The Floor Is Heterosexuality

honestly fuck all romance except for whatever the fuck that little shy kid and the dude with severe daddy issues had in Dead Poets Society

Stupid clichés I can’t get enough of

The sarcastic character who’s kind of an asshole but is really just traumatized and doesn’t know how to show his feelings for a fear of being seen as vulnerable 

The golden child who has to live up to his father’s unreasonable expectations and is this close to absolutely falling apart 

The two rivals who pretend to hate each other but really care extremely deeply, and don’t know how to show it besides “fuck you.” 

The badass girl who is tired of everyone’s shit and is just a. Goddamn survivor.

That one character who is everyone is a little scared of because they make jokes about murder and no one can quite tell if they mean it or not.

Childhood friends who haven’t see each other in a while then meet up and see how much or little they’ve changed, and as soon as they meet up they say inside jokes.

 When the cocky Dudebro who seems to have a god complex but actually is drowning in self doubt.

When the quiet, comforting character starts yelling and putting people in their place.

That one character that every once in a while just goes batshit crazy, like breaking windows and setting things on fire.

When the character you’d least expect it loves animals/babies. 

FOUND FAMILY

The girl gang that commits crimes together. 

Redemption arc from the character you’d least expect.

Writing Tips from an Editor (Who Also Writes)

People throw around the phrase “Show, don’t tell” all the time. But what does it mean? Really?

When I’m editing a client’s work, I always explain what I mean when I say “Show, don’t tell,” so I know we’re on the same page (pun intended). 

FYI: This advice is really 2nd or 3rd draft advice. Don’t tie yourself in knots trying to get this perfect on the first go. First drafts are for telling yourself the story. Revisions are for craft. 

Ruthlessly hunt down filter words (saw, heard, wondered, felt, seemed, etc.). Most filter words push the reader out of narrative immersion, especially if you’re writing in 1st person or a close 3rd person. “She [or I] heard the wind in the trees” is less compelling than “The wind rustled through the trees” or “The wind set the bare branches to clacking.” Obviously, the point of view character is the one doing the hearing; telling the reader who’s doing the hearing is redundant and creates an unnecessary distance between the character’s experience and the reader’s experience of that experience. Was/were is another thing to watch out for; sometimes, nothing but was will do, but in many instances—“There was a wind in the trees” “There were dogs barking”—“was” tells, whereas other phrasing might evoke—“The wind whispered/howled/screamed through the trees” “Dogs snarled/yipped/barked in the courtyard/outside my door/at my heels.” 

Assume your readers are smart. What does this mean? Don’t tell the reader what your characters are thinking or feeling: “Bob was sad.” How do we know? What does Bob’s sadness look like, sound like? What actions, expressions, words indicate Bob’s sadness? Does Bob’s sadness look different than Jane’s would?

It also means that you need not repeat information unless you have something new to add to it—even if it’s been several chapters since you first mentioned it. I think a lot of readers fall into this trap because writing often takes a long time. But what takes a writer days or weeks or months to write might take a reader fifteen minutes to read. So, if the writer keeps telling the reader about so-and-so’s flaming red hair or such-and-such’s distrust or Bob’s blue eyes or Jane’s job as a neurosurgeon, the reader gets annoyed. 

The last thing you want is your reader rolling their eyes and muttering, “OMG, I KNOW” at the story you’ve worked so hard to write. It certainly means you don’t need to have characters tell each other (and through them, the reader) what the story is about or what a plot point means.

Along these same lines, let the reader use their imagination. “Bob stood, turned around, walked across the room, reached up, and took the book from the shelf.” Holy stage directions, Batman! A far less wordy “Bob fetched the book from the shelf” implies all those irrelevant other details. However, if Bob has, say, been bedbound for ten years but stands up, turns around, and walks across the room to fetch the book, that’s a big deal. Those details are suddenly really important.

Write the action. Write the scene with the important information in it. Let the reader be present for the excitement, the drama, the passion, the grief. If you’re finding yourself writing a lot of after-the-fact recap or “he thought about the time he had seen Z” or “and then they had done X and so-and-so had said Y,” you’re not in the action. You’re not in the importance. Exceptions abound, of course; that’s true of all writing advice. But overuse of recapping is dull. Instead of the reader being present and experiencing the story, it’s like they’re stuck listening to someone’s imperfect retelling. Imagine getting only “Last week on…” and “Next week on…” but never getting to watch an episode. I’m editing a book right now with some egregious use of this. The author has a bad habit of setting up a scene in the narrative present—“The queen met the warrior in the garden.”—but then backtracking into a kind of flashback almost immediately. “Last night, when her lady-in-waiting had first suggested meeting the warrior, she had said, ‘Blah blah blah.’ The queen hadn’t considered meeting the warrior before, but as she dressed for bed, she decided they would meet in the garden the next day. Now, standing in the garden, she couldn’t remember why it had seemed like a good idea.”

That’s a really simplified and exaggerated example, but do you see what I’m getting at? If the queen’s conversation with the lady-in-waiting and the resulting indecision are important enough to be in the narrative, if they influence the narrative, let the reader be present for them instead of breaking the forward momentum of the story to “tell” what happened when the reader wasn’t there. Unless it’s narratively important for something to happen off-page (usually because of an unreliable narrator or to build suspense or to avoid giving away a mystery), show your readers the action. Let them experience it along with the characters. Invite them into the story instead of keeping them at a distance.

Finally, please, please don’t rely on suddenly or and then to do the heavy lifting of surprise or moving the story forward; English has so many excellent verbs. Generally speaking, writers could stand to use a larger variety of them. 

(But said is not dead, okay? SAID IS VERY, VERY ALIVE.)

Rowan: “I wrote an extra 12 inches. Do you think she will notice?”

Me: “I drew three house elves standing on each other’s shoulders”

No wonder Merula hates me so much, gosh.

meme?

God, I want Mamma Mia to become the Fast and Furious franchise of musicals. They just keep making them for no reason, and the more they make the more you don’t even care that there isn’t a plot.

You think we care about a plot? The first movie could have been solved in 2 seconds with a DNA test, but instead they decide to sing about how this girl doesn’t know which of these 3 men is her dad for 2 hours and in the end THEY STILL DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER. AND NO ONE CARES.

The plot is ABBA karaoke, and it brings me joy. That’s all you need to know.

*swings into your room on a rainbow and throws confetti* happy pride month mother fucker

I was at Hogwarts and someone had been posting pictures of the cartoon snake that says “pwease no steppy” all over the Slytherin common room.

I want a girl x girl fic between Penny and the reader fic asap

LISTEN i know the game’s only been out a for a few days, but i NEED somebody to start writing fics/headcanons/imagines for:

- BenCopper X Reader

- PennyHaywood X Reader

ASAP !

I’m so in love with the game and these sweet side characters 💕