This Seems Like Something Everyone Should Know If They’re In The Sciences And/or Interested In Reading

#aww yeah another jackbox night

#this will be fun

Paranatural Jackbox Night 2!!!

Hey guys! I’m going to be hosting another Quiplash 2/Drawful 2 game night with custom Paranatural prompts!

It will be on SATURDAY NIGHT AUGUST 22, at 8:00 PM EASTERN TIME. We will be using Zoom, which I will give a link to when the game night starts.

If you’re not familiar with how Jackbox works, a game is put on the screen, and all the players answer prompts on their phone, which then appear on the game screen. We are using Zoom ONLY to see the game screen, so you DO NOT need to have your camera or sound on for the game night!

Quiplash works like Cards Against Humanity, and Drawful works sort of like drawing charades. If you don’t know how to play, that’s ok! You can watch a few rounds and then hop in. You can jump onto the Zoom meeting at any time, and even if you’re not a player in one of the games, you can play as an audience member.

If you can RSVP by sending us an ask or reply, etc., I’d appreciate it just to get a general head count, but you don’t need to by any means. Heck, if you find out 5 minutes before the game starts that you can play? Come on in!

Any questions can be directed at this blog or message @blairdiggory if you want to ask something more privately.

#lizard #Komodo Dragon

Komodo Dragon. Indonesian Islands of Komodo,Rinca,Flores and Gili Motang.1 of 3 venomous lizards on Earth.

one of my favorite stupid things to do in fanfic is to throw two characters together who literally never interact. and then give them an entire, fleshed-out relationship dynamic that exists nowhere but my own head. yes they’ve literally never spoken. yes their relationship is important to me. hope this helps.

Hello! This is my first time asking but I could I have some advice on how to write a story that starts in the climax of the plot already? The context is my MC woke up and they are not able to remember anything, but suddenly, he just woke up in the wards of his family (a very strong political figure in their world might I add) whom he told what his life was but the narratives they are telling does not match even in the slightest of the flashback that's plaguing him as the time stretches. And they were in the middle of the war, too. I'm having a hard time to achieve that mind-blowing... thrill I suppose? They also got a love interest that is unmistakably not the one his family claimed ‘their-spouse’ to be.

Starting with Inciting Incident

Remember: your story's climax is the moment your character faces off against the antagonist once and for all. While some stories do start at the climax, and then flashback to the beginning of the story to build back up to it, it doesn't mean you start at the climax and move forward from there.

I think there can be a lot of confusion with the concept of "In Media Res" which a lot of people confuse as meaning starting in the literal middle of the story, or at the inciting incident or climax. Instead, "in media res" simply means starting in the middle of the action. That action can be the inciting incident, the climax, or the literal middle, but again, it doesn't mean the story moves forward from there.

If you're starting your story at the point where your character wakes up without their memories, this isn't the climax but rather the inciting incident. This is the moment when their life and world are turned upside down. Starting at this moment in a story about memory loss is a great way to go, because your reader knows as little about the character and their world as the character does. It puts the reader in your character's shoes right from the start, and they'll be learning everything right alongside your character.

So, that's really the key is to make sure you're filling in the gaps left by not having an exposition. You'll need to make sure to fairly quickly illustrate this character's natural personality, the world they've woken up into, and what their life was apparently like before they lost their memories. If they're being lied to, you may want to build in some clues that hint at what their actual life was like--such as feeling a place is familiar to them even if they're told "no, you would never have been to such a place."

As far as creating that thrill in that opening moment, it's really going to come down to emotional and sensory description. In lieu of recognizing who they are, where they are, and what happened to them, they're going to focus on their immediate surroundings. What can they see, hear, smell, taste, feel? What does that sensory input tell them about who they are and where they are? How does that sensory input--and what they can learn from it--make them feel? What emotions are they feeling as they process this unfamiliar environment and realize they have no idea who they are, where they are, or what happened to them?

I hope that helps!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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the critical thinking sheet filled with questions to mull over is nice and very much appreciated

Y’all “critical thinking” does not equal “criticism”.

And some writing prompts are out! Seeing what people make of these is going to be a blast!

Here is the Spectober writing prompt list! Again, don’t feel pressured to do every prompt, but you’re welcome to plan ahead for the month. 

The prompts are also rewritten beneath the cut

Keep reading

This skull looks friendly. It'd be a nice evening to sit by a fire with the skull, a cigar perched in the hole in the teeth, as they told me stories of times gone by in that soft, grandparently drawl one has when they've reached a long life and are content with where they are.

The Skull - Memento mori by Jean Morin

just adding that she has very similar, if not the same energy color as the Sphinx of Truth:

Will this mean anything? Probably not, but if Zack’s going the kinda-sleazy-conman-with-a-heart route (or perhaps just the tried and true lovable asshole route), then the interactions between Truth’s power and how Scabs could theoretically sidestep those truth powers activating on her while allowing them to be used on others to the fullest extent...that’d be a rather interesting interaction!

Scabs in this update here to uplifit my spirits, water my crops, and ruin my years-old headcanons about how she might act. Dropkicking my soul into writing that story I’ve had for a while about her. Digging the color of her spectral energy, and I wonder about her backstory.

Right now she’s kinda giving off Kuzco energy (maybe start-to-mid-movie Kuczo?). We’ll see how this progresses.