Olympereeeeeeeeeeeeeemtblr - Olympe Erem

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.

the floor is heterosexuality

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.

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.

Finished it

Re-blog if you are soft and like to be cuddled

no wonder my energy runs out this fast considering the fact im carrying this whole damn house on my back

THINGS WHICH MAKE WRITERS ANXIOUS:

not writing

writing

people reading their stories

people not reading their stories

How to Kick a Reader in the Gut

Disrupt the reader’s sense of justice. 

This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite. 

Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal. 

Let the bad guy get an extremely important win. 

Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.

Don’t always give characters closure. 

(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)

A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.

A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.

A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine

Make it the main character’s fault sometimes. 

And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.

MC must choose the lesser of two evils.

MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.

Rejection is a powerful tool. 

People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.

MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them

MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.

MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)

On the flipside, make your main character keep going. 

Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.

“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?

Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost. 

Also remember that the things that make us sad, angry, or otherwise emotional as readers are the same things that make us feel that way in our day-to-day lives. Creating an empathetic main character is the foundation for all of the above tips.

my only two moods ever are tenderness and hysteria