This Is An Appreciation Post For The Fanfic Authors Who Aren’t Included On Rec Lists

*saving this for later 😎*

queer books that didn’t disappoint me the way everything else has. please enjoy.

“Before you know it it’s 3 am and you’re 80 years old and you can’t remember what it was like to have 20 year old thoughts or a 10 year old heart.”

— This is the scariest fucking text post I’ve ever read (via fuckinq)

i’m gonna say it.

there is nothing wrong with you for liking cartoons, comic books, cosplays, dolls, nickelodeon, cartoon network, superheros, disney, fanfiction, video games, drawing, basically anything that is label to be “kids stuff.”  life is too damn short to be boring; who the hell wants to just be into things are acceptable by adult standards. 

enjoy the things that make you happy, and if it’s something that people view as immature and childish you should not be ashamed. you are fine the way you are.

remember the brief trend earlier this year of celebrities posting their co-stars middle school pics and captioning them "it makes me so mad I can't hang out with this kid"??? Richie and Bill, within seconds of each other and without mentioning their plan to each other first, both post pics of them like hugging as kids captioned "it makes me so mad that I HAD to hang out with this kid" lmao

omg ok but this would be so hilarious if they roasted each other while no one knew that they were childhood friends. like obvs before derry they didnt even know each other so the fans would have no reason to associate them in any way but then after derry. richie and bill dont make a post like ‘hey we’ve actually known each other for a long time’ or anything like instead richie just tweets a pic of bill as a child one day with some caption like “anyone else think he looks how cold fries taste?” which just causes Mass confusion bc hUH??? like richie didnt tweet anything abt bills writing so it doesnt seem like he just read one of bills books and was upset by it. but ppl still dont have any reason to think richie and bill know each other. so in the end ppl just think that comedian richie tozier woke up one morning and was like. you know what? Fuck that horror novel guy

alright kids, so i’m just about finished re-reading IT and i would like to share the bichie highlights with you in case anyone who hasn’t read it is interested. buckle up.

Richie is the only one that Bill confides in about his guilt over Georgie and Richie is very sincere (a rarity) when comforting him.  “What Richie had just said had made him feel better about George’s death for the first time in months…”

This is also the point where Bill begins to cry and feels insecure about it and Richie tells him it’s okay to cry and that he would do the same.

Whatever this is: “Bill was here and Bill would take care; Bill would not let things get out of control. He was the tallest of them, and surely the most handsome. Richie only had to look sideways at Bev’s eyes…to know that. Bill was also the strongest of them - and not just physically. There was a good deal more to it than that, but since Richie did not know either the word charisma or the full meaning of the word magnetism, he only felt that Bill’s strength ran deep and might manifest itself in many ways, some of them probably unexpected. And Richie suspected if Beverly fell for him, or “got a crush him”, or whatever they called it, Ben would not be jealous; he would accept it as nothing but natural.” cont.

Keep reading

Just in case this needs to be said:

It’s the first draft. Use the word “suddenly.” Put as many dialogue tags and adverbs as you want. Say “he saw” “she remembered” “she felt” “they wondered” as many times as you need to. Put the em dash there, put in too many commas, use semi-colons with reckless abandon. Type in [whatever] instead of thinking up a title for something. Just write it. If you worry too much about the particulars, about all the advice posts you’ve seen saying whatever you’re doing is wrong or not good enough, you won’t get anything done. It will slow you down as you go back and try to reword what you just wrote to make it better, proper. The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done. And when you get to the end, you’ll find that all those “mistakes” are just clues for your future self to put together to make it all better.

Putting in adverbs and certain dialogue tags are a note for you as to who is saying something and how they’re saying it. When you’re editing, you can make sure it shows through the story instead. The word “suddenly” is a reminder to make things more abrupt. The first draft is just you mapping out where you want to go and how you want to get there. Don’t waste time trying to get it 100% right now, because then it will never get done. Don’t think too much– just write. Save the thinking for editing later.

Actually life is beautiful because the sound I make while trying to breathe around hot food sounds like my dog trying to eat an apple. When I yawn my cat tries to put his face in my mouth like a little dentist man and when he yawns I put my finger in his obligate-carnivore trapzone and we both know he will not hurt me. When I do not fold my clothes, they do not hold it against me.

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely, like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

This is the process of getting better. With wonderful people and wonderful strangers and wonderful friends: I am getting better, slowly. Thank you, whoever you are. In some way, you've been wonderful, and left a wonderful place in the world to ripple out to me. In some small way - isn't it beautiful - I promise, you've been helping.

On Writing: Dialogue Tips

It’s only natural that novels and short stories are usually dialogue heavy - it’s a written medium. We need the characters to talk. However, a lot of the time we have difficulty writing dialogue. 

Hopefully these tips will help some people!

How to Make Your Dialogue Better:

Relationships and voices matter. Unique voices matter, and character relationships will affect how they speak. Think of how strangers or friends or siblings would interact. Even friendly strangers will hold themselves back a little. Think of how Iroh and Zuko from ATLA talk, for example. Their relationship is clear from how they speak, and they have unique voices. Iroh frequently spouts wise idioms and is generally calm and serene, while Zuko is all anger and urgency. Think about how your characters feel about each other and how they might interact.

Summarise the boring parts. A common mistake in bad writing can be to repeat in the dialogue what was just described in the inner monologue…exactly how it was just described. You don’t need to do this; summarise it. Reword it. And you don’t need the characters to go through the usual motions of small talk every time they meet. It’s boring and a waste of words.

Avoid name drops and dialogue tags. At least, don’t use them too much. People don’t say each other’s name constantly in dialogue without a reason (see Captain Holt repeatedly saying “Rosa” in B99 because he didn’t want her to feel dehumanised. This was for comedy but the point stands). Dialogue tags are fine, but they should feel invisible. Try to use verbs more extravagant than “said” or “asked” sparingly, and don’t end every piece of dialogue with a dialogue tag. As long as every new piece of dialogue is on a new line, it should be clear who’s speaking, and it won’t bore the reader. This will also help vary your prose/sentence structure.

Create pauses through narrative. By breaking the dialogue up with narrative, the characters will pause in the reader’s mind without you having to specify that they’ve paused. This is a handy way to avoid using dialogue tags too much. It can also make the dialogue easier to read if it’s not all smushed together with no breaks. Especially if you have a long passage of one person speaking; long, rambling speeches aren’t that popular anymore (not that they have no place, but that’s another story).

Dialogue isn’t perfect. People make mistakes; they forget words and lose their train of thought when they speak. They change topics and get lost in the moment. This can add realism to your dialogue, and can be a fun way to show character. But don’t do it too much or the scene will go on too long without getting to the point. And try to avoid too many ‘um’s and ‘er’s - they may be common in real life but they can drag the prose down if used too much.

An example I have is from Big Hero 6 (a movie I love by the way, but this was bad): Tadashi: What would mom and dad say? Hiro: I don’t know. They’re gone. (this is good, this is fine) Hiro: … They died when I was three, remember? (NOOO)

Dialogue should show something important. There’s a common idea that dialogue has to move the story forward or get cut out. This isn’t necessarily true. However, dialogue should tell the reader something about the characters or the world they live in. This comes back to cutting out the usual mundane small talk. Dialogue doesn’t have to move the plot, but it should be there for a reason, even if it’s to show the relationship between two characters, or how they feel about something that isn’t central to the plot. It doesn’t have to move the plot forward, but there has to be some reason for the reader to see it.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi Writers: use apostrophes! “I am not”, “I did not”, “I do not” - this can feel unnatural if all your dialogue is like this. You don’t need to write all your dialogue like this. Don’t be afraid of the apostrophe! Apostrophes are great! It won’t make your characters seem too modern, I promise. Don’t make the dialogue too awkward or stiff. After a while, they’ll stop sounding human.

How to Make Writing Dialogue Easier:

Write your dialogue like a script. If you’re struggling with the dialogue in a scene, try writing it like a script and omit the narrative (aside from very basic actions). I’ve done this once or twice; sometimes it’s easier to figure out what you want your characters to say when you’re not bogged down by writing the narrative, especially in a scene where the dialogue is especially important. You can incorporate the narrative later.

Read your dialogue out loud. Reading out loud can help you see how your dialogue will sound to the reader. It can help you spot weird sentence structures, or if something sounds out of character or inhuman. You can also get an idea of the characters’ voices. If you have a willing friend (and you’re not too embarrassed), try to get them to read with you!

Colour-code your dialogue. This is a trick you can use for scenes with more than two characters. By colour-coding the dialogue, you can clearly get a sense of each character’s voice, see who’s speaking the most or the least, etc. You can use this to redistribute roles and dialogue in the scene, or maybe experiment with adding or subtracting characters depending on their contribution to the scene. It can also help you keep track of all the characters, which is generally harder in written medium when you can’t see the group in front of you.

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my favorite thing to do right now is imagine the hargreeves children on saturdays from noon to half past noon