after the huge amazing response I got from my ace!Jiang Cheng comic - all of the ace people saying how amazing it felt to be acknowledged, and all of the people who came to me saying that they hadn’t realised they were ace until they read the comic - I decided I wanted to make something for ace awareness week. it’s not quite as pretty or feelsy as the other comic, but there are so many people even within the LGBT+ community who just… genuinely do not understand asexuality, I figured even something basic would help :)
happy ace awareness week! please remember: everyone’s experience with sexuality is different! be kind and support each other!
Just realised tumblr allows html editing, but the other reasons still apply. Also, it's just not the same editing within the confines of a tumblr panel and doing so from a website you can fine tune the layout of and control the comments on etc
I feel like maybe starting a blog again I want to write in depth posts about topics with full html support And I also want to talk politics in a public space without all the problems of talking politics on social media. Especially I want to keep my tumblr account mostly non-political.
Also first time posting in months Again. Or even checking tumblr. But this is my only social network now (stopped using twitter even before the fiascos with Musk) and I kind of miss having that. But I also find myself with a lack of anything to share. Life has been pretty boring in most non-political regards.
Hey, help me please. How do you write description in your novels? Not a character one, surrounding ones. How do you describe from 3 POV , the background of the novel?
Hi there! Thanks for writing. I talk at length about this in my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (See Chapter 4 / “Building Your Story World,” Chapter 16 / Setting the Scene, and Chapter 21 / “Choosing the Right Details” for the majority of the discussion about description, but it’s peppered throughout), so I’ll just give a brief rundown here. :)
That means describing, with precision, a detail you can see/hear/touch/taste/smell. Avoid using vague words that are hard to visualize or sense, like “the house was ugly” or “the weather was bad.” Instead, choose a sensory detail (or two) for your descriptions, for example “the house was a wretched shade of salmon pink” or “the wind was blowing I could taste dust in my mouth.”
It’s common for beginning writers to either use no description, or go completely overboard. I give examples of both in my book. While there’s no hard rule about how much description is too little or too much (it depends a lot on the particular story, genre, and the writer’s style), I personally like to include around 4-5 sensory details per page.
The idea is to give the reader a solid sense of where they are without going on and on, making them want to skim over as you carry on for paragraphs about the smell and texture of a doily.
Description draws your readers attention to what you’re describing. Use that to your advantage. If that doily contains a blood stain that’s a pivotal clue in your murder mystery, by all means spend three sentences describing the particular color red of the blood or the weird smell it emits. Where you linger, the reader will linger.
Use more description at the beginning of a new scene, or anytime the location of your story changes. I talk about this in the section on transitions in my book. Summary gets a bad reputation in fiction, but these transitional paragraphs are the perfect time to paint the scene with sensory details about your character’s surroundings.
One common thing I see in writer’s manuscripts is what I call “jerky camera movement.” Here’s an example:
Jesse pulled into the driveway of the suspect’s mansion around noon. A white, floppy dog barked ferociously in the window. It was a warm, sweltering day. Jesse looked down and realized her shoe was untied. The house had three large columns in front, each wrapped with a gawdy red bow.
In this example, the “camera” moves from the driveway, to the dog in the window, to the “day,” to Jesse’s shoe, to the outside of the house. If that was your head, looking around the scene, you’d get dizzy pretty fast. Here’s a smoother movement, starting wide and focusing in on Jesse’s untied shoe.
It was a warm, sweltering day. Jesse pulled into the driveway of the suspect’s mansion around noon. The house had three large columns in front, each wrapped with a gawdy red bow. In the window, a white, floppy dog barked ferociously. As Jesse approached the door, she looked down and realized her shoe was untied.
These aren’t perfect examples because I’ve dashed them off just now, but you get the idea :) Try not to make your reader seasick by making them look all over the scene (unless you’re trying to achieve that effect, for example, in a scene where your protagonist is drunk or discombobulated).
Hope this helps!
Why Gritty Why
Our campaign’s Big Bad, threatening our necromancer through her dreams: I am beyond your mortal comprehension. My name cannot be uttered by your tongue, I shall destroy-!
Our necromancer, nodding: I’m going to call you Jerry.
The boss’ name was later revealed to be Yogsathoth, but was never referred as anything but Jerry.
the long tailed silky-flycatcher is a thrush-sized passerine bird found only in the mountains of costa rica and western panama. females are duller in coloration than males and lack the signature long tail feathers. this species primarily feeds on insects, as their name suggests, but also takes fruit, with a preference for mistletoe. these birds lay only two eggs in a clutch, which are placed in a delicate nest made of lichen.