Latest Posts by laylabsposts - Page 6
HELIUM THROAT: A SHORT STORY
a bitter story exploring loss, trauma and healing gone wrong.
GENRE: literary fiction.
POV + TENSE: first-person referral, retrospective.
SETTING: a fictional commune, unspecified time period.
TONE: bitter, sharp, resentful, lonely.
STAGE: completed first draft, 2769 words.
LOGLINE: years after her childhood and its horrors, angry, resentful emily writes a letter to her dead sister— the one whom she sees as the cause of her trauma— in an attempt to come to terms with how horribly wrong her life is now.
LITERAL LOGLINE: when you decide to scream into the void as a substitute for therapy except surprise! it doesn’t help.
CHARACTERS:
our first-person, extremely unhinged narrator. she’s a very bitter woman and is someone with nothing to live for, the way she sees it. a lot of her apathy + the disarrayed state of her life and mind was a direct cause of her childhood trauma and the unhealthy coping mechanisms that followed said trauma. she’s perpetually angry at her younger self and is overly conflicted towards her feelings towards her family, mainly her sister.
emily’s older sister. she was a role model for her when they were kids, and emily used to worship her. she was a loving and emotional person, and was very reckless— and rebellious— with a streak of massive unchecked anger [directed mostly at her father]. emily doesn’t recall much about her anymore, due to how young she’d been when lilee had died.
WHAT GOES DOWN:
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do you think adult fantasy/fiction has to have sex scenes in it? Like if a work is adult in tone/style/other content but sex scenes are more like...fade to black, do you think that's more YA?
hi anon! so no, Adult books don’t need to have sex scenes. they can, of course, have explicit sex scenes (though, depending on how explicit, this runs the risk of the book shifting from Adult to erotica, since there’s a line that differentiates them; in fanfic terminology, and to really simplify it, “mature” is Adult while “explicit” is erotica), or sex scenes that are mature but not with anatomical terms (Red, White, & Royal Blue is a good example of this), but they can also have fade to black scenes, or no sex scenes at all. it’s all up to the author and what they want to write, and the rules and expectations of the genre they’re writing. my books fall under either category fantasy romance or (in the case of my current WIP) category romantic comedy, and the sex scenes i write have importance to the characters’ arcs (both as characters and as a romantic pair), so i include them, but that’s my personal choice as an author (plus, i’m tired of authors being afraid of using the word “cock” in their romance novels, y’know? @bittenwrath has talked about this before, too). if you want to include fade to black scenes in your manuscript, go for it! your book can still be Adult with the tone/style/other content if it has fade to black scenes :)
I always tell myself I’m going to write the idea down and that’s even assuming I remember I had an idea lol…
Writers who have had works spawn from one sentence or image... share that line here!
When it comes to your writing, you are allowed to do the following:
Be proud of your work.
Have fun.
Enjoy the process.
Celebrate milestones no matter what they are, whether that’s 100 words written in a day, 5k words finished this week, or a final draft.
Take breaks.
Rest.
Do other things that have nothing to do with writing.
Work as fast or as slow as you like.
Write “cliches”.
Outline.
Fly by the seat of your pants.
Partly-outline it and fly by the seat of your pants the rest of the way.
Rewrite.
Write to publish.
Write with no intention to publish.
Write for only yourself alone.
Feel free to add on!
types of academia pt. 2
art: paint dried at the cuffs of your favorite jacket, ink smudged hands, your notebooks are just sketchbooks for your class doodles with notes crammed in between the drawings, sudden revelations, wanting to create something meaningful with your own two hands, thinking of pygmalion during your sculpting class, reading a book and coming across that one sentence that sparks the inspiration for your next piece, afternoons on a soft green hill sketching, the scent of jasmine on the breeze, the music blaring in your headphones is all you can hear or feel as you work through the night, laying under the starlight
writer: the sound of a pen against parchment, the glow of a computer screen in a dark room, the sound of a clock ticking away the hours, reading with a hunger that will only be satisfied once you can give shape to your own words, empty notebooks, notebooks full of poetry, forgotten ideas that were not written down, your notes app is full of poetry, rainy days full of time spent typing away, living every experience in its rawest fork because you know you can write about it later, “write what you know” so you try to know everything, dreaming through your characters eyes, you and the moon have become good friends after nights spent writing under her light and reading your prose out loud
romantic: sketches of your love in a sketchbook that’s falling apart, singing to the moon at night, reciting sonnets alone in the woods, linen and silk, bathed in golden light, wax seals on love letters, pressed flowers in a journal, wanting to catch the stars and put them in the eyes of the one you love, the sweet scent of roses, ivy crawling up a cobblestone wall, a garden full of statues and plants that flint silver in the moonlight, sweet milk tea, daydreaming in a meadow
sci-fi: stargazing is a personality trait, deteriorating copies of sci-fu novels, coffee stained science magazines, a cork board full of conspiracies, squinting at the sky in search of life, believing there’s something more, tangled headphones, leather-bound dream journal, fog filled nights, psychoanalyzing, sticky note with the names of different theories scribbled on it that you need to research later, scrolling through wikipedia pages under your blanket when you should be sleeping, walkie talkies, a head full of wonder
urban: city lights blazing like stars, briskly walking down streets through the crisp air, drizzle fogging your glasses, hands in the pockets of a frayed coat, the overt dichotomy of light and dark, shadows in alleys and buzzing neon signs, dim bars and lit apartment windows, a small book shop crammed between a starbucks and bank, going to a vintage movie theater at the center of the city, mornings spent at the museum that’s free before noon, nights snuggled up in a blanket in your small, overpriced apartment as you read a book near the window and watch the city breathe
pt. 1
A writer is a world trapped in a person.
Victor Hugo (via writingdotcoffee)
I
may
have
just
gotten
a
publishing
offer
the sexual tension between me and wasting time on tumblr instead of writing like i should be
Nano project? Nano project!!
I’m gonna focus on Dressage Dragons this November, so prepare for a relentless onslaught of Hot Rich Barn Bitch rivalry!
Or, y’know, radio silence until December. Depending on my spoons.
Some deets about DD!
YA queer urban fantasy - real world with added dragons
Queer rivals-to-friends-to-maybe-more
Dragon riding is basically equestrianism
The sport has a reputation for being populated by spoilt, wealthy young white women (obvs a whole range of folks ride horses IRL, but… there’s a reason for the stereotype, and we’re gonna acknowledge elitism where it exists)
Plot revolves around a competition to gain entry to the most prestigious Draconic Dressage Academy in the world
And a developing wlw relationship between a cruel ambitious heiress and a resentful, ruthless stablehand
No soft lovable MCs here guys sorry Except Fareed, he’s perfect
But lots of character growth all around!
Plenty-o diversity
Set in the UK
Vicious rivalries!
Pranks that get WAY OUT OF HAND!!
Dragons!!! Did I mention the dragons??
Basically: Obnoxious young women teach giant fire-breathing carnivores to dance!!!
[Transcript under cut - warning for First Draft Quality (or lack thereof)]
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MEDIA INFLUENCES FOR ‘ON SUNDAYS, SHE PICKED FLOWERS / LITERATURE
The long put of sequel to the film version of this post… But anyways, it’s finally here so we can talk about the books that inspired On Sundays, She Picked Flowers. I’m just gonna give you the names of the books and the inspirations I took from each of them in relation to the plot, the relationships, the setting and the characters!
THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker
Celie and Shug Avery was the first time I’d ever read or seen anything about Black women who love women. It’s no surprise that their relationship inspired the relationship between Jude and Nemoira.
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston
Janey’s independence inspired much of Jude’s character, as well as her relationship with her hair and her lovers.
The body as nature, a pear tree in bloom as a symbol of sexual awakening; Jude’s connection to plant life (trees, in particular) is quite obvious in On Sundays
BELOVED by Toni Morrison
I could do an entire essay on the connection / inspirations between Beloved and On Sundays, She Picked Flowers but that’ll have to wait until the book is published, and more of the references will make sense. For now, Jude is heavily inspired by Sethe and Nemoira by Beloved herself. Many other themes borrowed are the pursuit of freedom through violence, mother-daughter relationships, isolation and self-ownership, and healing through past trauma, how trauma affects the whole body, mind and all.
JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
Jude herself admits to being formed/inspired by Miss Jane Eyre!
Not to mention, the themes of nature, isolation, strange loves and “haunted” houses
HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Z. Danielewski
Speaking of haunted houses … Both houses viewed in On Sundays, She Picked Flowers are characters of their own, and they’re both radically inspired by House of Leaves. The corridor, the staircase… Yes.
ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer
Nature behaving strangely, isolation (again!), and a little something special with a bear ;)
ALIAS GRACE by Margaret Atwood
A slightly unreliable narrator, a woman that can’t be pinned down with just one word…Yes. All over, yes. Also quilting, but less in a white woman way and in more of a ‘Black American women have always had a very complex and long history with quilting, so much so that our contributions to quilting is its own history.’
SHARP OBJECTS by Gillian Flynn
Two words; Mommy Issues, Self Harm as a way of gaining control over a body that seems uncontrollable. Though I guess, actually, that’s way more than two words. You get what I’m saying though, right?
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
The setting, the sick house and sick land, the haunted house as a character, the unreliable narrator, the gay vibes all throughout, the bone deep terror that weaves its way through the story until you’re curled up on your bed terrified… I only hope that On Sundays makes you all feel the same.
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Me writing at three a.m.:
Me after waking up four hours later, sleep-deprived, eyes bloodshot, one eyelid twitching as I stare at an incomprehensible doc filled with word nonsense:
what is the most brutally honest reason you write?
How new WIPs are born:
𝒘𝒕𝒘 𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒐𝒕 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒕𝒔 — 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒉
Marksley did not stand like a servant. His back was too straight, and though his shoulders remained slouched, there was a certain tenseness there that never appeared with the male servants she interacted with both at Isidore and at the palace. His feet were positioned just so that he would be able to stand completely still without locking his knees, his weight displaced equally between his feet and his arms behind his back.
Marksley did not stand like a servant. He stood like Leda before she adjusted to her new position. He stood like the guards that watched over her at the Manor. He stood like her mother, in some odd way, though Titania’s stance never looked as rigid and uniform as the rest of them.
He stood like a soldier.
Idk who introduced nik and his self destructive bisexual ass to drugs and alcohol but once I do I'm kicking them square in the jaw
- ash, maybe
𝐰𝐭𝐰 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐬 — 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐭
You hit the ground with a crack. Back arched, mouth opened in a silent scream, your lungs a vacuum of nothing but mind-numbing fire. Spider-web fractures blossom beneath you. A grotesque pair of wings belying your own divinity. You sputter choked sobs, a spittle of blood dripping from between your cut lips and down your cheek.
"The gods are cruel," said He. He whose form transcends mortal eyes, cloaked by storm clouds with a voice as deep a rumbling thunder. Your Destiny. Your Demon. Your Bane. "But perhaps they are most cruel to you."
i like how enigmatic life can always be. are you having a good day? well, tomorrow might be shit. or is it a bad day? maybe tomorrow you'll be the happiest version of yourself. you can't expect anything from life yet it disappoints sometimes. it's is so beautifully strange.
Me, Squinting at my writing: What perspective are you even in??? Are you even in a perspective??
My writing:
Patients of Karma
if karma's for real then I'm due some happiness having suffered long
I'll have clarity and be free from depression and the loneliness
but karma's lagging and I'm quickly impatient in waiting for it
.
3in1 haiku #227
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