Words Count

writing tips, advice and memes

[just-french-me-up]

the urge to write is like a cat meowing for dear life for someone to open the goddamn door, who then shows utter disinterest in said open door

[cactusringed]

(writes something) god this sucks so bad. this is awful. i'm the worst writer ever. this is nothing. (rereads it a while after writing it) oh dude this is fire. i'm the god of writing. (writes something again) god this sucks so bad. th

[luxfuxxvii]

not now kitten. daddy only planned the first half of his wip, and now he has to figure out what the fuck to do for the other half.

[nondelphic]

i’m not procrastinating. i’m allowing the story to ferment. like kimchi. or a crime scene

[luxfuxxvii]

not now kitten. daddy only planned the first half of his wip, and now he has to figure out what the fuck to do for the other half.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

every day of my life i read someone being like “why doesn’t this story just solve the problem immediately and casually? they just drag it out and make it an issue” well. because that’s the Story

[succubusboyfriend]

you have permission to pick that 2 year old "abandoned" project back up. it's not mad at you for setting it aside. and maybe time and distance have helped ease or erase the things that made you put it down in the first place.

[rad-roche]

writing is a fantastic hobby but the kicker is it's a lot harder to show your friends as it's progressing. with a sketch i can show someone and they'll be like oh that's an apple. you can't do that with words until you get a lot of them down. so i'll just be like damn fuckin. uhh. check this out

that's right. and that's just one of the several words i know

[gr8writingtips]

writing tip #4183:

apparently some readers only read dialogue now, so make sure you put anything important in quotation marks

[gr8writingtips]

i'm sorry, "apparently some readers only read dialogue now, so make sure you put anything important in quotation marks"

[tippenfunkaport]

I just know I am going to be thinking of this post forever so I had to share it here. Truly the creative experience in a nutshell.

ND Stevenson (@gingerhaze.bsky.social)

There are two types of entries in my Notes app

[rneliflua]

[ohnoitstbskyen]

What it looks like to me is that these churns of outrage aren't actually about anything that these creators say or do, so much as they are a kind of reflexive action in response to literally any kind of friction. Like an angry infected rash flaring up with pain when it is brushed by a feather.

The show you like is telling a slightly different story than what you want? Friction is the same as pain so it is hurting me, AAAA!!! Your expectation of what was going to happen to that character you liked didn't pan out? Friction! Friction hurts! You're hurting me!!

But where the Disney Corporation can run a fucking angle grinder across the rash and barely provoke an "ow," indie creators (especially if they are not men), can get nearly run off the internet for things like factually answering a direct question or stating that the story they are writing has main characters.

There's a lot of misogyny in that, obviously, and in many awful flavors, but I think there's also mixed in there a very peculiar kind of consumer-brained entitlement. We expect that the big corporations will fuck us over every two seconds, and we expect to be utterly powerless to do anything about it because all they give a shit about is Line Go Up, but indie creators (especially if they are not men) are expected to be the balm to that infected rash. Where everything else in the world is painful and mean and uncomfortable, independent queer creators are expected to produce the comfortable swaddling bandage that dulls the pain and soothes the sensitivity. This is supposed to be our happy place, our safe place. It's supposed to be ours and belong to us and serve us.

And so they moment they produce friction, any friction, literally the tiniest amount of friction imaginable, well that's a failure! You are failing to live up to your purpose, and that's not just a creative failure but a moral and personal and spiritual failure too. It's a sin, in fact, it is a kind of evil. Friction hurts, and that means you are hurting me!

It creates this fucked up upside-down bizarro logic wherein the corpos and the companies can transgress to almost literally any degree, as much as they want, as often as they want, but queer independent creators (and I cannot stress this enough: especially if they are not men) have to walk tightrope on a razor wire and may God help their souls if they ever put a foot wrong. We will shake and shake and shake the towers until they each fall down; I didn't like that step I think you were taking, how dare you believe you deserve to be up there!

[spicymancer]

I definitely feel a sort of hesitation and anxiety whenever I read people’s headcanons about my stories, because I get worried they’ll be upset that the way I write the story doesn’t match up to the thing they have in their heads. This gets especially tricky when lots of folks speculate in different directions and I feel that whatever I write WILL disappoint somebody… (or, to Skyen’s point: create upsetting emotional friction for them)

Which, to be fair? Yeah. That’s normal. Not all art is for everybody. I try hard to internalize this… there’s a really badly paraphrased Mark Rosewater quote about game design I think about a lot:

“Anything specific enough for a person to fall in love with must, by its very nature, be something that another kind of person doesn’t like.”

That’s not a bad thing. Everyone is different and if you try to make something that perfectly inoffensive to everybody, you end up with something mild and flavorless.

All this to say, I’m glad I’ve managed to cultivate a broadly cool audience who, for the most part, are super supportive of my work. I think it’s important to make stuff for the sickos (Affectionate).

[station18908]

The small voice in your head that says: "I don't need to write down every small detail of this plot idea, I love it so much, I'll remember this."

That's the devil speaking.

[nondelphic]

writing is just sitting in front of a computer and making up problems for imaginary people while ignoring your own. fun and casual hobby.

[digitalkiddo]

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[leosmiserables]

obsessed with this bookshop in stratford-upon-avon having WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE listed as a ”local author”

[stonelionhearts]

i think as a writer, the older you get and the more you read, the more you realize there are very few actual truly bad ideas. which is a relief. but! the other thing you learn is that stories live and die on the execution and ha ha. lemme tell you. unfortunately. there are lots and lots of bad ways to execute an otherwise fine idea