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I Think The Most Challenging Part Of Piano Tiles Is The Self Controle It Takes To Not Scratch The Sudden
I think the most challenging part of piano tiles is the self controle it takes to not scratch the sudden itches you get everywhere as soon as you start playing....
More Posts from Bitterfairy98
After school you hunt down Jr. You really need to get this cleared up. Despite the fact that werewolves ARE human most of the time, they’re also monsters that kill people, infect people, and spread their disease. Many cities had been wiped out before this order was started. Many cities that don’t like the order and refuse to accept it have been wiped out since. The disease is getting out of hand. It must be contained. It would be impossible to completely wipe it out, but keeping it under control is good enough. As long as the government stays hard against them, giving no leniency, they’ll at least behave. That’s all the people want. Just for them to behave… You find him at the park, sitting under a tree. You walk towards him. As soon as he sees you he scrambles up. You hurry over to him, stopping in front of him, “We need to talk.” “I don’t have anything to talk to you about.” Though his responses had been short and difficult before, now he’s cold and unfriendly. It seems he already knows what you’re here to talk about. “Yes we do Jr. Your brother told me why you’re upset… I just don’t think you realise-” He laughs, cutting you off, “Don’t realise? YOU don’t realise! What the Hell do you know?” You glare, “I know that plenty of cities have already been wiped out from werewolves! I know that you ungrateful brats have NO IDEA how dangerous this disease is! Sitting there crying for “animals’ rights”, once they’re granted this city is going to be wiped out and it’ll be YOUR FAULT!” Jr snaps, “I’m not upset at them rounding up werewolves! Werewolves need to be contained! They round up anything that shifts! Not just werewolves! ANY SHAPESHIFTER! Yeah, I GET IT, better safe than sorry! Have you SEEN how those who are confined are treated!?” “They’re given their own CITY! They’re aloud lives! Just SOMEWHERE ELSE!” Jr grabs your wrist, making you jump, “Come on. I’ll show you their 'city'.” He walks off, dragging you with him. “Wait! We’re not allowed near the wall! It’s dangerous!” “And that should be a sign that something is wrong, shouldn’t it? They’re not giants. They’re not gonna break out of the wall. They don’t want you away to keep you safe. They want you away to keep you stupid.” You frown, tugging at your wrist, “I’m not stupid Jr.” His grip only tightens as you near the edge of town. You glare at the back of his head, “Let me GO Jr. I don’t want to get in trouble! Jr let GO!” You yank at your wrist, but he only jerks you forward, causing you to stumble and almost fall. “Stop fighting me. If you want to come preaching to me, I want you to see the facts first…” You glare, but don’t fight anymore. No matter how dangerous and illegal it is, you have to admit, you’re curious. Eventually the wall rises in front of you. A little gasp escapes your lips. It’s huge and magnificent. It’s kept in pristine shape, practically shining. Towers sit at intervals across it, tall and proud, certainly full of guards.
Also! As you're studying creative and professional writing: do you have any writing advice? Anything you picked up along the way that's incredibly helpful with your original fiction and fanfic?
alright, i’m gonna try and culminate the last three years of my degree into the most helpful advice i received that i can remember and it might be completely useless to you all but who cares:
adverbs are the enemy. if you can say she smiled prettily you can sure as hell take another four words to describe what was pretty about her smile instead. (if you gotta keep 1 or 2 adverbs in, fine, but purge the rest.)
kill your darlings is usually relevant but only because that one sentence you love so much is usually only loved because it doesn’t actually fit in with everything else. if your darling fits and works, don’t go killing it - raise everything surrounding it to that standard.
when posting articles/content online (especially on websites like medium), post towards the back end of the week, in the second half of the day. wednesday and thursday are the best ones for it. the algorithms of medium and other websites will make sure the article ends up trickling into friday, when bored employees go online during their breaks, and if enough of them read it, it’ll be especially popular over the weekend. (case in point, i did exactly this for this essay on depression.)
be warned though, popularity can be down to your tagging system, your title, any featured image and subtitle. just because you post at the exact right time doesn’t mean you’ll get the reads. here’s a masterlist of free stock images you can use, just because i’m nice.
read everything you can
read where we came from as much as new books. i don’t like classics but even i have to admit that reading ray bradbury can provide important and helpful tips and tricks, as much as reading the hunger games can.
try as many genres as you can, but if you know what genre you want to write in, focus your energy on that. a teacher of mine once said that he regrets dividing his energy between literary fiction and horror. he reads and writes both, but because he spent his time split, he never mastered either of them. if he had focused on one over the other, his talents with it would be much more than they are. (though, note, if you want to focus on multiple genres, do it anyway. i can’t decide between sci fi and fantasy, so i’m willing to master neither so i can enjoy them both.)
write everyday if possible. my teachers all recommend morning pages - you write a page in the morning before you get up and leave. do it during breakfast or when you’re still in bed. it can be about anything - word association, prose, poetry, whatever. it also does not have to be good. here’s a good book we were recommended on the subject if you want help with this.
for fan fic specifically: write in third person. unless you’ve got something super Artsy and Forward Thinking going on, your readers will only find themselves uncomfortable with first person, as we’re already trained to consider these characters as outside ourselves. putting first person in makes us the same person as the character, and whether readers are aware of it or not, that’s not the experience they came to fan fic for.
try to observe the trends of fan fiction when you can. i did this when i wrote for the 100 (i noticed that more people wrote during the hiatus between seasons, but more people were reading during the season airing and immediately after it finished) - you’ll find you’ll get more reads than you expect.
on tagging, just because it’s relevant to me: tag however you want on ao3, but tumblr only pays attention to the first 5, so make them the most important ones that are most likely to be read. from 6 onwards, tumblr won’t put your post in that listing when searched, so don’t bother.
don’t make the same mistakes i did with the prose around dialogue. it’s not:
“Hey there,” Jackson said. Emily smiled.
“Hey!”
as soon as your prose stops relating to the dialogue and jackson, you gotta start a new paragraph. even if you’re going into exposition or description - it doesn’t belong on the same line as the dialogue and it’ll start confusing the reader. especially when you stop saying things like “jackson said” and the reader starts attributing the dialogue to incorrect characters. try:
“Hey there,” Jackson said.
Emily smiled. “Hey!”
be as economical in your writing as possible. seriously. i love purple prose but we don’t need it everywhere. sometimes the reader just needs the facts and not three paragraphs of adjacent information. (sometimes, however, the reader wants that information, so it’s about being economical with how often you’re economical.)
for correct formatting for scripts, use the BBC writer’s room. they also have contests and open submissions. very occasionally, the people who submit can get hired to the BBC.
let yourself be shit at writing. it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Reading List:
here’s the best books i can offer you for writing. some may be helpful, some not so much for you - but these are the books my teachers recommended and i connected with.
The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler is a staple, okay? it was the first book we were told to buy, because it breaks apart a story into so many pieces and shows you how they’re to be employed. it’s not an enjoyable read, but it’s a really good place to be starting from.
The Elements of Style, Strunk and White. Another staple. Very short and apparently, very important.
if you want help with novel writing, Thomas Emson’s How To Write a Novel in Six Months is my go-to. he came in and delivered a lecture, the book takes only 40 minutes to read, and it comes with a lot of great advice you can pick and choose from. i reference him every time y’all ask for writing advice and it’s because the things i took from his book are the most helpful to my process.
Stephen King’s On Writing is pretty good. I was bored as heck through the first half, where he writes his life story, but the second half is all writing advice and super helpful.
as mentioned in the morning pages point: The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron.
The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting, Syd Field.
The Ode Less Travelled, Stephen Fry. if you’re interested in writing poetry, this is a very good one to use.
On Writing Well, William Zinsser. if you want to write non-fiction, this is the one for you. get the most recent edition you can, the edits are worth it. (for example, zinsser originally wrote ‘he’ when talking of the writer, and eventually changed to ‘they’ and ‘he or she’, because he learned feminism lmao.)
my playwriting teacher recommends The Art of Writing Drama, Michelene Wandor which i haven’t actually read yet but i plan to.
Heussner, Tobias, et al. The Game Narrative Toolbox is good (though a lil expensive) for when it comes to writing for games.
so is Rusch, Doris C. Making Deep Games: Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose, but again, recommended for games.
sources: i’m a third year creative and professional writing undergrad, consistently top of my class, taught by professional writers in fiction, experimental literature, poetry, non-fiction, playwriting, young adult and children’s literature and game design.
Had to reblog because I love this so much
My favorite thing about seeing non-Americans online is how they’re so shocked by things that you just take for granted and don’t even think about.
Like that whole restaurant post explaining how portion sizes aren’t a reflection of how people typically eat every day and that you’re practically expected to take leftovers home. It’s because between things like the Great Depression and coming off of having to ration our meals there was a big deal about being hospitable and giving guests lots of food that they could save for later thanks to the invention of refrigerators.
Or how non-Americans just shrug their shoulders at the idea that “Oh that house is old and haunted SOMEBODY DIED IN THERE!” because the U.S. has only been around a few hundred years and ghost stories like that are a common occurrence because we don’t have still-standing homes dating back to the Renaissance era and we have very different ideas of what is considered “old” because we really are such a young nation.
You dont’ quite realize that America does have its own cultures until you start exposing it to people who aren’t surrounded by it. And I think it’s important to realize that America does come with a culture but most people don’t see it as a culture because they’re so used to that whole “Melting Pot” thing but see that’s just it. The fact that there is a history and people who’ve been shaped by that history and those experiences is how culture is created and you can’t stop it. But it’s kind of like how if you’re a fish you don’t really know what’s “wet” because there’s water everywhere. If you’re American you don’t really know there’s an American Culture because you live and breathe it every day.
You sit at the cafe and sip your coffee awkwardly. Jr watches judgementaly. His brother sits quietly, pushing a crumb around his plate with his finger. You clear your throat, "so..." Jr raises an eyebrow. His brother looks up. You smile, "what do you guys do together?" Jr shrugs, "brother stuff I guess..." His little brother goes back to his crumb. You sigh, "you know it'd be nice if you would help me break the ice." Jr shrugs again, "Wasn't my idea to come here.", putting his hands in his lap. You sigh again and get up, going to get a refill. You feel juniors eyes burning into your back as you walk off.
When you get back Jr and his brother are talking quietly. Jr looks up and his brother looks down. You resist the urge to shake your head. He's so shy... You sit down and sip your drink. Jr smiles a fake smile, "do you have a sibling?" His arm moves and he glances down in his lap. You flare up. Stupid boy is playing on his phone under the table. You bite your cheek so as not to snap at him, then say, "No I don't. Its just me and my mom." He nods, looking back up at you, "Wheres your dad?" You glare, "You know, MOST people try to be gentle on the subject of parents being gone, or just avoid it completely." He shrugs, going back to his phone, "I have never once tried to fool you into thinking I was most people. Nor did I try to convince you I was nice..." You glare, "I dont know where he is. He left when I was, like, two." He nods, "That sucks." His brother sighs softly. You glare, "Yeah, well, we make it work. What about you? Wheres your mom?" He smirks, "cooking supper. Preparing to beat my ass cuz I'm not home." You burst out an unwilling laugh. The thought of him being chased by his mom is just hilarious. It's so different than the tough persona he puts on. His brother pushes his plat away, crosses his arms on the table, and buries his face in them. You frown, "What's wrong?" He shakes his head, "Just tired..." Its muffled and quiet. You keep frowning, but don't say anything. Jr, however, grins, "Dont fall asleep. We're probably gonna be here awhile." You scowl at him, "What's that supposed to mean?" Jr shrugs, "We're trying to get to know eachother right? That could take a while." You shrug and sip your drink. You sit in awkward silence, broken occasionally by short bursts of conversation. It's dark by the time you finally get up, ready to go, "I guess I'll see you tomorrow..." Jr nods, "ready to go?", looking at his brother, who stirs a little and nods into his arms. You wave, "Bye..." And leave. This is gonna be so hard. But he really needs a friend…