Hey guys, I regret to announce that with things that have been going on (work, career decisions, etc.), that I’m officially leaving this blog. However, this is not sad news, because I’m not leaving the site. I’m just moving everything to my lace-of-hearts account, which is now my main writer blog as well as a fandom one.
Two reasons why: One, even after I finished out the semester, I still didn’t have as much time as I wanted, and with trying to finish a novel on top of work and stuff, I just couldn’t realistically juggle two separate accounts (and personas, sheesh) and still post meaningful content.
Reason Two is simple: I miss fandom. I miss writing about characters and things I love, because that is every bit a part of my writerly-self as anything. I mean, it’s funny I’d say that, because a year ago still thought fandom blogging was just silliness and not respectable and a downright terrible way to promote yourself, (given the number of people who still associate fanfiction with porn and a lack of originality). But the thing is, we’re all inspired by things created by other people. Deny that, and you’re disregarding literature’s ability to influence culture and how it preserves history and human emotion. I’ve decided to finally honor that part of me.
So about this other blog-it IS a One Piece blog. That hasn’t changed, bit now I’ll also be using it to talk about my writing, WIPs, college, etc. A lot of my posts are character analyses, predictions, etc., but now that I’m leaving room for some leeway, I’m also using these posts to comment and talk about writing.
For instance, one post I’m working on is an analysis of one of my favorite characters, who, instead of fighting was spontaneously married off to one of the protagonists (and was 210% fine with it). My post is on why I think the outcome worked, and that while she isn’t an ideally feminist character, she’s still important, because stories need ALL kinds of women, not just ones that exude strength in every square inch of their lives.
So, if my mutuals get a follow from a lace-of-hearts, that IS me. If you absolutely hate anime/manga (although One Piece is the only manga I read), I also made two sideblogs for my original art and writing pieces. 1001brushstrokes is my sculptures and scary attempts to draw, and goldencombscribbles is my short stories, poems, and general lit analysis.
Anyway, I appreciate all the support, and I hope to see y’all later. Love you guys~
One of my characters has lived for a really long time and been in relationships with influential historical figures. Would it be ok for her to mention being with people like cleopatra and Julius Caesar or would that be offensive to some people or make them upset for some other reason?
There is no reason that should offend or upset anyone because those people have been dead for centuries. I think the only place where you might tread carefully is with historical figures from the 20th century and beyond, as they may have living children or grandchildren who could take exception to anything sordid, but even then it’s probably unlikely anything would come of it.
#What if this is what really happens when mermaids/sirens take men into the water?
#What if they like really want to love them and be with them but they know they themselves can’t survive on land
#So they bring the guys into the water in the hopes that they turn into mermen
#but they just die
“A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.”
There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.
The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are a series of smaller mysteries in the meantime, too, a new one appearing as soon as the last is resolved. J. K. Rowling is another master of this technique — Who gave Harry that Firebolt? How is Rita Skeeter getting her info?
The art, meanwhile, the thing that makes “Pride and Prejudice” so superbly suspenseful, more suspenseful than the slickest spy novel, is to write stories in which characters must make decisions. “Breaking Bad” kept a few secrets from its audience, but for the most part it was fantastically adept at forcing Walter and Jesse into choice, into action. The same is true of “Freedom,” or “My Brilliant Friend,” or “Anna Karenina,” all novels that are hard to stop reading even when it seems as if it should be easy.
Charles Finch, in his round up of the summer thrillers in the New York Times Book Review. Just clipping this into the Tumblr, because I thought it was such an elegant formulation… the trick vs the art. The whole piece is worth a look for people who need a warm weather fix of suspense. (via joehillsthrills)
Aaand here’s another one. I almost had my professor grade this story, but it wound up being the least edited of all of my pieces. In this prompt we had to practice writing dialogue, and once again, I went to one of my WIPs and snagged an exchange between my OCs Moose and Philip. I really really liked the way this turned out, which I know is probably why it never got better, but it was hard to revise without messing up the dialogue. Anyway, this story was what spurred me to start actually writing this book, and though I know it still isn’t great I’m hoping this was a good start.
Philip was wearing a forest green sweater, which seemed very wrong when it had been so hot this summer, and I started to wonder if October had blown in while I was watching infomercials. The sweater was big on him, meaning it was a giant sweater unless Philip had shrunk within the last month, and this image popped into my head of being inside it, warm and shielded from the wind that blew across my doorstep. I could tell he felt good in it. His lips were pulled in an curious frown and I’d found him running his eyes up and down the door frame and empty clay pots on either side, and since then his face hadn’t tensed in the slightest. He looked far too comfortable. Comfortable people weren’t allowed to linger on my doorstep. That would be a rule.
I don’t know how exactly how long we stood there only looking at each other before Philip said “Hey,” and I said, “What are you doing here?”
Philip shrugged and said, “Delivering a pizza.”
“My, such wit.”
“Yeah. It’s cold, can I come in?”
“No. We don’t allow green sweaters. It’s a rule.”
“‘We’?”
“Yes,” I said, and thought of saying something about another rule that prohibited shaven Philips because they looked weird without beards, but you know what? He didn’t deserve this conversation. Think, an entire month without a single word. If he thought I was going to make this easy, he must be sloughing off brain cells on the university sidewalk.
I started to say “Good-bye,” but then realized I had waited too long for it to be effective and shut the door in his face. I didn’t turn back to see him leave. I wandered into the kitchen and stuck my coffee back in the microwave for another minute. Dad was right, it was stinkin’ loud and sounded like a baby’s toy lawnmower that was liable to explode at any given moment, but at least it would prove its worth and drown out Philip’s engine starting up as he glided by the house.
When someone came to the door again, I had decided to actually do something and migrated to the sofa and flipped to an actual channel that showed movies. It wasn’t that I didn’t know it was Philip, although I had half-expected him to be shirtless and therefore cold and not-comfortable. Instead, I found him fully clothed, perfectly calm, if a little disheveled with a wide, wet streak running diagonally down the front of his sweater. He wasn’t holding his phone this time. He had a handful of skinny flowers.
Again, we stood there, not saying anything, listening to my alleged neighbors yelling across the street to each other and the cht-cht-cht-cht-chhhhhh of the sprinkler across the street.
“Oh, he’s chivalrous now,” I said.
“They’re not for you.”
“For Dalton, then? You want my approval?”
“No, I just thought the condo looked bare.”
“As far as you know.”
“Moose, are you going to let me in?”
“Sure. You can come in for three seconds.”
Philip glanced up at my window as though considering this, then he held up three, grass-flecked fingers and said, “Minutes.”
“Two minutes. Two minutes and three seconds.”
Philip shrugged, flaking flower petals into my doorway. “Okay,” he said, and followed me into my hallway and quickly closed the door behind him. With his back to me, he let out a long breath through his teeth, either because he was cold from being wet or finally showing some hint of frustration.
“Shoes?” he asked. They were grass-stained now, too, and leaving wet prints on my floor, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had no rule for shoes and coats, and that I hadn’t taken either of mine off since I got here this morning. My mom’s theory that almost twenty-two-year-old girls didn’t do well alone was starting to prove itself. Not because we were inherently dependent or vulnerable. I just sucked at it. Period.
“You wanna take them off, even though you’re going to put them on again in two minutes and three seconds?”
“How about the landing?” he asked, pointing to the bottom of the carpeted stairs, and I just nodded and ditched mine there, too.
“So,” I said and gestured grandly to the narrow hallway. “My house.”
Philip’s gaze quirked to the living room as though he might reach out and touch the arm of the sofa, because he probably could. “Yeah. It’s a condo,” he said.
I snorted. “At least it’s mine. And more than you’ve got.”
He held up his hands in mock-touché pose and then said, “So, show me your condo.”
“You want a tour? We’ve still got a two-minute, three-second slot open,” I said, gesturing for him to follow me into the living room, where the TV flickered on its scratched washstand. I fumbled for the remote that had fallen between two cushions on the couch and hit the power button as a woman screamed, “My life is a friggin’ mess!” And only then did Philip screw up his face in something like discomfort. He stood by the window, where the orange rays streaked through the blinds onto his pants and lit up a clean square on the floor where the former owner had apparently put something useful, like an end table or a box. Philip’s eyes grazed the white walls and landed on the old clock that hung by itself on the wall.
“Is it fast?” he asked.
“Yes, by five minutes. They all are,” I nodded at the stove clock in the kitchen.
“Good.”
He barely fit in the kitchen. He stumbled against the table as he ducked in behind me, and glanced about, nodding to himself, as though fairly impressed all things considered. And why shouldn’t he be? The place was spotless—literally. I even put my plate and fork away and recycled the can of chicken noodle. Except the table was trashed. One of the metal chairs my brother had brought over was still pulled out (Philip tripped on that, too), and a fat crossword book lay open beside a stack of mad lib books and old Reader’s Digests (which had fallen on Philip’s trip inside). I think Philip recognized the puzzle book. He had been with me when I bought it. It was open about three-quarters the way in, and the pages behind it were crinkled and gray, and he probably noticed that, too. Suddenly, I wished I’d cleaned them up, first.
No, that was a lie. I wanted him to see it.
“Got a vase?” Philip asked. He waved the flowers over the table, flaking another petal onto the crossword book.
“Maybe,” I said, and climbed up onto the counter to open a high cupboard, which had nothing in it except one narrow vase the exact same green of Philip’s shirt. I almost laughed. Almost.
As he lowered the flowers into the flask, Philip began to chew his lip. “When did you move in?”
“Today. Well, technically a week ago.”
“So, this is all you’ve got?” He was squeezing the end of the stems to fit them inside the vase’s tiny opening.
“Well, I haven’t completely moved yet. I’ve got enough for now.”
“No you don’t. Where’s the scissors?”
I peered into what was apparently the junk drawer, but there was nothing in it. “At home, I guess,” I said, and watched him pick a few blooms out of the bouquet and noticed his eyebrows inch closer together as he did so. “I’m doing the best I can by myself, you know.”
Philip paused, and finally laid the flowers on the table. “I’ve been really busy, Moose,” he said. “I went back.”
“I know you did.”
“Okay, but you didn’t have to do this,” he gestured around. A furrow now creased his brow.
“Yeah, I pretty much did. You said you were too busy.”
“Well, yeah, I said I was busy. I never said it was over, Moose.”
“Too busy. Over. Same thing, Philip.”
“Since when?”
“Since forever. What, you never learned that in twenty-seven years? You don’t get ‘too busy’ for people.” Then again, maybe Philip did. He was a one-thing guy.
Philip ran his hands through his hair, leaving sprig of tiny white petals in their wake. “I don’t know. It’s basically been hell since day one.”
“I get it.” Which I guess I did. Fighting to get enrolled on time, fighting with his dad, fighting with himself to ignore the one failure, trying again. It would be hell. People went through hell. And they’re not gonna have time for everything they did before, my brother told me once. Like you. I mean, sorry Moose, but it happens like that. Yeah. I should get it. But…
“Well, okay, then why all this?”
“I told you that already.”
“Moose, I said I was too busy to talk that day. Not ‘too busy period.’”
“Well, I didn’t take it like that. We were together, like—basically every day. And then bang, I call and you’re too busy.”
Philip shrugged, and his shoulders shook a little as he did. And then some surge of anger came down on him and he pushed off the table and pivoted into my living room in a huff.
“Yeah,” I said to his back.
“Yeah, I do one thing, Moose, and you buy a friggin’ house. I still wanted this,” he added, more to the walls than to me.
“Then why didn’t you try again? And again? You try again. That’s what you do.”
The silence hung in the air above the table, and Philip turned and stared at me, face blank again. The old clock was ticking behind him, and it was almost like the whirring of the cogs was coming from Philip’s head.
Then, outside, a car honked. Honked wasn’t right. It was a beep-beep, like the Roadrunner from Looney Toons. Philip’s car. It beeped again. And again.
“I gotta go,” he grunted.
“You do?” I asked. It was my mind’s turn to whirr, now.
“It’s Dalton,” he said. “We’re picking his car up.”
I was about to ask why he’d leave his brother alone in a car after he’d wrecked the last one, but I was drowned out by another chorus of honks, beeping in rapid succession. It had been longer than two minutes and three seconds.
Philip laced his shoes carefully, and then paused by the door.
“What?” I asked.
“I wish you’d…” he trailed off and opened the door.
As he started down the porch, I thought about letting him go. I could call him. Might as well, right? But it wasn’t right, all of this. And maybe I’d been the one to screw us over this time, but I had to ask.
“Philip?”
He stopped.
“Why did you come, anyway?” It was a stupid question, really.
He turned around and wiped his grass-stained hands on his jeans, like they had to be clean before he said it.
How can I avoid 'the chosen one(s)' cliches? [In the plot I'm planning, the core group of characters keeps getting 'reincarnated' into parallel worlds to stop this other group of people from completing a certain action. Something that the universe/fate/etc has set up to right a wrong.]
Don’t make it easy. Even though they are destined to do the thing, it doesn’t mean the stars will align so that doing the thing is easy. Make them work! Make them suffer! Don’t give them things because they are “the Chosen Ones”.
Chosen ≠ Gifted. One of the more irritating aspects of Chosen Ones is that they’re always excellent at whatever the plot and/or prophecy demands. Allow characters to work for the ability they need. Allow characters to even be bad at it. In thinking of how the character could still accomplish their task without the skill, you may come up with a better ending.
Their stories should be different. Although they are going into parallel worlds to prevent the same thing (I think?) the plot should be unique in each place because they’ll make different decisions. Or they should. If at all possible, let the characters fail. It’ll also help show the consequences of what they’re doing. At the same time, if the characters have knowledge of their exploits in the other dimensions, allow them to “cheat” their way through by studying what the other dimensions did/did not.
Reactions. If the Chosen Ones are known to the world, they will face a variety of reactions and those reactions are not split into good (acceptance, faith, assistance) and evil (doubt, envy, distrust). A good person can distrust the Chosen One, just as an evil person can offer them assistance. There might even be a group that is good, but is planning for a contingency if the Chosen Ones should fail.
If the Chosen Ones accompany a prophecy, see here and here for how to manage those.
My favourite writer error is forgetting that every character has their own motives, and most of them are unrelated to the protagonist. The most amazing thing ever is when a rival, nemesis, or casual bystander is to all appearances completely obsessed with the protagonist to the point that they appear to have shaped their lives around the protagonist. The protagonist is all they talk about. Thoughts of the protagonist keep them up at night. They constantly compare other people to the protagonist. They mock the protagonist, because they can’t seem to stop thinking, staring, or obstructing the protagonist in some way. You know it’s unintentional, but all else being equal, this character appears to have a raging crush on the protagonist, one that only true love’s first kiss can subdue.
During the Bubonic Plague, doctors wore these bird-like masks to avoid becoming sick. They would fill the beaks with spices and rose petals, so they wouldn’t have to smell the rotting bodies.
A theory during the Bubonic Plague was that the plague was caused by evil spirits. To scare the spirits away, the masks were intentionally designed to be creepy.
Okay so I love this but it doesn’t cover the half of why the design is awesome and actually borders on making sense.
It wasn’t just that they didn’t want to smell the infected and dead, they thought it was crucial to protecting themselves. They had no way of knowing about what actually caused the plague, and so one of the other theories was that the smell of the infected all by itself was evil and could transmit the plague. So not only would they fill their masks with aromatic herbs and flowers, they would also burn fires in public areas, so that the smell of the smoke would “clear the air”. This all related to the miasma theory of contagion, which was one of the major theories out there until the 19th century. And it makes sense, in a way. Plague victims smelled awful, and there’s a general correlation between horrible septic smells and getting horribly sick if you’re around what causes them for too long.
You can see now that we’ve got two different theories as to what caused the plague that were worked into the design. That’s because the whole thing was an attempt by the doctors to cover as many bases as they could think of, and we’re still not done.
The glass eyepieces. They were either darkened or red, not something you generally want to have to contend with when examining patients. But the plague might be spread by eye contact via the evil eye, so best to ward that off too.
The illustration shows a doctor holding a stick. This was an examination tool, that helped the doctors keep some distance between themselves and the infected. They already had gloves on, but the extra level of separation was apparently deemed necessary. You could even take a pulse with it. Or keep people the fuck away from you, which was apparently a documented use.
Finally, the robe. It’s not just to look fancy, the cloth was waxed, as were all of the rest of their clothes. What’s one of the properties of wax? Water-based fluids aren’t absorbed by it. This was the closest you could get to a sterile, fully protecting garment back then. Because at least one person along the line was smart enough to think “Gee, I’d really rather not have the stuff coming out of those weeping sores anywhere on my person”.
So between all of these there’s a real sense that a lot of real thought was put into making sure the doctors were protected, even if they couldn’t exactly be sure from what. They worked with what information they had. And frankly, it’s a great design given what was available! You limit exposure to aspirated liquids, limit exposure to contaminated liquids already present, you limit contact with the infected. You also don’t give fleas any really good place to hop onto. That’s actually useful.
Beyond that, there were contracts the doctors would sign before they even got near a patient. They were to be under quarantine themselves, they wouldn’t treat patients without a custodian monitoring them and helping when something had to be physically contacted, and they would not treat non-plague patients for the duration. There was an actual system in place by the time the plague doctors really became a thing to make sure they didn’t infect anyone either.
These guys were the product of the scientific process at work, and the scientific process made a bitchin’ proto-hazmat suit. And containment protocols!
Within her native land, as well as internationally, she has been praised as the best Croatian writer for children.
She started writing poetry, diaries and essays rather early but her works were not published until the beginning of the 20th century.
Her book Croatian Tales of Long Ago (Priče iz davnine), published in 1916, is among the most popular today.In the book Mažuranić created a series of new fairy-tales, but using names and motifs from the Slavic mythology of Croats. It was this that earned her comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Tolkien who also wrote completely new stories but based in some elements of real mythology.
Brlić-Mažuranić was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. However, she never won the prize due to the fact that, in her time, the prize was not accustomed to be given to women.
hello, could I ask you for some writing advice? I'm starting to write a book, and when I get older (I'm 16) I'd like to publish it and I don't want it to be total piece of (please excuse my language) crap. also did you have the whole book in your head since the beginning , or just the most important events? Thanks in advance!
The way I explain it: I know the bones of my story. I always know the bones. For me, this means act breaks, major plot points, the general overview and shape of the story. This translates to a 5-7 page outline. And then I get to drafting, and put the flesh on those bones. :)
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
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origamiaround
pixelskylines
stormborns
