Writing Advice From My Uni Teachers:

please speak about palestine

Alright. There are a lot of politics surrounding this event, so much random bullshit that tries to obfuscate the simple fact that what is happening in Palestine is vile, and plainly wrong. When deciding whether or not you should step in and help, you must remind yourself that this isn't about the ''politics'' of the situation, this isn't about the bullshit arguing we make for 'both sides' whilst we sit safely within the confines of our homes - this is about humanity - Don't let people confuse you, or downplay the terrible acts that are happening. See your fellow person in trouble and help them when they're suffering, it's as simple as that.

Imagine how easy it is to spend $20 bucks on a subway sandwich and a side of chips, so instead of doing that, spend the equivalent helping people not die (or do even more!). I suggest you all spend some time donating, sharing with others and helping out where you can <3

E-sims

Supporting Displaced Families

Emergency relief

Spreadsheet of Gofundme's

"Side by side, they were very much alike, in similarity less of lineament than of manner and bearing,

a correspondence of gesture which bounced and echoed between them so that a blink seemed to reverberate, moments later, in a twitch of the other's eyelid.

Their eyes were the same color of gray, intelligent and calm. She, I thought, was very beautiful, in an unsettling, almost medieval way which would not be apparent to the casual observer.“

~ Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Silly drunk dialogue

Can also be under the influence of other stuff.

"Oh, look at the stars! Ursa Major… so beautiful!" "We're inside. Those are just ceiling lights."

"Please don't leave me!" "I'm just going to the toilette." "Can I come with you?"

"My arm is floppy. I'm like a puppet."

"Can you be my girlfriend?" "I already am." "Oh, lucky me!"

"Let’s go play baseball!" "Your shoulder is dislocated, maybe not right now."

"You look almost as pretty as this moon." "That's a street lamp." "And you're almost as pretty."

"Have you ever thought about penguins? I think we should think more about penguins."

"You have a stupid face and it's my favourite one to stare at."

"I will definitely remember this tomorrow! How could I ever forget?" *doesn't remember anything in the morning*

"Oh, I think we haven't met before." "We have been in a relationship for five years now."

"You should go, otherwise I'm doing something stupid. Like kissing you or falling asleep on the bathroom floor."

"Let's get you home." "Oh, mine or yours?" "Ours." "Oh, wow!"

"I'm totally, absolutely, not at all drunk at all. Like... at all."

"Why are you all laughing? That is not very nice. I haven't even told my joke yet."

"How many drinks did you have?" "Yes, yes I am."

"You are too beautiful for me." *starts crying*

"Why are you undressing?" "Because it's hot! And I'm hot!"

*starts singing a remix of all their favourite songs*

*then starts crying, because their own voice is too beautiful*

Mystic Flour Cookie

Whohowuououhoho art moots? :3

What makes an outfit practical or impractical to fight in? Would an acrobat's outfit with some decent shoes be okay to fight in? Any suggestions on how to make an outfit frilly/girly without sacrificing (too much) practicality? (Trying to come up with practical[ish] Magical Girl outfits - know it's not your genre probably - there are certain expectations for frilliness even for tomboyish characters)

You’re, basically, looking for three things: How well canyou move in it, does it give potential foes anything to grab, and does it offerany protection?

If you can’t move freely in your clothes, you can’t fight inthem. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about them being tight enough torestrict movement, or if they make it difficult to walk around. Tight skirts,high heels, tailored suits; it doesn’t matter; they’ll all limit your abilityto fight.

With footwear, you’re looking primarily at how well you canstand and move in it. Shoes and boots designed to grip the floor are (usually)the best options here. So, things like sneakers or work boots are good options.Rubberized soles will help you keep your footing far better when you’restanding in someone’s blood than a dress shoe or high heels.

Things like long coats, ties, free flowing skirts, scarves, hoodies,or of course capes, won’t usually limit your mobility, but they can give anopponent something to grab. Once that happens, that article of clothing willlimit your mobility (some). This is also a factor that’s difficult tocompletely eliminate. Practiced martial artists can, and do, go for collar orlapel grabs on clothing you might think would pass. That said, there are somespecial cases here.

If the article of clothing will tear away freely, it’s (kindof) a wash. You’re still talking about losing clothes, which isn’t usuallysomething you want, but it means you’re not getting dragged out of position byan attacker.

If the combatant is ready for it, it’s possible to usesomething like this as a firing point to retaliate. If you know, roughly, wheretheir hand is, it’s much easier to extrapolate where the rest of them is inrelation to you. This still doesn’t make fighting in long flowing garments a goodidea.

The final factor, almost by definition, doesn’t really applywith magical girls as a genre, and can get a little weird when you’re talking aboutany superhuman characters.

Ideally, if you’re planning to get into a fight, you’ll wantdurable clothing that will take a few hits, and hopefully shield you from harm.Materials like leather and denim hold up much better than lighter fabrics.Insulation in a jacket will take some kinetic force from a strike (not a lot,but still), so it’s better than just jeans and a tee, or even a denim jacket.This also gets into a discussion we’ve had before. Protection is often about makingtradeoffs.

An insulated leather jacket will (slightly) reduce yourmobility. It will give an opponent something they can grab. But, it will alsooffer protection from stray hits and while parrying incoming strikes. It won’tprotect against gunshots, or against a sword, and if that’s what your characterwas likely to face, they’d need armor to deal with those threats instead.

Somewhat obviously, exposed skin isn’t offered anyprotection. Technically, skin itself is protection for your body, and it doesfunction as your first line of defense against infection, but that’s mostlyacademic in this context.

This is also where, magical girls, and most superherosubgenres, deliberately start straying from reality, without actually being unrealistic (in theliterary sense). What matters is if your character has some kind of protectionfrom the threats they’re facing. It doesn’t matter if that’s an ancient alienartifact, a mystical gemstone, or the weaponized power of friendship. That is what protects your character,not her denim vest. You’re also talking about characters where the threats theyface are, effectively, impossible to mitigate through mundane means. Again, aleather jacket, no matter how snazzy, won’t do much against a death beam fromsome snarling murderbeast, or blows from a sword with an enchantment thatdrains the soul from anyone who touches it. As I’ve said before, you selectyour armor to deal with the threats you’re likely to face, and when it comes tomagical girls, those threats are (almost always) going to be far beyondanything you could physically protect against.

Normally, you wouldn’t want to fight off an arisen god ofwar in a school girl uniform, but it’s not like a flak vest would offer anymore protection against a threat like that.

-Starke

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“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

喫茶店の店主

By LabradoriteKing on Pinterest

Person A: “Hey, have you seen (Person B)?”

Person C: “Not since yesterday evening, why?”

Person A: “Someone claiming to be their arch nemesis, is standing outside demanding to see them.” 

Person C: “….I thought (Person D) was their arch nemesis?”

Person A: “They are.”

Person C: “Then who the fuck is- You know what, don’t worry about it. Let me handle this.”

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)