Fool! said my muse, Look in thy heart and write!

A blog dump for my writing! Plus art inspo and references with anything from journals to watercolor to photography to writing. ask about my OCs!

[rivalwrites]

I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017. 

the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too. 

he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it. 

he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.

previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.

is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.

it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.

tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.

[mareebrittenford]

This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.

[sawyersscribbles]

This is brilliant!!

[shittydndideas]

Shitty Animal Companions*

A list of disappointing dogs, bothersome birds, and other awful animal companions.

A crow who steals shiny things for you. Usually, it takes your own things, puts them somewhere else for a while, and eventually (maybe) brings them back.

A fox with extreme balance issues; it has to be carried everywhere, and cannot hunt.

A nearsighted hawk.

A carnivorous deer with bloodlust that tries to take a bite out of anything that moves.

A scarred, intimidating-looking dire wolf that is easily scared off by a smaller dog, a squirrel, a cat, or pretty much anything else.

An owl that you’re pretty sure can talk, but that only says “who” in a human voice.

An invisible dog. It barks at all hours and will only stop if you scratch it behind its ears (wherever those are).

A cat. Just a regular, asshole cat.

A parrot that swears like a sailor and curses like a witch; whenever it speaks you either have to have a counterspell ready or simply apologize to whoever it’s offended.

A clinically depressed horse.

*note: this list does not portray the author’s actual feelings about animals. All animals are perfect good beans and deserve lots of love.

[salt-and-a-dash-of-pepper]

Pen Dips - A Daily Writing Schedule for the Month of October (A.K.A. An Alternative to Inktober Because You Don’t Want to Draw Every Day)

Write at least a 300-word response to the designated suggestion every day. Post your responses on Tumblr! Share with the community; encourage productivity for this lovely month! Choose different characters, or make your own in the process of it. Enjoy, fellow authors!

1) Choose a character. What do they smell like? (If you do not fulfill the 300-word count, add another character in!)

2) Choose a location, be it fictional or real, from your own imagination or from another’s. Wait until you are hungry. Then, describe the most stereotypical yet high-quality meal that place could possibly provide.

3) Prompt: your character is now a vengeful wraith. 

4) Change the genre of your current story, or a story that you are currently reading/watching. Make it as humorous as possible.

5) How does your character walk? What do their footsteps sound like?

6) You are forced to clasp onto your character’s hands. The reason why is a scenario for you to figure out. What do their hands feel like?

7) The most important location in your world has just been destroyed. What happens?

8) Begin your story with this sentence: “It wasn’t my fault.” 

9) Your character is humorously upset over something entirely unimportant. What is it, and how do others react? How out-of-hand does the situation become?

10) Begin your story with this sentence: “Spit that out.”

11) Capture a moment of utter peace in the autumn afternoon.

12) Your character has been handed a child that looks nothing like them, but everyone insists that it is their child. 

13) A child wanders into a pumpkin field and meets a peculiar fellow. What happens?

14) Your character has become bound to an enchanted forest by a witch. They cannot leave. What happens?

15) Your character’s soul has been bound to a cat via a curse. What happens? 

16) Your character has just obtained the one thing that they’ve always wanted. What changes?

17) Your character has just become a tyrannical dictator of your story. What happens?

18) Create an original vampiric character. They can be any race, gender, religion, fantasy creature, vegetational entity, etc. Introduce them as you would in a beginning of a story. 

19) A werewolf is running rabid in a lone town. What happens?

20) Begin your story with this sentence: “I can’t feel my legs.”

21) Prompt: There are stairs. An endless, winding well of stairs, going up and up and up. And I can’t get out.

22) A witch has granted your character a single potion of their choosing. What will they choose?

23) Prompt: a baking disaster involving autumn foods.

24) Prompt: There is something hidden below that massive pile of leaves.

25) Prompt: It is not water falling out of those clouds.

26) Choose a character. What feature of theirs do they express the most emotion through? The eyes? The hands? The lips?

27) Your character’s form begins to flake away, like dead leaves off of a tree. What is happening?

28) A small black cat is now under the ownership of your main character. Write this encounter through the cat’s point of view.

29) Hot, pumpkin-flavored tea can make others feel a bit hotter than they’re wont to be. Write a romance scene involving pumpkin-flavored beverages.

30) The entire landscape of your main town has been transformed. In what way? How do the characters react?

31) Your main villain is given a single candy. They do not know who it is from. What happens?

[deepwaterfiction]

Text: She looked up at me, her whole body alight, flickering.“What do you want me to burn?”

[samurots-deactivated20160616]

i just found this website that can randomly generate a continent for you!! this is great for fantasy writers

plus, you can look at it in 3d!

theres a lot of viewing options and other things! theres an option on-site to take a screenshot, so you don’t have to have a program for that!

you can view it here!

[somethingdnd]

Totally gonna use this for making my worlds

[hackmydungeon]

This is the future

[12drakon]

Can they 3D print me a new planet? This one has been disappointing lately.

[castleblue92]

New Link: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/demo.html

[tauforged]

@tailsmutual

[vulpemarshmallow]

I’m really invested in the idea of elves having twitchy ears that reflect their emotions. I’m also invested in the idea of elves having a hard time reading humans because their ears don’t move—and really, that’s like talking to someone who never moves their eyebrows for them.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Magpie Love

“The first rule of love,” her mother says, voice crackling over the phone, “is to never take more than they can give.”

Finola’s eyes dart to the shoebox under her bed and then back out the dorm window. Her room is on the second floor this year and she can see more of the trees than she can see of the grassy space preceding the dining hall. “I know, Mom.”

“Remember.” Her mother’s voice is sharp and Finola can almost see her heavy, thick brows lowering until shadows cover her eyes. “No clothing. No bags. Never any jewelry.”

Finola wraps her free arm around her waist and closes her eyes. The light breeze rolling through the window smells like eucalyptus and mint. Her mouth waters. “I know, Mom.”

“Those are the big things,” her mother says, “but remember that too many of the small things can amount to a big thing.”

The shoebox under the bed gleams in a stray ray of light. Finola licks her lips. “I know, but—I need something. I have to. I feel like she’ll disappear if I don’t.” The words are inadequate for the sick fear in her stomach each time she loses sight of her. The horrible certainty that something bad will happen if she’s not by her side. She rubs a hand over her mouth.

Her mother’s tongue clicks. “That’s old instincts, Finola. Fight it. You don’t want your father and I to pull you out of school, do you?”

The memory of watching her high school fade out of sight surfaces and, in that moment, she’s sixteen again. She can feel her heart beating too fast, the scream ripping out of her throat, the way the ropes chafed her wrists. She can smell her first love’s perfume, cloying peach, in the air. She can feel their separation like a death in the pit of her stomach, radiating up into her chest, her throat, her head.

Keep reading

[theclonewriter-blog]

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

[onewordtest]

“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement. 

[joehywheelah]

“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”

[tenoko1]

“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”

[cj-amused]

Things I didn’t know

[prismatic-bell]

“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”

[jawnwats-deactivated20160713]

You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.

[fragmentedink-archived]

When Writers™ have entire notebooks filled and detailed outlines and know what the fuck they’re doing. And then they ask what your preferred method is and you respond:

[incendavery]

a prayer for the artist

( patreon | ko-fi )

[meridiangrimm]

I want to read a story about a wizard whose only spell is “fix this”, but the specially-crafted magic takes their intent into account.  "Fix this" can mean repairing the wheel on the adventurers’ cart or healing a broken arm or “fixing” a lock so that it’s in what the wizard considers the “correct” (unlocked) position.  Imagine the other mages getting increasingly frustrated as the wizard stubbornly refuses to learn any other spells.

[meridiangrimm]

Wizard: *points at a canyon* Fix this

Other casters: That’s not really how spells -

Wizard: Oh look, one of our blankets is now a magic carpet.  Guess we don’t need a bridge.

Casters: How -

[meridiangrimm]

Wizard: *points at logs that won’t catch fire* Fix this

Other casters: There’s been too much rain, it won’t -

Wizard:  I fixed it so that it’s in the same state it was yesterday.  Someone here knows how to start a fire, right?

Casters: What -

[meridiangrimm]

Wizard: *points at charging dragon*: Fix this

Other casters: THAT’S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS YOU IDIOT WE’RE GOING TO DIE

Dragon: *coughs* Did you just… cure my intestinal problems?  I’ve been trying to stop breathing fire for weeks, but it just kept spilling out, and every time I tried to ask for help, I burned everything down.  I won’t forget this kindness.

Casters: *ripping their hair out* H O W

[spacebrick3]

On Brittle Characters

So I think my favorite type of character isn’t strong characters or weak characters, emotional characters or stoic characters. Instead, its a type which manages to embody all of these at once: the brittle character.

See, most characters, they have levels. Annoy them and they’ll get irritated. Keep irritating them, and they might move into anger. Keep annoying them, and they might snap into outright fury. Same with pain. Hurt them, and they’ll wince. Hurt them more and they might shout, or scream. Where they switch between these levels will vary, of course, but they’ll all be there. Brittle characters are different.

Brittle characters don’t get those levels. Because brittle characters are basically just this raw, emotional, completely open character - the soul of the character, you could even say, surrounded by a shell. A hard shell, to be sure, but a thin one. And maybe some characters have a candied shell on the outside, while others have corrugated aluminum or something, but they all have their shells.

And if you hurt a brittle character, they won’t flinch. They won’t react. They’ll just stand there and take it…and take it…and take it…until suddenly they don’t. Until suddenly that shell shatters - maybe you hit a weak point, or maybe it just couldn’t withstand the pain anymore. And you get the pure essence of who the character is, something that is harder to see in less brittle characters because of all the levels protecting that. There’s none of that here. It’s all or nothing.

Brittle characters, people. Sure, you have to break them completely to see what they’re made of, but it’s worth it.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

This honestly doesn’t need an addition because, wow, what flawless analysis of why I love brittle characters too.

It’s so freeing to write the reaction of a brittle character because any action from them is a release from this tight ball of raw vulnerability they’ve become. And, to them, that action isn’t something they can weigh—there’s no “should I?” By the time they’re compelled to act, it’s the only thing they can do. The essence of who they are, as OP says.

It’s frickin’ beautiful

[spacebrick3]

On Brittle Characters

So I think my favorite type of character isn’t strong characters or weak characters, emotional characters or stoic characters. Instead, its a type which manages to embody all of these at once: the brittle character.

See, most characters, they have levels. Annoy them and they’ll get irritated. Keep irritating them, and they might move into anger. Keep annoying them, and they might snap into outright fury. Same with pain. Hurt them, and they’ll wince. Hurt them more and they might shout, or scream. Where they switch between these levels will vary, of course, but they’ll all be there. Brittle characters are different.

Brittle characters don’t get those levels. Because brittle characters are basically just this raw, emotional, completely open character - the soul of the character, you could even say, surrounded by a shell. A hard shell, to be sure, but a thin one. And maybe some characters have a candied shell on the outside, while others have corrugated aluminum or something, but they all have their shells.

And if you hurt a brittle character, they won’t flinch. They won’t react. They’ll just stand there and take it…and take it…and take it…until suddenly they don’t. Until suddenly that shell shatters - maybe you hit a weak point, or maybe it just couldn’t withstand the pain anymore. And you get the pure essence of who the character is, something that is harder to see in less brittle characters because of all the levels protecting that. There’s none of that here. It’s all or nothing.

Brittle characters, people. Sure, you have to break them completely to see what they’re made of, but it’s worth it.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

This honestly doesn’t need an addition because, wow, what flawless analysis of why I love brittle characters too.

It’s so freeing to write the reaction of a brittle character because any action from them is a release from this tight ball of raw vulnerability they’ve become. And, to them, that action isn’t something they can weigh—there’s no “should I?” By the time they’re compelled to act, it’s the only thing they can do. The essence of who they are, as OP says.

It’s frickin’ beautiful

[horrificmemes]

Small-Town Gothic Sentence Starters

Sentences that can work for a variety of situations, but inspired by the atmosphere of small town horror stories. 

“I haven’t seen your face around here. Who are you?” “You can’t go in there. No one is allowed in there.” “We don’t take kindly to trespassers.”  “If they catch you here, you’re dead.” “Nobody likes outsiders around here.” “There’s some things you just don’t ask questions about.” “Why is everyone giving me nasty stares?” “Whatever you do, don’t go wandering around after dark.” “Hi, where can I find the gas station? I need to get out of here.” “The people around here are really weird, aren’t they?” “You’re not welcome.” “Things were fine until people like you started showing up.” “This is the last stop for miles. You won’t find another motel.” “You can stay the night, but I suggest you leave before the sun comes up.” “I’ll show you where you’ll sleep. If you need anything, learn to live without it.” “So is everyone here in some kind of cult?” “I get an eerie feeling just walking around this place.”  “Sometimes when you see something you can’t explain, you just have to turn your head and ignore it.” “My neighbor got abducted by aliens once. That’s why he twitches.” “You probably shouldn’t drink the tap water.” “My car stalled out of town. Can I get a ride?” “I feel like some weird shit’s going on that no one talks about.” “Will someone please just explain what the hell is up with this place?” “God, I hate towns like these. It’s like being on another planet.” “You can drive to the next town, but it’s about two hours to get there.” “Why are there so many abandoned buildings?” “So why do you live here? You don’t seem like the other weirdos.” “This town’s got to have some good ghost stories, right?” “We haven’t had a visitor in a really long time.” “This town wasn’t even on the map.” “Do me a favor and be gone by morning.” “When you leave, please take me with you.”

[listing-to-port]

Ten great reveals

1. They were not one and the same person after all. In fact, they were many different people. Whether they were villains was debateable. They certainly did not think that they were. But each time the detective came by they split their roles, the work of one person becoming two, then four, then eight. This fitted the greater meticulousness that they wished to apply. It helped that the detective had never been good at faces. 

2. We stop, suddenly, and meditate on a tiny detail that we almost missed earlier on. Could it be that this is the answer to the mystery? As it turns out, no. Meanwhile as we are deep in thought the mystery drives past the window and makes its way up the hill to the far horizon.

3. Suddenly, we realise that there is another layer of reality. However, instead of moving one layer out, we move one layer in. The characters gather together and begin writing a story. We begin to listen. Gradually, they fade away…

4. The twist we were all waiting for turns out to have been a cinnamon twist. There is a brief pause while it is eaten, then everyone goes home.

5. A god comes out of the machine. Everyone stops what they are doing and stares in astonishment. Those petty details hardly matter any more. A god exists and is standing in front of us; the secrets of the universe are resolved; there remains nothing left to do but to hang suspended in an endless, weightless moment of awe and adoration. The god, embarrassed, crosses the stage and winds the crank that drops the curtains.

6. Gradually, we piece together the clues that allow us to look further into our amnesiac past. We learn where we ate on our birthdays; we find old pictures of ourselves paddling in the sea. It becomes apparent that the past is fairly unexceptional. Eventually, we address the creeping sense that we are bad people with a psychologist. Life becomes a little better thereafter.

7. For a long time the characters have been blaming the narrator. Totally unreliable. Never represents a situation correctly. Never turns up on time. Constantly bullshitting. But then it turns out that the narrator was so unreliable that she has not been at work narrating for the entirety of the story. A standby narrator is narrating instead. A standby narrator who is reliability itself. There are a few characters who have some explaining to do, and no mistake.

8. The main character inexplicably dies, followed by the next best candidate for main character, followed by everyone else. Rocks rotate around each other for a few million years. This is all that the true audience, who are not human at all, were really after.

9. Once again we jump levels of reality; the only difference here being that the story has taken flight to a level of reality somewhat higher than the viewer. As a result, absolutely nothing makes sense. Eventually, an astute production assistant notes that the show has lost all of its viewers on the levels below the current one, changes are implemented, and we descend back to a more appropriate level of metafictionality.

10. Everybody gets what they deserve. In a surprising twist, it turns out that what everyone deserves is a large pizza with olives on; even those who do not like olives or cannot eat pizza. There is insufficient time remaining to fully explore the moral implications of this development.

[unmooredonasundayevening]

writing tip: don’t tell us your character’s backstory. don’t tell us what your character is thinking. don’t tell us what your character is doing. don’t tell us anything. the reader should simply look at a blank page and be suddenly overcome with emotion.

[clinticalthinkr]

Good tip. I know a lot of writers who cry uncontrollably when they see a blank page, so I’m sure that feeling will translate directly to the reader.

[nonomella-deactivated20171016]

Coraline is a masterfully made film, an amazing piece of art that i would never ever ever show to a child oh my god are you kidding me

[cthullhu-deactivated20170910]

Nothing wrong with a good dose of sheer terror at a young age

[whatthecurtains]

“It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares. It’s the strangest book I’ve written”

-Neil Gaiman on Coraline

[greenbryn]

@nightlovechild

[lierdumoa]

This is a legit psychology phenomenon tho like there’s a stop motion version of Alice and Wonderland that adults find viscerally horrifying, but children think is nbd. It’s like in that ‘toy story’ period of development kids are all kind of high key convinced that their stuffed animals lead secret lives when they’re not looking and that they’re sleeping on top of a child-eating monster every night so they see a movie like Coraline and are just like “Ah, yes. A validation of my normal everyday worldview. Same thing happened to me last Tuesday night. I told mommy and she just smiled and nodded.”

[wahbegan]

Stephen King had this whole spiel i found really interesting about this phenomenon about how kids have like their own culture and their own literally a different way of viewing and interpreting the world with its own rules that’s like secret and removed from adult culture and that you just kinda forget ever existed as you grow up it’s apparently why he writes about kids so much

[12drakon]

An open-ended puzzle often gives parents math anxiety while their kids just happily play with it, explore, and learn. I’ve seen it so many times in math circles. We warn folks about it.

[gokuma]

Neil Gaiman also said that the difference in reactions stems from the fact in “Coraline” adults see a child in danger - while children see themselves facing danger and winning

[sometimesrosy]

i never saw so much push back from adults towards YA literature as when middle aged women started reading The Hunger Games. They were horrified that kids would be given such harsh stories, and I kept trying to point out the NECESSITY of confronting these hard issues in a safe fictional environment.

[jewishdragon]

Also, in an interview, he said that Coraline was partially based on a story his not yet 6 year old daughter would tell him 

SAGAL: No. I mean, for example, your incredibly successful young adult novel “Coraline” is about a young girl in house in which there’s a hole in the wall that leads to a very mysterious and very evil world. So when you were a kid, is that what you imagined?

GAIMAN: When I was a kid, we actually lived in a house that had been divided in two at one point, which meant that one room in our house opened up onto a brick wall. And I was convinced all I had to do was just open it the right way and it wouldn’t be a brick wall. So I’d sidle over to the door and I’d pull it open.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Right.

GAIMAN: And it was always a brick wall.

SAGAL: Right.

GAIMAN: But it was one of those things that as I grew older, I carried it with me and I thought, I want to send somebody through that door. And when I came to write a story for my daughter Holly, at the time she was a 4 or 5-year-old girl. She’d come home from nursery. She’d seen me writing all day. So she’d come and climb on my lap and dictate stories to me. And it’d always be about small girls named Holly.

SAGAL: Right.

GAIMAN: Who would come home to normally find their mother had been kidnapped by a witch and replaced by evil people who wanted to kill her and she’d have to go off and escape. And I thought, great, what a fun kid.

[wetwareproblem]

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.” - G. K. Chesterton