Frodo And Sam In Mordor Wouldnt Have Been Nearly So Heart Wrenching If We Hadnt Seen Them In The Shire.

Frodo and Sam in Mordor wouldn’t have been nearly so heart wrenching if we hadn’t seen them in the Shire. Cinderella’s cheerful nature makes her breakdown when her stepsisters ruin her gown and chance to attend the ball so much worse. Sora’s never-give-up attitude makes his total collapse in the Keyblade Graveyard poorly foreshadowed even more worrisome.

Contrast is everything. In every form of art, from the visual to the auditory to the written word. It’s why we have images like a campfire on a snowy day, curled up with a good book and a beverage in front of a rainy window.

It’s also probably why so much of mainstream fiction is so messed up. They keep piling on calamity upon atrocity to keep the horror going, when they could keep things manageable just by having some light.

“The closer you get to the light, the darker the shadow.”

It’s why authors of tumblr toss around posts about the ways to make a death more impactful, by having it come out of nowhere in the midst of joy.

Making your angst hurt: the power of lighthearted scenes. 

I’m incredibly disappointed with the trend in stories (especially ‘edgy’ YA novels) to bombard the reader with traumatic situations, angry characters, and relationship drama without ever first giving them a reason to root for a better future. As a reader…

I might care that the main siblings are fighting if they had first been shown to have at least one happy, healthy conversation. 

I might cry and rage with the protagonist if I knew they actually had the capacity to laugh and smile and be happy.

I might be hit by heavy and dark situations if there was some notion that it was possible for this world to have light and hope and joy to begin with.

Writers seem to forget that their reader’s eyes adjust to the dark. If you want to give your reader a truly bleak situation in a continually dim setting, you have to put them in pitch blackness. But if you just shine a light first, the sudden change makes the contrast appear substantial.

Show your readers what light means to your character before taking it away. Let the reader bond with the characters in their happy moments before (and in between) tearing them apart. Give readers a future to root for by putting sparks of that future into the past and the present. Make your character’s tears and anger mean something.

Not only will this give your dark and emotional scenes more impact, but it says something that we as humans desperately, desperately need to hear. 

Books with light amidst the darkness tell us that while things are hard and hurt, that we’re still allowed to breathe and hope and live and even laugh within the darkness.

We as humans need to hear this more often, because acting it out is the only way we stop from suffocating long enough to make a difference.

So write angst, and darkness, and gritty, painful stories, full of treacherous morally grey characters if you want to. But don’t forget to turn the light on occasionally.

Support Bryn’s ability to provide writing advice by reading their debut novel, an upbeat fantasy about a bloodthirsty siren fighting to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain!

Actually super helpful so that I can visualize the dang things, and am in awe of the time taken to make the colors match, but the lighter colors are hard to read. Cream is the hardest. That said, mine now, suckers.

Color Terms You Didn’t Learn in Chinese Class

In your Chinese studies you’ve probably learned: 红色、橙色、黄色、绿色、蓝色、紫色、灰色、白色、黑色、咖啡色、粉红色

But there are so many beautiful colors out there! Let’s learn some more. These are color terms I’ve come across outside Chinese class.

In general you can indicate a light shade with 浅 and a dark shade with 深. I have also seen 墨 for dark and 淡 for light, but when I Googled various color terms, there were more results for 浅 and 深 than 淡 and 墨.

I spent way too much time messing with HTML to color the text to match (except for the shades of white).

褐色 hèsè - brown

橘黄色 júhuángsè - orange

奶油色 nǎiyóusè - cream

金黄色 jīnhuángsè - gold color

朱红色 zhūhóngsè - vermilion

米色 mǐsè - beige

棕色 zōngsè - brown

青色 qīngsè - cyan / blue-green

灰白 huībái - light gray / ash-colored

蔚蓝 wèilán - azure / sky blue

纯白 chúnbái - pure white

雪白 xuěbái - snow white

洁白 jiébái - spotlessly white / pure white

漆黑 qīhēi - pitch-black

铜色 tóngsè - copper

乌黑 wūhēi - jet-black / dark

靛色 diànsè - indigo (color)

金色 jīnsè - golden / gold (color)

银色 yínsè - silver (color)

Here are some single characters I’ve seen as well. Some of these are commonly used in names, like 彤 and 丹.

彤 tóng - red

丹 dān - red / pellet / powder / cinnabar

缇 tí - orange-red silk / orange-red colored

赤 chì - red / scarlet / bare / naked

碧 bì - green jade / bluish green / blue / jade

翠 cuì - bluish-green / green jade

皓 hào - bright / luminous / white (esp. bright white teeth of youth or white hair of old age)

颢 hào - bright / white

玄 xuán - black / mysterious

彤, 丹, and 缇 are all described as a red-orange color. I’m not really sure of the difference, so I just made them all the same shade. I’m also unclear on exact distinction between 褐色 and 棕色. Image search results certainly suggest that they are used differently. Not sure how 咖啡色 fits in either.

I stumbled across this giant Wikipedia table with many beautiful colors that you can check out to learn more!

Been wondering what the ever loving was a “dogsblood drama” until I unwittingly found one. It’s a soap opera in text format.

Coming into a fandom late

handletheheat.com

If you ever feel like you keep starting all your sentences with the same few words over and over again, try making sure you start each sentence with a letter of the alphabet in sequence. You may need to crack a dictionary for some of the trickier letters, but that’s part of the fun.