magpie tell me all your stories

Birdie. 30, she/her, lesbian. Fantasy writer whose interests include queer women, companion animals, found families, mythology, ancient history, and hopepunk. Sideblog, follows & comments from taibhsearachd.

[belovedplank]

WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE WRITERS BLOCK

SO, I LOVE fanfiction, it is my main source of entertainment and joy in life, especially in these troubled times.

And I read a variety of fandoms and pairings

I also WRITE fanfiction; usually inspired by an episode/part of the book/movie not going the way I would like it to (usually in respect of my OTP of choice) 

Now, I don’t write for every fandom I read, but I have written something in most of the fandoms I have become invested in.

HOWEVER, whenever I start to write something that is getting lengthier, something I am really starting to feel proud of, its like I run out of steam. I, along with my readers, am DESPERATE to know what happens next (or sometimes, I have the end all mapped out but am stuck between here and there). BUT I AM TOTALLY BLOCKED AND HAVE NO WAY TO GET THERE!

Way back when, LJ used to be the place I would go to beg for assistance from the relevant community, but its so desolate and forgotten now. And although I LIVE on AO3, there is no facility on there (that I am aware of) to ask for assistance beyond maybe leaving a Note on the story itself (which I have done on some)

Currently, I have about a dozen fics of varying lengths in a variety of fandoms; some of which I don’t even read anymore, but I CAN’T bring myself t orphan or abandon the fics because I am proud of them and I really want to see them finished; I just need a little help and/or inspiration.

I am begging for assistance/guidance/ANYTHING. If anyone is interested in helping or has any ideas where I could/should go for help, please PLEASE let me know.

[dduane]

First of all: Deep breath. Most writers who work at longer lengths (here suggesting 40K+ as a general starter/target length) have been where you are right now. It’s not an inescapable dead end. At worst it’s like being a Roomba banging repeatedly head-first into a corner.

What needs to happen for you here is for you to get yourself un-cornered at least once, so that you’ll know by experience that it’s possible. After that you’ll be able to carry that certainty along with you to free up other stuck works.

So let’s take this step by step.

(1) First of all: assess the spread of works that you’re most desperate to get going on. Identify the one that you’re most desperate about; the one for the sake of which you’d gladly murder someone to get it going again and completed.

(2) Put that one aside. There’s too much energy bound up in it, and if the tactics to follow don’t work for you, you might lose heart.

(3) Pick the one that came up second to that work as the one you’re most desperate to complete. This is the one you’re going to operate on. I use the term both advisedly and with intent to indicate what’s going to happen.

(4) Identify, in advance, a period during which you’ll have a quiet… afternoon? (or similar period, judging by what you know to be a comfortable reading speed) to read through what you’ve got of that work in prose form (not your notes, but the actual written work). The pieces do not have to be connected.

(5) On the day you’ve chosen, take the work out and read it top to bottom. No rewriting. You can take notes if anything useful occurs to you, but otherwise, leave it alone.

(6) Now put it away for a week. NO PEEKING. Go do something else, be something else, read something else. Anything else. Lots of anything else but not, under any circumstances, that.

(7) After a week, take it out again. Your dealings with the work in this pass are going to be strictly diagnostic. You have three questions to ask yourself about this work, and answer. If you can’t find answers to them all within a day or two, put the work aside and come back a week later and have at it again. The questions are these:

(a) What is this story about? (Boil it down to the most prominent trope. “Love will find a way.” “Sometimes you have to suffer.” “Your first choice could be wrong: don’t be afraid to change your mind.” Etc.)

(b) Regarding the overall arc of what story you’ve got: Who does it hurt? (Meaning: who is the person, and what is the situation, to or from whom/which most of the pain [and therefore the drama] in this story flows?

© What material is in this story that doesn’t need to be there (i.e., doesn’t serve the answers to the first two questions, doesn’t advance the plot / the characters’ development toward the final place where you hope to leave them)?

(8) What you’re allowed to do now is some light editorial. Use the answers that come up to question © as a guide toward cutting out at least some, if not all, of those unnecessary elements. You may be shocked at how much stuff you lose at this stage. That’s perfectly okay. After a session or two of editing in this mode, no more than three, put it aside again for a week, and once more go do/be other things.

(9) Now comes the stage where so often the magic happens if you know what question(s) to ask next. …My experience with stoppages of this kind in the past has shown me that routinely there is a motivational element or plot problem that you haven’t sufficiently thought through. Most often of all, like 85% of the time or better, this takes the form of character business that hasn’t been sufficiently resolved. Once you get it resolved, the stoppage routinely comes undone.

So you need to find a couple of chairs. One of them is for you. One of them is for one of your characters. Because routinely there will be an important character who needs to have a conversation with you – one who has something important to share with you about why this isn’t working.

You get to “sit” that character down in that chair and say to them, “What do you have to tell me that you haven’t told me before?”

And then you wait.

You may not get anything back right away. This is normal, because this technique routinely freaks everybody out (including experienced psychiatric professionals, like yours truly). Keep your butt in the hot seat and keep theirs there too. Wait for an answer.

Routinely you’ll get something back within an hour or so. It may take longer. The exigencies of life do often impinge and you may have to get up and go do something else. But every day, you need to sit in the chair and sit them down and ask them again, “What have you got to tell me?”

The answer will routinely surprise you. It may turn up in the middle of the night. It may come to you in a dream. It may come up in conversation with someone real. But it will arrive.

When it does: (a) write it down, FFS. And then (b), consider what to do with it. But again, routinely, a way forward will suddenly appear. May indeed seem obvious. Resist the urge to bang your head against the wall.

Then start writing again.

So: give that a shot and see how it works for you. If you need more assistance, you know where to find me.

Now: go get ‘em. :)

[berrybird-blog1]

Helpful things for action writers to remember

Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll. 

Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast. 

Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention. 

Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them. 

Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently. 

ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face. 

Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.

Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone. 

A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way. 

If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword. 

ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters.  (CLICK ME)

If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability. 

People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot. 

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME) 

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here. 

[transmechanicus]

I love the idea of dead gods. Not in the sense of “hey i killed something supernaturally strong” but in the sense of “i killed it and it’s still a god.” It is still worshipped. prayers are still answered. miracles are performed in its name, even as it lies pierced by a thousand swords and burning with chemical fire. even as it drifts through vacuum, decapitated and bleeding molten rock. in cosmic spite of being shot through each eye and hurled into a plasma reactor, it still radiates the power of the divine in a way that primitive death cannot smother. the nature of godhood is not so simple as to be tied to the mortality, or immortality, of any living being.

[homunculus-argument]

Worldbuilding stuff:

If your story has an idle nobility class, their culture shouldn't just be different from the general population, it should be an over-the-top caricature of the common folks' culture. Whatever the population generally agrees is ideal, fair, admirable, or good, the nobility will take into stupid extremes.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, people are actually not at all happy when they're idle - a person with no assigned task or duty will go out of their way to come up with one. And all around the world, whenever there's been an upper class with nothing to do, they've started to compete with each other over stupid shit, but always stupid shit that the culture they live in considers positive qualities.

From the noblemen in Europe challenging each other to a possibly lethal duel over insulting someone's hat, to a Chinese noblewoman being moved to tears by the beauty of someone's calligraphy, bored elites everywhere have always wanted to outdo each other in their expressions of possessing all the noble traits that this culture in particular holds in value.

You can, and should, use this as a way to highlight what the actual values of this society is. In a setting where being religious is held as an admirable trait, there is nobility coming up with new ways to one-up each other in their expressions of worship. Society that values art and music will have them competing over who hires the most artists, and who employs the most talented musicians. Aggressive, war-like people will have fuels to the fucking death over a stupid hat.

Literally anything can be competed in, and bored people with far too much time and money in their hands will become competitive over the most ridiculous things. This isn't just an useful tool in worldbuilding, but also a fun one.

[llamagoddessofficial]

[This idea has been rattling in my brain and I had to share it.]

I know we all love the ‘humans are space orcs’ concept… but imagine, onboard the new ship they’ve been assigned to, the human meets an actual space orc. A massive monster… fangs and tusks and scars and a battle-hardened stare, looming over all the other life forms on the ship in its thick indestructible armour it refuses to remove. It barely drinks, it doesn’t need sleep, its massive shoulders are heavy with the terrible things it has experienced. Compared to the squishy & delicate human body, this thing is a walking tank.

… Except instead of hating/ignoring one another, the human and the monster start bonding over both coming from death planets. The human is excited to find a life form who doesn’t quiver with fear at the vague description of a jellyfish and the monster is ecstatic to meet someone who understands the feeling of being bitten by a qua’lem (cats are pretty close). They sit together and compare dangerous animals and locations as the other aliens look on in confusion and fear… oh, you also have dense jungles of deadly hidden predators, boiling acid lakes, tamed predatory killers, and areas with horrendously high and low temperatures? Sick!! 

It doesn’t take long before the two of them become totally inseparable. The human loves not feeling like some kind of crazy outsider and the monster is overjoyed they’ve finally found an equal in this unkillable marshmallow.

Monster: When I was a youngling, a grol-lik stung straight through my armour. The pain lasted for approximately 16 human hours. Human: Oh yeah man, I get that. As a kid I got a wasp stuck in my shirt. It stung me like four times, it was awful, and all my cousins just laughed at me… Monster: [using their arm screen to research human courting methods] I see.

[driiaz]

Not quite an ‘Orc’ per-se, but eh, close enough. See here giant spiky Deathworlder simping for tiny shouty Deathworlder.

[marlynnofmany]

This art is amazing and makes it so much better.

[deflare]

My first thoughts when I read this were: 1) “Qua’lem are like cats??? I WANNA PET ONE.” 2) “Oh, I’d definitely date this cool alien.”

So. Uh. Point made, OP.

[sunnibits]

Hot take but I don’t think “Hetero” couples in fiction are boring actually I just think they’re boring because we see the same m/f couples every single time.

Allow me to elaborate:

Usually every m/f couple we see in media consists of two conventionally attractive, young, skinny, allosexual, cishet, gender conforming, often white people. And you can always see the relationship coming a mile away.

Imagine how much better it would feel if you saw more of THESE kinds of m/f couples in media:

Fat characters involved in the relationship, and not made into a joke

Disabled characters involved in the relationship, and not made into a joke

A man happily in love with a gnc or masculine woman

A woman happily in love with a gnc or feminine man

Bisexual or pansexual men and women in love with the opposite sex (and bi for bi, Pan for Pan couples)

A man happily in love with a trans woman

A woman happily in love with a trans man

Trans for trans m/f couples

Asexual and gray-sexual people in romantic relationships and being respected in those relationships

Two middle aged people entering a new relationship, with the same attention and slow burn and tension as any young pairing (because middle aged and elder people have love lives too, and can fall in love again even if they’ve been married before!! See Kane/Abby in the 100.)

More POC x POC relationships!

A man who stays at home and takes care of kids x a working woman who isn’t criticized for not being home enough

Supportive parents to queer kids

Punk/alternative/goth m/f couples and parents (bc I just think that’s cool)

Couples who get together and then realize they’re better as friends, and have a healthy breakup while staying super close (and not creating secret drama)

Neurodivergent people involved in the relationship (adhd/autistic men and women infodumping to their supportive partner... happy stimming after a cute interaction with their crush.. it’s just so good) and not made into a joke or infantilized!

BUFF STRONK WOMAN x LIDDOL MAN VERY IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE

People who aren’t conventionally attractive in a loving relationship, and there isn’t any drama or weird side plot about “learning to love someone for what’s on the inside!!”

and so many more I could think of!!!

Just something to think on. (And remember, not all m/f couples are “hetero”. If you’re still saying “ew heteros!!” every time you see a straight couple, now is the time to stop.)

[betterbemeta]

Foods Humanity Figures Out Everywhere

soup: Boil The Food To Make Food Water

stew? gravy? curry?: like soup but less water more food 

porridge: add water to the starch but not so much. warm and mushy yum

pancake/flatbread: make the starch wet and flat, then put on hot surface.

fried starch thing: Use hot oil to make starch crispy yum++

dumpling: put the not starch in the starch thing and cook it.

alt dumpling: ball of starch added to soup or stew. makes chewy starch ball yum yum

filled portable food: starch wrapper of some kind to make it so you can eat the messy food with your hands.

[an-apocalypse-of-magpies]

#also: ferment thing until it makes dizzy water

[atelierwriting]

plot feeling a little empty in the middle? here’s some food for thought.

actions have consequences. things that your characters do inevitably can affect other people around them. what might they have done in the past that could come back and serve as an obstacle? or, maybe, what could they do now that could possibly raise the stakes just a little bit more?

subplots! be mindful of the subplots you’re adding - but sometimes it might be a good idea to include one if your plot is feeling a little bit empty. not only can it tie back into the overarching struggle, but it could also serve as a way to explore one of your characters or points further.

character exploration. get to know your characters a little bit better! let your readers find out something new. connecting and understanding the people within your story is important if you want your readers to grow attached to them.

world exploration. similar to the previous point, with the addition of creating a greater sense of familiarity of the circumstances that your story is taking place in. remember that nobody else knows the world of your wip as well as you do - illustrate it even further so everyone else can grasp it even better.

let your characters bond! maybe there’s a lull in the plot. if your characters have the chance to take a breather and get to know the people around them, let them! it might help flesh out or even realistically advance their relationships with each other.

[bookishdiplodocus]

Naughty words in a godless world

Imagine you're writing a story that takes place in a world that has no God, or gods, or saints. What do you do with exclamations like "Oh gosh!" (derived from "Oh God") or "Jeez!" (derived from "Jesus!")? And - oh god - what do you do with curses and swear words? If your characters can't say "Oh my god", "hell no", or "damn" because there are no gods to damn anyone to hell... what are your options?

Here is a list for inspiration

In general, non-religious curse and swear words refer to local cultural taboos.

Many languages swear by referring to cleanliness: dirty, sweaty, sticky, smelly etc. This includes things you do on the toilet.

Some languages, like Dutch, use diseases as curses and insults. For example, someone nasty/bothersome might be called a "cancer sufferer" in Dutch. These swear words are combinations of (derivates of) typhus, cholera, and cancer.

Societal hierarchy and family trees, mainly the inferior positions like a bastard (seen as inferior in the family tree) or a derogatory word that refers to lower class people (seen as inferior in that society).

On the other hand, you could insult a highly valued member of the other person's family, like their mother, or of their society, like their Queen/Emperor.

Sexual taboos, often implying someone (or their mother) is more sexually active than society accepts of them.

Calling someone the word for someone's genitalia refers to the same taboo.

How do you apply this to your language?

You could use explicit/taboo words as ... :

... an intensifier: "It was a shit-hot day."

... a negative adjective: "This is a shitty job."

... an insulting noun: "This journey is shit."

Or try to be creative and combine different taboos for a multi-hit offense. My favorite one is the Spanish "I shit in your mother's milk", which combines insulting the other person's mother, the taboo of bodily functions, and the taboo of cleanliness.

During my research I came across this article, which contains a number of concrete examples from all over the world you can draw inspiration from.

And on a less offensive note, you could always make up your own equivalent of "Merlin's beard!", "Great Scott!", or "For Pete's sake!" (Pete, by the way, is a catholic reference: Pete is Saint Peter.)

I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing!

Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing tips here. New topics to write advice about are also always appreciated.

Tag list below the cut. If you like to be added to or removed from the list, let me know.

And if you come up with creative curses, feel free to add them in the comments :)

@therska @writingwordsaddrawingpictures @the-words-we-never-said @writingwhithotchocolate @i-rove-rock-n-roll @maskedlady @no-time-like-write-now @timefire25 @black-lakritz-dragon @nzmayart @fandomrandomness-stuff @dangertoozmanykids101 @anaestheticdisaster @storytellingofravens @purpleshadows1989 @mathematicpony @i-don-t-know-words @notquitenovelist @coffeescribles @reffaces @livingthelovelylife @katsglabella @lokitty-is-my-spirit-animal @thefallenbibliophilequote @watchmewritedumb @sting-the-scribe @kais-writing-shit @dameschnee123 @curiosityonmars @oodlittlething @nonbinarychaoticstupid

[probablygoodrpgideas]

The “Necromancy is evil“ we see in most fantasy worlds stems from a christian view of having to honor the body after death in a certain way to ensure the soul’s safety in the afterlife. And while I encourage you to explore societies that don’t see necromancy as evil, I also encourage you to explore societies that see necromancy as evil for different reasons.

Drow might believe that after death, your body belongs to Lolth and must be fed to spiders. Reanimating a body means stealing from Lolth and must therefore be punished.

A Zoroastrian inspired society might believe that with death, evil starts infesting the body, so dead bodies must be kept away from the community, and reanimating them keeps them in the community and is therefore bad.

[pomrania]

Ooh, sounds fun! Let me come up with some more.

necromancy is associated with the culture’s traditional enemies, and is the same level of frowned-upon as using certain symbology or weapons or languages etc which are also linked to those enemies

once someone has died, it is severely disrespectful to look upon their corpse, so anything which is VISIBLE as being an undead is Very Bad, because it means you can see that person’s dead body

the reanimated dead have historically been used to spread plague and do other biological warfare type stuff; if you create something like that, a) gross b) unsanitary c) this is interpreted as the intent to commit war crimes

[135weirdos-deactivated20250128]

A society of druids that uses the dead to grow sacred gardens, and reanimation deprives the dead of their part in the cycle

A society where each plot in the cemetery is used to grow vegetables/herbs for community use, to ensure that everyone is fed and the dead are visited/remembered. Necromancy deprives the community of the food that person would have grown and disconnects the dead person from their community

A society obsessed with history/recordskeeping/memory, and necromancy prevents the dead from being properly catalogued

A totalitarian society wherein the citizens are property of the state and necromancy is stealing

Death is nirvana and reanimation deprives the dead of this experience

The dead are ritually eaten by friends/family to allow them to live on, and reanimation ends their time prematurely

The finest jewelry is made of the bones of the dead, so there’s a lucrative trade in grave robbing, and the bone jewelry lobby has convinced the public that necromancy is worse than the expensive jewelry made from the bones

[pomrania]

when someone dies, their death is considered a “sacrifice” to the deity who presides over their cause of death; how exactly you deal with the body, that doesn’t matter so much, but USING the body to your OWN benefit, that’s an insult to the god of warfare / disease / ocean / etc. Like stealing the offerings from a shrine.

[eclipseyeger]

~~a culture that recognizes the effort and emotional strain their people go through in life, and when someone dies they throw a huge wake and celebrate their break from life before joining their god/reincarnating/guarding something/etc.  Reanimating someone or trying to bring them back to life is seen as a huge taboo because it’s like asking someone who constantly works and finally gets a time of rest to go straight back to work before they’ve recovered.  Except it’s the hardest job/adventure ever.  For the same reason, motherhood, illness, leadership, recreation, personal growth, and winter are all highly venerated concepts/times in the culture, as times of rest or things in need of a period of rest eventually.  To honor these times as sabbats is commanded by one of their gods after a great catastrophe. The whole community is involved with these things, and so too are is the whole community involved with death and picking up the physical or emotional slack of the person who died.  If permission is given from the person who is being reanimated, then maybe maaaaaybe it’s ok, but that’s only happened once when a guardian was once needed, and it’s pretty hard to verify if it really was the person.  

[pomrania]

reanimation is seen as asserting “ownership” over that being; so while it’s okay to have an undead animal (so long as it wasn’t someone ELSE’S animal, as that would be theft), reanimating a HUMAN counts as “slavery”

necromancy is considered “lazy”; like, dude, do the work yourself, or pay/convince someone else to do it, what kind of loser has to resort to CORPSES

only the divine can raise the dead; reanimating the dead is a poor mockery of the gods’ ability, and you are liable to be punished for your hubris, and that kind of punishment tends to have a lot of collateral damage so it’s best for mortals to solve the problem before the gods take notice

[dailycharacteroption]

This is a good follow up to the post about necromancy and enchantment a few days ago.

[leave-her-a-tome]

@writwritewrought

[ruffboi-mags]

Asking for a writer friend, but as a queer writer, how would you handle realizing after youd already written a character to die (his death is plot relevant) in your story that they very much come off as bisexual? Friend asked me for advice since she's not as into queer culture and doesnt wanna fall into bury your gays tropes. I'm not really a writer so I figured I'd ask a couple queer writers I follow for advice for her.

Have other queer characters who don’t die.

Seriously, that’s it. Bury Your Gays is such a problem because it’s usually a situation where a gay character exists, is the only gay character around, and then ends up dead. It’s a problem because by killing that gay character in a story where they’re the only gay character, you’re removing the only queer rep in your story and putting them in the ground.

It’s sort of like how you can have a character who’s (almost) any kind of cliche/stereotypical, as long as there’s a couple other characters who share that demographic who are NOT stereotypical, y’know? to show that a) not all people of that demographic are like that, and b) you know that not all people of that demographic are like that.

Seriously. If it’s a plot relevant death, that’s totally fine. Just include other queer characters in the story. It doesn’t have to be a big central plot point, just have a female character mention an ex-girlfriend at some point, or another character mention needing to fill their HRT prescription, or whatever. It can be a background detail, if the story’s not about that, but as long as there are more queer people around, one of them dying doesn’t remove ALL the queer rep in the story.

[wingsandbarrows]

Alternatively, depending on the character and the story... sometimes the answer can be to change the story. In the book I’ve been working on for years (there are multiple, so if I ever publish, GOOD LUCK FIGURING IT OUT, BITCHES), the main character is gay and her girlfriend was originally intended to die in the course of the big quest. It could’ve been considered a heroic death, at least in the girlfriend’s intentions, but mostly it was just sad and pointless (as far as the characters are concerned) but still very much plot relevant. And, you know, I’m a lesbian, I get to decide that I’m cool with my sapphic romance ending badly where a non-sapphic person writing that story would definitely give me pause.

And then, through different iterations and revisions of the story, I realized the main character’s girlfriend was trans. And in that context, her death felt a lot less appropriate; no matter how intentionally she went into it, no matter how many other trans characters I put into the story.... it just felt bad. So the story changed. It doesn’t end that way anymore, and honestly, I like the shape of it a lot better now.

So...

More queer characters can fix a lot of problems and I highly recommend that as a first option. But I actually don’t think it’s a cure-all. If you have a story full of queer characters but the most stereotypically gay/lesbian character dies, if a queer character dies in a way that evokes specific Bury Your Gays tropes or real-life threats queer people face, if the only queer relationship in your story ends with one of them dead... there may be some concerns.

Because of that, I think your friend should absolutely have someone in the community read her story before she publishes it - you don’t have to be a writer or editor to know when something feels bad, and if you’re at least somewhat literate in queer media, you can probably point out the classic pitfalls. Most stories will not need a complete overhaul. Most potential Bury Your Gays issues can be solved with More Representation. But sometimes... sometimes you gotta be willing to change direction, and if (generic) you as a writer don’t have the awareness and familiarity with the queer community to figure out where that line is drawn, you need to go in willing to listen and make major revisions when a sensitivity reader tells you it’s necessary. (If you’re unsure about that judgement, I encourage you to get second and third opinions on the subject, you don’t have to go off the judgement of one person... but you have to be willing to listen to the people this is going to hurt, even if it means you might have to fundamentally change or abandon your story.)

[gostaks]

some random redemption arcs that aren’t just ‘zuko, but a little to the left’

I’m evil but all my evil friends betrayed me and I’ve decided that the best revenge is to ruin their evil plans. Yes, this means I’m a “good guy” or whatever. No, I don’t like it any more than you do.

I was evil but all my evil friends betrayed me and now I’m going to latch onto the first person who shows me kindness. If that happens to be the protagonist, I am totally fine with realigning my morality to match theirs.

I never wanted to do what I did, and now the biggest obstacle to me switching sides is convincing me that I’m not a living weapon.

Well as long as you’re imprisoning me in this magic amulet I might as well give you pointers on your technique. I mean come on if you all die I might be stuck here for millennia! It’s not because I like you and don’t want you to die. Nuh uh.

Look, I legit thought that being evil was going to be my best option to get this important thing done, but, uh, that didn’t pan out. Help?

[earlgraytay]

how to rec original fiction (when most of what you read is fanfic)

By popular demand!

I've seen a lot of people on here complaining about how Queer Book Rec posts aren't really useful. There's a lot of rec posts that say things like "m/m, found family, magical island setting" without saying anything about the characters, plot, tone, or themes.A lot of the discourse has kinda wound up as FANFIC BAD vs. FANFIC GOOD, but I don't think that fanfic is the problem. A lot of fic rec lists use a format that works for fanfic, but doesn't translate well to original fic.

Like I said here, when you're talking about fic, the ship does a lot of heavy lifting. A ship carries a character dynamic, themes, and tone with it. You know a Stucky fic is likely to be about nostalgia and fixing a relationship broken by circumstance. If you're reccing fanfic, you can say "it's a Stucky coffeeshop AU" and people will have an idea of the vibe. But when you're talking about original fic, you can't really do that. "F/F" and "M/M" are poor substitutes for shipnames; they don't get across the same information about tone and theme.

So how can you rec a piece of original fic you liked while getting across the same information? Gentle reader, I'm so glad you asked.

I'm gonna use my short story The Captain's Sphere as an example. If I were going to describe The Captain's Sphere the way I've seen some Tumblr rec lists do it, I'd say something like this:

Steampunk fantasy f/f with a disabled trans lady scientist main

This isn't the worst description of The Captain's Sphere you could write, but it leaves out a lot of the things that make Sphere unique and interesting. So how do we make this work?

First: The hook.

The hook is the one-to-three sentence description on the Amazon page. You don't have to copy it verbatim- tbh you probably shouldn't- but it's what the author thinks makes the book unique.

Here's the hook for The Captain's Sphere:

Lady Ava Loftus is an unusual woman, even by the standards of sky-sailors. As she pursues her passion- the study and dissection of mysterious creatures called angels- she must move between different social spheres and contend with others' ideas of who and what she should be. Can she adhere to the expectations set for a lady of quality without betraying her true self?

If you can find a way to sum up this hook in your own words, that already goes a long way towards making your rec more interesting. It'll get across more of what the book's about.

So you might say something like:

The Captain's Sphere's about a trans steampunk sky captain who hunts eldritch angels, does SCIENCE, and deals with Victorian gender roles.

Second: the tone.

This is something you really need to get across in a rec, and it's hard to do. but it's really important for convincing people to read it. after all, any genre can mean a lot of different things. does fantasy mean The Secret of Platform 13 or A Song of Ice and Fire? does steampunk mean pith helmets and colonialism or critique of the Industrial Revolution?

One way to get this across is just... to mention something you really liked about the setting, or the character interactions, or the plot. So for example, you could say:

I really liked how Ava has to act like a different person in each part of her life- stern ship captain, family black sheep, distinguished scientist, or loving girlfriend. I also liked the 'angels'- they're eldritch and mindbending without being too Lovecraftian.

Finally- you can cheat.

if it's easier for you to describe things in terms of ships, tropes, and fics, you can still do that for original fic. If the main pairing in a book reminds you of a pairing you like from a piece of popular media, you can compare them to that pairing. If the main plot of a book reminds you of a fic that's popular in your favourite fandom, you can compare it to that fic. Don't make it the entire rec- you risk falling into the "F/F Steampunk Lebsian" description again- but if it's the way you can best express yourself then go for it, you funky lil nerd.

For the Captain's Sphere, you could say something like:

The main characters' relationship really reminded me of Jenny and Madame Vastra from Doctor Who- the difference in their social status and their desire to protect each other means that they love each other, but don't always trust each other. It's a really cool dynamic and I wish I could see more of it.

So when you put all this together, you've got a much longer description. But put the two side by side, and...

Steampunk fantasy f/f with a disabled trans lady scientist main

Versus...

The Captain's Sphere's about a trans steampunk sky captain who hunts eldritch angels, does SCIENCE, and deals with Victorian gender roles. I really liked how Ava has to act like a different person in each part of her life- stern ship captain, family black sheep, distinguished scientist, or loving girlfriend. I also loved the 'angels'- they're eldritch and mindbending without being too Lovecraftian. The main characters' relationship really reminded me of Jenny and Madame Vastra from Doctor Who- the difference in their social status and their desire to protect each other means that they love each other, but don't always trust each other. It's a really cool dynamic and I wish I could see more of it.

One of these descriptions doesn't tell you anything about the story other than "there's gays and trans". The other one's much longer, but it also gives you a good idea of what you're getting into. If I was looking for queer fic to pick up, I'd be mildly intrigued by the first description- but I'd know I had to read the second one.

You see the difference?

[ihasafandom]

This is a good suggestion. I feel like the pro sphere needs some of these tips too. I have seen too many professional book descriptions that don’t give you any info at all, and often they use way too much space to do it so it doesn’t even fit on any of the sites that rec it. Movies, too. (especially since those often just list the actors) So you’ll get 

“Critics are raving! Famous Author: “I was blown away” Coming this fall, an amazing new read by Medal award winning bestselling author Author Name, Book Name is a tour de force that follows the engaging story of Character Name of Place Name......”

And if there’s 30 books on the rec list is anyone actually going to click through to see what any of them are about?

[shiraglassman]

I love this post! Also, @ihasafandom​, I could be wrong but those weird, unhelpful blurbs on some published books might be written by the publishing house, not the author, especially if it’s a big house -- and I know what you mean about them being supremely unhelpful. Like somehow I have this feeling that isn’t what the author would even want. (I do know this definitely happens for book covers at bigger houses.) Usually the blurbs I see on professionally edited self-published indies or small press books are more of the “helpful summary” flavor and less “mysterious praise that actually doesn’t tell you a thing.”

But yeah, this post in general is super helpful because I bet a lot of people saw all those posts going around and thought, well, okay, but I’m just a rando, how do I recommend a book if the way I’m currently doing it isn’t what’s going to sell people on it?

And OP, you did a good job of describing your book in your example! ^_^

[prismatic-bell]

To add to what Shira said on this already excellent post, I think the reason you see this done on books by famous authors is the same reason it works well for fanfiction, but the problem is, that can backfire HORRIBLY. Here, I’ll give you an example using one of my favorite books. Don’t look up the author name, I’ll tell you at the end but I want you to read the description first.

“11/22/63 is this really amazing look at Kennedy-era politics and the way America looked at the time. Basically this guy finds a time portal that lets him go back to a specific day in 1958, but no matter how long he stays, he comes back to the present two minutes later. So he recruits someone to live in the past for five years to stop the Kennedy assassination, and it follows this guy’s life while he tracks down Lee Harvey Oswald and tries to stop him.”

Now, if I were to give you the “the author’s name does the heavy lifting, and that can be a problem” version:

“11/22/63 is the new novel by acclaimed horror writer Stephen King....”

....well, shit.

11/22/63 is not a horror novel.

There are some EXTREMELY minor horror elements, but they can be boiled down to “good G-d! What have I done?” and can be found in almost every piece of dramatic writing ever. The book itself exists at a crossroads of sci-fi, urban fantasy, and historical fiction, presented as slice-of-life. If you were to hand it to me with the author name redacted and tell me it was by someone else, I’d believe you—and I’ve been a King fan for almost 15 years. It plays that hard against his normal type.

This kind of laziness on the part of the publishing house leads to authors being pigeonholed. What do we say when Stephen King writes speculative historical fiction? When John Grisham writes something that isn’t about lawyers? What if Danielle Steel decides to write a murder mystery? Hell, I hate using her as an example, but this is literally why J.K. Rowling took on a pen name. She didn’t want every book she ever wrote to have “from the author of Harry Potter” on it, and when she got outed as Robert Galbraith she was incredibly upset about it. (Also, no matter how much we may dislike her and think her work as Galbraith sucks, I think that’s a very fair reaction to have to being the author of Harry Potter and also wanting to write other things.)

Demand better summaries. It helps us as readers and helps authors, too.

[thewritingumbrellas]

I always found the 7 act structure helped me a lot more than the 3 acts.

Link right here

[snapdragonling]

TOP TIER CONTENT

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

‘Brooding person who only feels safe enough to let the mask slip around Sunshine person’ is alright, but we really do not see enough ‘Sunshine person who only feels safe enough to let the mask slip around Brooding person’.

[inkwell-attitude]

all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is

[fatal-blow]

okay so i know i said most of this in the replies but it might be easier to actually reblog and say stuff instead lmao

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

tl;dr i like to think of major climate events that might have also shaped the land on top of some basic rules

[possiblypedanticrpgideas]

The Artifexian has an entire series on building your world from literally the stars down and then the ground up.

Worldbuilding Videos - YouTube

All my worldbuilding videos

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

[inkwell-attitude]

holy shit?

[intj-confessions]

Every writing advice thing ever: Don’t get bogged down in details on your first draft. Just write! ☺️

Me: How I begin this scene hinges on whether cheese sandwiches were served with mayo in the 50’s.

[colourfullmess]

have not seen anything more relatable today >.<

[wufflesvetinari]

let me link the world’s most useful twitter thread. 

some excerpts:

there’s nothing to stop you from using the <get there> method for research details. in fact, i know many many writers who use it for just that.