d e v o n
Claire Keane
KIROKAZE
Sade Olutola
we're not kids anymore.
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
todays bird
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shark vs the universe
Mike Driver
tumblr dot com
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
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styofa doing anything
⁂
blake kathryn
JVL
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@wordsnnblues
hi langblr!
i’m back :)
my account used to be wordsnnblues, but after a very long hiatus i figured it would be best to start from scratch!
so, a little about me…
- my name is jade and i’m from the usa
- i study linguistics, english, italian, russian, and japanese in college
- outside of school, i study norwegian, portuguese, and a few others here and there
i hope to meet catch up with my old mutuals again, and hopefully make some more!
Head of a Capri girl (1878), John Singer Sargent animated with MyHeritage.
Original picture below.
“Paradise XIV”
Gustave Dorè, 1860, for “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri.
Quick Italian cheat sheet by me.
Save it, print it, learn it!
Fusion of Classic Paintings and Modern Day Cityscapes
Ukrainian artist Alexey Kondakov juxtaposes classical oil paintings in modern day scenes to compose magnificent collages.
Keep reading
Agnolo Bronzino, Saint Sebastian, 1533. Oil on panel, 87 cx 76.5 cm. Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid.
i am overcome with the urge to deal out unsolicited writing advice
!!!! i’ve had four consecutive zooms today and ready to scream so have a bullet pointed list that more than one person did actually ask for
READ OLDER WORK
read!! ur!! older writing!!! if you’re working on a wip that you’ve had for a while, go back to the start and reread it!!
if it’s in chronological order (impossibly cool of you if it is) even better.
rereading ur older writing and thoughts about a wip will 100% make you think of new thoughts to add in, or lines to rewrite or parts where you could’ve said something more
it’s a v. easy way to turn add a few more ks of words to a long doc
DIALOGUE THOUGHTS
dialogue is so fucking awesome!! write more dialogue!!
seriously though, when you’re envisioning a super specific scenario of your characters where you know every fucking thing about the scene down to how they’re sitting and what color the wallpaper is, dialogue / script format is your friend. it’s there for you.
just get all of their dialogue out into one page, add actions and descriptions and relevant info in brackets or clauses or some kind of script format if that’s what works
and now you have a semi coherent scene! it’s in order! character a said this, in this kind of tone. they did this action. the wallpaper was this color. they were having the conversation over lunch. this is foreshadowing / symbolism because xyz reason!! it’s coherent!! it’s scene!!
SAID IS THE BEST WORD EVER OK YOU CAN ADD FUN THINGS LIKE ‘SHE SAID BEFORE SMIRKING’ OR ‘THEY SAID HUNGRILY’ OR WHATEVER IT’S SO GOOD IT’S LIKE A SANDWICH BASE FOR UR DESCRIPTIVE TOPPINGS.
no seriously don’t trip yourself up- especially if you’re on a sudden burst of inspiration -by trying to pick words and adjectives that haven’t already been used. this is your doc. this is your draft
do not waste twenty minutes trying to figure out the perfect balance between ‘x said’ ‘x laughed’ ‘x did action no said or other synonym’ just fucking write x said, and stick with is but also write things in clauses or brackets like (she’s saying it angrily, you can feel the tension. her hands are clenched around the handle and the protag notices) to unpack later
so much of writing is unpacking things you wrote to be honest
on the flipside of this, writing as dramatically as you want just to get the ideas out in the way that you want them to, head to paper, is something that using ‘said’ alternatives is good for.
it’s better to write an entire doc of ‘she screamed’ ‘the cat wailed’ ‘x howled’ ‘he yelled’ than to reread your writing and go no!!! this doesn’t capture my intentions!!!
if you write as dramatically (definition when used in this context is to go all out with your words, no said angrily, we use screamed in frustration) you have an excess of prose and adjectives and weird phrases that you wrote to capture what the feeling of the moment felt like in your head, it gives you something to prune away at.
‘VIOLENT STABBING FANTASY OF FALLING AND KNIVES IN FULL ON PROSE AND ANALOGIES AND SO MUCH DIFFERENT ADJECTIVES FOR WORDS RELATED TO PAIN AND TORTURE’ vs. ‘(x is fantasizing about taking revenge on y. dramatic sequence of imagined gore is involved)’
ACTING AND REACTING FOR CHARACTERS
character!!! is very important!!! ur characters have to act, okay?
bad stuff can’t just happen to them and kickstart plot events, it makes a unengaging story filled with shitty things happening to people.
you can’t just write about someone reacting to events that are happening to them. your characters need to have some kind of agenda, to act.
one of my favorite things in knife summer (one of my wips) is the fact that while many horrible shitty things happen to our protagonist, most of them are due to her own actions.
*snaps fingers* it’s about the acting instead of reacting
it’s the difference between ‘my mc is a victim whose suffered a humiliating defeat because of fate oh no look at what angsty bad event has happened’ and ‘my mc is a bastard who actively acted like one and attempted to kill this other character and yeah the humiliating defeat part is kind of her fault because she was the one who incited the other character into claiming their fate and also this event was v. good for her character development in a way because it showed how they’d underestimated the people around them and also how in the aftermath of it, discovers that isolating themselves was a bad decision’
bad things will happen!! to your protagonist! your protagonist has to fuck up at least once or else it isn’t fun.
but you can’t just make them go through events where all they’re doing is reacting. *mentor figure is murdered!!* *protag is sad* *dog is kidnapped!!* *protag is furious* *love interest betrays them!!* *protag is completely useless and unable to do anything about it except be betrayed*
or alternatively you could have figured something out that’s entirely the opposite of what i just said. different things work for different people.
most of my thoughts on the above stem from my personal aversion to when horrible shitty things happen to a character, that are out of their control and all they can do is react and try to catch up to the pain of what’s happening. and that’s for personal reasons, and my personal opinion
SECONDARY AND MAIN RELATIONSHIPS
this is going to turn into a wishlist of things that i love in any media at any moment, but i’m sorry and three of you did ask for this to be honest.
but !!! your protagonist shouldn’t have zero significant bonds with people who aren’t their love interest!! even if this is a romance novel- people don’t exist in their own bubble of themselves singular. they have friends, they have acquaintances, they have work friends, they have people they went to school with who they awkwardly bring up going out for coffee to and never actually do it- so many relationships.
and not all of them are romantic!! and that’s the coolest part about it!
anyway develop the relationships your characters have with other characters (not just their love interest) and plot will suddenly be much easier.
for spring hanging (one of my wips), all of the main characters have some kind of relationship with each other, whether it’s ‘childhood friends who know a terrible secret’ or ‘unwilling accomplices’ or ‘situational friends but that doesn’t mean their relationship is zilch in terms of plot’ and it makes writing plot events, so much more easier.
you need to be able to think of your characters as people too. and people react to events differently based on whose involved. if someone you loved was implicated in a terrible event, the fact that their someone you love, will create bias for whatever decision you make. even if you choose to make a decision that you’d make if they were a stranger.
relationships can further plot!! why would x and y work together? because z is x’s friend and also the student y is supposed to be mentoring! so of course they’d work together to figure out what happened to z!!
and more friendships in media!! friendships are this very cool concept of when you and two people mutually decide to be associated with each other, and it is hella fucking rad and can not really be explained
but look a story is surreal when you think about it, how you’re creating a world and all the characters are you in a way, and all the things they do have been predetermined by you and- don’t think about it too much.
the point is that you should definitely have more than one kind of relationship in your work. because platonic bonds can affect plot just as much as romantic ones, whether it’s familial or friendship.
Gerardo Dottori (Italian, 1884-1977), Senza titolo, 1925. Oil on canvas, 77 x 101 cm.
via jareckiworld
RUN (DUN DUN DUNDUNDUN)
(from the anfield wrap on twitter)
Everyone who reblogs this before 20/2/2020 will get a random Italian word in their ask box
A list of songs that every Italian speaker knows but are weird to explain to foreigners
(because a genius made a tweet about this and it was so brilliant that I need to do something similar on tumblr)
the one where America is a metaphor for masturbation [x]
the one about Sundays being boring and useless [x]
the one where somebody killed spiderman and it might have been the coffee industry [x]
the one where happiness is a glass of wine and a sandwich [x]
the one about a vespa scooter [x]
the one where the cobra isn’t a snake [x]
the one where a guy wants to go on a date with his girl but someone from her family keeps tagging along [x]
the one about bananas and raspberries [x]
the one where a guy suffers from stress, is tired and out of shape but is in a boyband [x]
the one where a lady sees a hot guy at the supermarket and tries to hit on him before he finishes his grocery shopping [x]
the one about getting a new face thanks to a perfect scalpel [x]
the one where you need to ask your mom to send you to buy milk because we need to talk [x]
the one about a man starting to consider the triangle after the lady he was supposed to sleep with brings another dude along [x]
The one where making love is beautiful but only if you do it below the latitude of the city of Trieste [x]
the really, really upbeat song about wanting razorblades to self harm [x]
the one about cicadas [x]
the one where the afternoon is too light blue and long [x]
the one where a boy form Naples likes to act like an American even if he’s born in Italy [x]
the one about a guy that wants to spend all day in the bath tube [x]
the one about poppys being tall tall tall, but you’re born a little duck and there’s nothing you can do about it [x]
the one about Gianna who had a crocodile and a doctor [x]
the one about the night before your final high school exams [x]
the really, really old one about how both black eyes and blue eyes are pretty but we like legs more [x]
the one where until the boat goes, don’t row [x]
the one about a really cool guy that liked the beatles and rolling stones just like me but now he’s dead in Vietnam [x]
the one where life is beautiful as long as you have an umbrella [x]
the one where superhero Shpalman spreads shit on the faces of the bad guys [x]
the one about the friendzone [x]
the one about houses, books, cars, travels, newspaper sheets [x]
the one about a man being hung with a gold rope because he stole 6 deers from the king’s park selling them for money [x]
the one about chocolate ice cream, sweet and a bit salty [x]
the one about the moon knocking [x]
the one about going to dance in Apulia except “dance” is a methaphor for dying [x]
The last one doesn’t have a link, so it’s my duty as someone who dances in Apulia to provide it
THIS IS AMAZING
Perfect example of what happens inside your brain when you speak more than one language
I love you Alessandro so much
One last post about Mahmood @ the Eurovision Song Contest 2019
+ Bonus:
How to improve pronunciation
Salut! How would you recommend someone to improve their pronunciation in French if they don’t have access to a class/live in the country where French is spoken? I’m trying so hard but I struggle a lot with pronunciation but it’s so so important to me to be able to pronounce words properly and speak well because I love this language so much and it’s very important to me but I’m struggling a lot
I’d like to point out that you don’t have to live somewhere or go to school to get any kind of skill. Practice and hard work will always be enough. Now :
Study this post about phonetics
Study this post about pronunciation
Listen to audiobooks while reading the written version (see below)
Watch subtitled stuff (Netflix, TED talks, hacked content, TV5 Monde’s Sept jours sur la planète, Public sénat)
Speak to yourself, pretend to be a Youtuber, debate out loud (…) and record it so you can listen to it later
Some resources :
Youtube’s pronunciation channels
The website Forbo (natives pronouncing words)
The website Reverso (translation, pronunciation, context)
The website Linguo.tv (french videos + subtitles)
Phonetic transcription
Audiobook/ebook combo :
Le Petit Prince - Saint Exupéry AU / EB
1984 - George Orwell AU / EB
The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo AU / EB
The Art of War - Sun Tzu AU / EB
The Call of Cthulhu - Lovecraft AU / EB
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll AU / EB
L’Île mystérieuse - Jules Verne AU / EB
The Bible AU / EB
The Fellowship of the ring - J.R.R. Tolkien AU / EB
Pride and prejudice - Jane Austen AU / EB
Le Horla - Maupassant AU / EB
Candide - Voltaire AU / EB
The Black Cat - Edgar Allan Poe AU / EB
Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde AU / EB
Hope this helps! x
oh, how long it’s been!
i’m making a slow return from my hiatus
in all honesty, i haven’t been keeping up with my studies as much as i should be, but i’m planning on getting back into making original once again.
i’ve really missed the community on here and just language study in general
if we haven’t spoken in a while feel free to say hi! i’ve missed you guys ❤️
& to all my new followers, welcome to my page! you don’t have to think twice about messaging me either 😌
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