romance is what pulls a lot of readers in, but it also pushes a lot away. So, for those who find romance in their novels boring? Have I got something for u
End description.)
Plz, tell me where I can obtain these readings. 0.0 I want to read this person’s books!!!
Hi!! I'm both the op of the twitter thread and the author, and unfortunately I'm not published quite yet, but when that happens, I'll be posting updates about it here on this blog!
Thank you so much for your interest in my series, it means a bunch!
