When I was in college, my Creative Nonfiction professor would regularly have us do something she called "hotspotting" (she didn't know that this was already a term tbc) with our rough drafts. Basically, hotspotting is when you look at your draft and pick out your favorite sentence, or one of your favorite sentences--one that you're really proud of--and write it down in a blank sheet in a notebook. Not a new document, a physical notebook. (You are not allowed to use technology for hotspotting.) And then you set a timer for however long--like maybe ten to twenty minutes--and you elaborate. You treat that one sentence as if it's the opening sentence to a new draft, and you write from there, until the timer is up.
It sounds like a gimmick, but honestly, some of my best writing in that class came from hotspotting. Usually, the sentence you consider the "best" is the one that really gets to the heart of something you're trying to convey. In a rough draft, it tends to be that you're fumbling around a bit before you really hit on the heart of things. So with hotspotting, you're starting from a less fumbly place, which means you're able to dig into your subject in a much deeper and more precise way. It makes you feel like a surgeon, a little bit.
So I do recommend trying it, even just for fun, even if you think the rough draft you have is already good. You might surprise yourself with what you come up with! :)
One thing I always found odd about people's ''clap backs'' against your critical analysis videos is that they always treat these shows and characters as if they were real people and not a product made for entertainment in mind.
It's always ''realism'' this ''realistic'' that, despite the fact they aren't actual people that would follow the same principles as us.
makes it kind of useless for any writer wanting to take notes.
Most of the time what they're claiming is realistic isn't even realistic.
The kicker is, you need to be able to look past this stuff. When they say "it's realistic" they haven't thought about it. It's a thought-terminating cliche. "It's realistic" isn't an argument for something being good, it's an excuse for why it's not and why you're wrong to even consider criticizing it.
It's a way to hide the real motivation: "Ugh! Just shut up! Stop with your booklearnin'! Lemme just melt my brain in peace, elitist!"
"why did you stop writing your story!!! never stop writing!!!!!!!!!!!" well you see the character had to drive one mile to a new location and the sentence "she got into the car" was quite simply my undoing
I feel this on a deep and personal level and I know you're making a joke but I do also want to take this opportunity to pass along the biggest small piece of advice I've ever gotten: You don't have to explain every step of how something happened unless something unusual/important happens along the way.
You can simply cut to the next scene when she's at the location, without explaining how she got there. People will fill that in. Now, if something important happens in the car on the way there, then sure, mention it. But if she's just driving? Nah. Delete that sentence, pop in a scene break, and keep writing.
Dialogue Tags Aren’t the Problem, Your Dialogue Rhythm Is
friendly reminder that the word “said” did not kill your scene.
you don’t need to replace every line of dialogue with “he rasped” or “she intoned” or “they gasped breathlessly” (please no). your dialogue is not dying because of your tags. it’s dying because the rhythm is off.
👀 let me explain:
✨ what is dialogue rhythm?
it’s the flow of speech between characters. the beats. the pacing. the way words bounce, interrupt, cut off, trail, clash. it’s less about the words themselves and more about the energy they carry.
dialogue rhythm is what makes two people arguing feel like a boxing match, or a confession feel like a car crash. it’s how you keep tension in the room. if your rhythm sucks, no amount of fancy tags is gonna save you.
🔪 signs your dialogue rhythm is off:
every character is speaking in full, polished sentences like it’s a staged play
nobody ever interrupts, stammers, hesitates, or doubles back
the emotional pace stays flat, even in high-stakes scenes
all the action beats are “he nodded” “she smiled” “they looked at her” over and over
you read it out loud and it feels like a middle school skit
👂 here’s how to fix it:
Read your dialogue out loud. Like, actually out loud.
if it sounds robotic, it is robotic. listen for places where people would realistically pause, ramble, get cut off, or trail off. insert those beats. add the mess.
Use white space and formatting to control speed.
short lines = fast pace.
long blocks = slow burn.
a line break right before someone says something unhinged? elite move.
example: “You really think I’d betray you?”
Pause.
“You already did.”
Cut 30% of your dialogue.
if you can remove the line and nothing breaks, it was filler. chop chop. more silence = more tension. not every reply needs a full answer.
Let action interrupt speech.
don’t wait for the character to finish talking before you show what they’re doing. intercut body language or physical actions mid-line. it mimics how people actually talk. like this:
“Don’t touch that—” she lunged forward, grabbing his wrist. “—you don’t know what it is.”
Stop overexplaining with tags.
you don’t need to say “she shouted angrily” if the line is literally “GET OUT.” trust the line. if the dialogue’s strong, “said” works just fine. if the dialogue’s weak, “murmured” won’t save it.
🛑 but what about dialogue tags?
use them! but treat them like punctuation, not prose. the goal is clarity, not ✨flair✨. you want the reader to know who’s speaking without noticing the machinery.
“Said” is invisible. “Snarled” is a spice. Use spices sparingly.
better yet: mix tags with beats to keep rhythm tight. example:
BAD:
“I hate you,” he said angrily.
“I hate you,” she snapped back.
BETTER:
“I hate you,” he said, jaw clenched.
She didn’t even blink. “Good. Then we’re even.”
💡 TL;DR: your scene doesn’t need fancy tags. it needs movement. conflict. silence. interruptions. character-specific tone. you fix that by fixing the rhythm, not the verbs.
go back to your WIP, open your messiest conversation scene, and test it. read it aloud. break it up. cut what drags. add one beat of silence. give someone a half-finished sentence and a reason to storm out.
watch how fast it starts to breathe.
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I noticed myself thinking about Cyanide as a gleeful killer again. It made me feel a little bad about how all my main characters are selfish bastards, and that got me to think, hey, that’s just what I find interesting.
I had already come to the conclusion that I hate the paragon of virtue type traditional hero, and today I realised why. I hate the propaganda. I like characters with a smich of reality to them: all humans are on some level selfish, even if that selfishness drives them to being nice and self-sacrificing. I like Daniel and Fetcher specifically because they are mindlessly devoted to their object of affection out of a survival instinct. They don’t want to think about why they want to do it because it is easier that way. I find that mindset fascinating!
I usually end up liking the villains of stories more than the heroes because the villains are almost always granted more real traits than the heroes. The heroes do good things and are nice just because that is the default, whereas the villains do things out of selfishness. This is why I found villain protagonists interesting, I want to follow a selfish asshole around and watch them do shit so I can analyse why they do it. The hero is rarely granted this kind of agency.
The lance is usually the only traditionally heroic character I end up liking, purely because they are the only archetype granted any selfish instincts. Everyone else always does good just because they have to. There is no room to ask why. I hate the paragon archetype because they are based on a lie, on propaganda. They are the reason why so many nice people in real life live in terror that they are secretly an evil person and just don’t know it, because they have been brainwashed to compare themselves to characters who are “pure of heart.”
The only way for me to find that kind of pure-of-heart character interesting is if they doubt themselves and have insecurities from this propaganda and/or from the pressures of being used as this propaganda. Like I tried with Hope: he was this perfect image of the hero, but on the inside, he doubted it a lot. He feared that if he showed any weakness, he would no longer be worthy of love. The mistake I made with Hope was trying to make him into the main character. I have a theory that this character would work best as the love interest with a pov, in a story where the main character learns that their love isn’t flawless and that he doen’t have to worry about not being worthy of him, and the loveinterest learns that he can be loved, imperfections and all. Hell, putting it like that and switching the roles around, I find the thought of writing this story fun again!
people think writers make good English teachers but the opposite is true. sixth grader asks why she can’t start a sentence with “and” and im like idk girlie grammar is a construct and language is a fluid gelatinous animal. people used to write “thou” and they were being totally unironic about it. start your sentences with an exclamation point for all i care. a+
At the start of last year, I made Alejandro (left) and Fetcher (right) in this picrew.
Today, I decided to look it up because Fetcher's expression and Ali's everything kept bugging me when I saw them in my gallery.
You see, even after writing a novella about him, I never really gave Ali a look. His hair was pink and short because I was lazy and it was the first thing to pop into my head, and the only distinct feature he had were his eyes.
I hated how neither of the old versions reflected the characters' personalities. Especially now that I understand character design slightly more. (idk how y'all visual artists do it, I use up all my brain cells thinking up just one distinct character design)
After trying again, I felt way more satisfied with his look this time, and if I write a sequel, he will be getting a haircut. The downside of this otherwise great picrew is that the facial expressions are quite limited, so I made just one of Fetcher.
Maybe I'm just face blind but I find fiction that describes the way a character carries themself to be way more useful in remembering a character's appearance than what rock their eyes remind the narrator of.
Every time I come across a song that reminds me of Puppylove I add it to this playlist. I keep changing my mind on if I should make it properly themed, or if I should just throw in all the goodies I have scavenged.
I would never use AI to write literally anything for me, especially when it comes to fics or WIPs or any piece of creative writing because wtf is the point of that. But I am curious how yall feel about AI or chatgtp being used to plan out/come up with ideas for writing books/fics.
Due to my lack of confidence and resources, I’ve used it to ask questions like I do on here, like “does this plot point even make sense” or “would this be more thematically impactful than this” but I’m starting to think that’s almost as bad as the writing.
What’s ya’ll’s (can you tell I’m Texan) takes on using AI in the outlining/planning/ideas part of writing but not the writing part itself?
I don’t think it’s useful for ideation, in the sense that the answers it gives are like the Most Generic Thing Possible. It can be useful in theory as a sounding board, giving you feedback on ideas, but things like “which of these things makes sense” and “does this have thematic value” are just not it’s strong points. It knows words.
If you’re using it to flat generate ideas I don’t think writing original fiction is the thing for you.
The main things I would use AI for if it weren’t damaging in other ways would be.
1. Turning a bunch of ideas into a blurb that I can evaluate. “Please summarize this” and then you see what parts you think are missing from the condensed version or what stuff you don’t actually need to get the story across. Then you write your own blurb and outline.
2. If I’m having trouble articulating a theme or plot point, I might see if ChatGPT can come up with the word I’m missing.
3. Reformatting a Series of Events into a list. Then I have a starting point to shuffle things around to get the pacing right.
4. Seeing what it wants me to write so I can then not write that because anything ChatGPT can write has definitionally already been written, if phrased differently.
Generally, asking it to repeat your own work back to you is useful so you can look at it more objectively and figure out what’s missing. But I’d advise against it cause idk about you but I like unambiguously owning my own writing.
If anybody has been wondering wtf I have been getting upto instead if writing, it was thinking about this guy.
How about a nabygirl (30M) except he is really wholesome and lovely and his life is rough --- but not to a fetishistic extent --- and he perseveres and we root for him? Well here's one.
He is kind and soft but also won't take anybody's shit. Call that sweet and spicy.
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Genre
All of it, fantasy, horror, romance, drama etc
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Trigger warnings
Mention of eye damage/trauma
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Basic Information
Nicknames
❛ DD ❜
It's a shortened version of his name, though rarely used.
❛ Vix ❜
Since he is very feminine and his animal symbol is the desert fox, I sometimes playfully call him Vix, as in vixen, a female fox.
☯
Name
Daniel Black
His last name changes all the time, but his first name is always the same. Daniel is a Westernized version of his birth name: Daniil, a popular name in Russia.
Slutz
This has been his maiden name a couple of times. It originates from the sim of Daniel I made and has since been referenced once in the story. I often misspelt this as Slitz somehow. I actually did while writing this bit.
Krasny
Russian for red, beautiful. This is his russian last name. It hasn't been used much yet but i chose it because I find the idea of him going from red to black amusing.
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Age
Anywhere from 25-40, it varies.
Birthday
Unknown. Most likely in June, maybe at the end of May.
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Zodiac
Gemini
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Gender
Cis+ male
He has figured out what his gender is and is very comfortable being a femboy.
Attraction
Bi/Gay
He is mostly attracted to masculinity/men, but occasionally a woman/fem walks by that he will have the hots for. Close friendships with women can also turn into romantic feelings for him. He doesn't care which label you use for him and uses these two interchangeably.
Pronouns
he/him
He doesn't get offended if he gets called feminine pronouns, though he likes to correct people who mistake him for a cis woman. Neutral ones don't provoke a reaction at all.
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Personality
Overall Personality
His personality is like Luigi Mario if you made him a femboy.
Flirty, mysterious (uses his bangs to hide his eyes), empathetic, short, opportunistic, anxious and smart when it counts.
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Fav colour: Gold
Gold reminds him of shiny things and he is a lover of all things shiny.
Fav music genres: Pop and Jazz
Fav food: dick
General likes:
-Shiny rocks, since they have magical powers and make for amazing decorations!
-Wine and other fine things in life.
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Hobbies:
-Working out
-Instagram modling
-Writing
He got into journalism (see more further down) after falling down a research rabbit hole a few too many times and exposing too many minor super-powered villains (super nuisances?) while writing his novel.
-Plants
Too many plants... One more will collapse the whole ecosystem... But they keep making babies that can be put in little water cups so how can you blame him?
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Dislikes:
-Cooking
This is to be avoided as much as possible! Pizza might be bad for you, but at least you won't burn down the house with it.
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Brain Situation
Neurotypical
Due to his daddy issues, he seeks approval from men in any form he can get it. He keeps seducing them because of this lingering insecurity.
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Habits
When he isn't being pulled into apocalyptic messes by his husband, his life is rather mundane and calm. He likes it that way. His favourite way to deal with stress is with a good, calming song and a mug of tea or wine while daydreaming and staring out the window.
Smoking isn't as attractive anymore as it used to be. Even still, it looks good in pictures. When shooting for Instagram, he occasionally will light one up. The perk of being able to tolerate the smell of cigarettes is that he can use it as an excuse to chat up people of interest, be that for info or company.
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Fears
He is scared of plenty of things, but he currently has no specific big fears.
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Flaws
-Fucking none
-Tax evasion
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Appearance
Overall Appearance
He has a pretty, round face and long red hair (depending on the limitations of a given character editor and my mood, this ranges from blood red to bright red. It is not natural, he just dyes everything) that is as long as I have the spine to depict it as.
He also (again, depending on my own cowardes and limitations of software) usually hides his eyes with his bangs. His eyes are hazy and visibly damaged. This isn't the reason he hides them, it just happens to be convenient for avoiding annoying questions.
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Disability
He has bad vision. In some versions he is outright blind, even originally missing his eyes completely due to shenanigans.
He uses contactlenses that help seeing with damaged eyes. The nature of the trauma is unknown in minor cases.
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Tattoos
Angel wings tattooed across his back.
A little heart on the side of his V-line
A ghost on his left forearm.
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Piercing
He has earrings, as a man should.
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Clothing Styles
His outfit ranges from anime femboy to straight up maid outfit.
He can most often be found wearing business casual or a woolly sweater.
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Species
It varies. Human/witch/vampire, depending on the setting.
In settings with superpowers he either has no powers or possesses telekinesis that enables him to weald small sharp objects hundreds at a time. When idle the objects orbit in a circle behind him, forming a big halo of death.
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Religion
Christian.
Yes, he knows God is a cat, but he was brought up in a religious part of Russia and it's just a part of him now. Besides, he knows better than to trust everything that a cat says. It's totally possible that Yahweh also exists, locked somewhere in the deepest basement of hell.
The bible doesn't control his life choices beyond giving him a basic guide for morality. Murder lots, respect religion, carnally lust for thy neighbour etc etc.
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Language
Russian, English
He grew up speaking Russian but picked up English very young. By the time he moved to the States, he was almost fluent and most people are surprised to learn he wasn't born in the US.
This is a mini visual novel I made for myself to see how I feel about the medium. Lo and behold, I love it. Might even transition from novel writing to visual novels. It's been good for my drawing skills. I was startled by how strongly my interest rejuvenated when I started messing with the UI.
Here's the link for those curious among you.
It's all done except for sound and music. You already know I'm a writer and I'm a nerd, so I like programming, drawing is fun to some extent too, but I have never in my life dabled in audio. The biggest challenge will be not taking this too seriously.
Still, it works even without audio, so have fun. Why not try to spot bugs to make me feel silly and find the 3 endings.
This is a mini visual novel I made for myself to see how I feel about the medium. Lo and behold, I love it. Might even transition from novel writing to visual novels. It's been good for my drawing skills. I was startled by how strongly my interest rejuvenated when I started messing with the UI.
Here's the link for those curious among you.
It's all done except for sound and music. You already know I'm a writer and I'm a nerd, so I like programming, drawing is fun to some extent too, but I have never in my life dabled in audio. The biggest challenge will be not taking this too seriously.
Still, it works even without audio, so have fun. Why not try to spot bugs to make me feel silly and find the 3 endings.
A little update to my wip's: I have discovered the wonders of visual novel writing.
I'm a nerd for two things: writing and programming, and on top of that I'm a very visual person even though I barely ever draw (I don't mean that in the "ik I just made a masterpiece but I really suck you guys" sense, I mean I get bored if I don't instantly succeed) so visual novels have so far been a really good fit for me.
Here's a little peek of what I have been working on:
Since I have no attention span when it comes to drawing unless I'm getting a w after w, I have returned to my old fling of pixel art. It strikes a balance between being stylized enough to forgive imperfections and versatile enough to let me do cool shit.
I have a little elitism problem that makes me snobby toward trying more cartoony art styles, I'm very used to only drawing realism, so a side effect of trying to sketch character designs is that I have gotten more comfortable with that, like this one. I don't know what to use her for, but I think she looks cool.
When it comes to the story, I'm still figuring it out. At the moment I'm working on a project just called "Test 1." These sprites are for that game. my goal is to just get this elaborate shitpost done and published on itch.io or something. The cool side of this is that I have so far not started to take myself too seriously! Hooray! That's the main reason I have abandoned all my other wips at the moment. I burned myself out by trying too hard when I do my best work when I stop caring too much. Incidentally birnout is why I abandoned this blog too.
One interesting thing I noticed was that I have leaned more toward comedy with the writing. Usually, I take my writing too seriously to be funny and because of the format of a book, the reader can look ahead and see the joke, causing me to lose control of the pacing and therefore lose interest in the joke in the first place. I do write some comedy bits into my books but never have I written a comedy story in itself. With Test 1 I have gone for a comedy vibe, which I am happy about since I like exploring different genres.
If I manage to get Test 1 done I will link it on this blog for yall.
A piece of writing advice that I haven't heard nearly enough, probably really ever, is that unless you are a pure discovery writer or pure planer all the way down, you need to know the ending before you sit down to write.
My writing style is mixed, sometimes I enjoy coming up with a story purely on paper and building it up like lego, but most of the time I write my daydreams. For the longest time I wondered why some things, like Slut camp and Puppylove worked when so many failed. It was that when I sat down to write them, I knew what I wanted.
Most of my stories just peter out once I get the daydream out of my head but they feel unsatisfying to work on and I never end up finishing them because I didn't get that boost of serotonin you get from finishing a story. Writing or reading, good or bad, the end is what sticks with you. Be that "Oh God, it's finally over," or "Fuck yeah, again, again!"
I was watching the original Ice Age movie and I realised Manny represents a milder version of the rather common trope of a grumpy and usually conical person, usually a guy, who often dislikes kids, learning to get with the program and stopping being a disrupter to the social homogeny. Often this character development is spurred by being saddled with a child, implying that "negative" character traits are cured by being forcefully made into a parent.
As someone who looked up to a lot of the funnier, more extreme versions of these characters, I can say that this is ass. I didn't "grow up" by starting to like kids, I mellowed out from a cynical teenager and through that started tolerating children. Hell, even now I'm pretty sure entrusting me with the care of a child would count as child neglect.
What I find interesting is the character of Sid, specifically how Manny has to "grow the fuck up" from his disruptive ways but he does not have to. I would argue Sid is in fact way more socially disruptive than Manny is, yet he has to over the course of the story learn very little. Yes, over the series he does mellow out with his bullshit if I remember correctly, but that isn't caused by the gods declaring him an evil deviant but just a casual writing decision to make him slightly less grating to the nerves. Or maybe I just got desensitized to him over the years.
So I wonder, why are people like Sid not considered a problem in media or in society? Why do the Mannyes of the world have to change but the Sids do not?
I suppose Sid represents the socially dominant unsocialized boy who is too annoying to bother teaching so people just tolerate him. But why is Manny not tolerated? I'm pretty sure that if someone took the time to sit Sid down and explain to him in detail why his behaviour is unacceptable, he would instantly get better. Yet no one bothers.
Is this all because the kind of personality type in real life he represents controls most things and likes to be told they aren't doing anything wrong, like the trope of the nerd boy getting the pretty girl without having to change anything about himself?
