Pessimists : This Glass Is Half-empty.

Pessimists : This glass is half-empty.

Fatalists : This glass is half-empty and there's nothing I can do about it.

Optimists : This glass is half-full.

Idealists : This glass is half-full and I will fill it to the brink again.

Realists: There's some liquid inside this glass. And it's water.

Pragmatists: Glasses are made to be filled and emptied out. Yeah, to drink.

Dreamers : This glass is half-full, I'm going to fill it up and make it never empty out, ever again.

Me: Can I have some vodka, instead of water?

Writing is not always writing.

Writing is being on the train and mentally seeing your OCs stumble into other people, or flinching away from the germ-ridden handrails, or sleeping on each others’ shoulders.

Writing is hearing a song on the radio and watching one of your scenes play out to the lyrics.

Writing is laying on your floor or sitting by your computer and spending hours collaging newspaper clippings or pictures or people or plants together and making something that is completely, uniquely, your story.

Writing is drawing your characters in your notebooks, and making tea only your one, picky character would drink, and writing an open letter to all your characters just to remind them you love them.

Writing is moodboards, and playlists, and crafts, and asks, and prompts, and pictures, and memories, and you.

So never think that just because you’re not putting words on a page, you’re not a real writer. Writing is something that follows you everywhere, beyond the word document, and beyond the screen.

Because writing isn’t something you do. It’s something you are.

All his life, Jimin has kept to the depths of the ocean, away from the monsters that roam the surface. But after years of wandering a lonely ocean, he decides to face his longstanding fears and discover just what lies beyond the world he knows.

He doesn’t know what to expect, but it certainly isn’t Jungkook.

OR

Can a merman let himself be lured by the voice of a human? Can he drown?

Writing Body Language

How to Improve your writing

This is something that happens every day in your life. A shift of your eyebrow in skepticism, or the way your lip may twitch to a half smile cause you’re trying not to laugh. These behaviors are vital for writing in character, because not only do the allow you to visually see what is happening but it is also reaffirming whatever emotion your character is showing.

So why should you write it?

Much of human communication is non-verbal which means you need to also translate this non-verbal reaction in a post. It allows you to greatly enhance the emotions of another character and always another person to ‘visually’ see how they feel in a post. Most of all, this will add depth and volume to your post to make it feel more real. IT will make your character feel like a human instead of just another fictional person you look at from above.

Below you will find a list different type of emotions and what sort of body language can be exhibited to them.

Three ways to accent an action.

When writing about emotions, there are different ways to verbally write them out. Each one is unique in their own way, allowing you to show more about the emotion.

Emphasize the Emotion. But doing this, you are expressing both the emotion and the body language. We’ll use a simple example. It’s short and simple yet you can sense he is happy. John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall.

Complicate the Emotion. Sometimes, even when you are feeling one emotion, deep down rooted underneath the facade of it all, there is actually an underlining emotion they feel. This is something you have to truly express otherwise no one will know. John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall. However, it was obvious by the way his nose crinkled that he was disgusted by the actions beforehand. Instead, John covered it up by appearing pleased today.

Contradict the Emotion. This is a little different than complicate. Contradicting means that you are claiming one thing when in fact its the other. In many ways, this has a variety of uses, from inner depth of the truth to what you see in person, or someone creating a wall. It could be considered a lie, but when is anything that easy? John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall. In truth, once he was in the classroom, his shoulders slumped and a pout crossed his lips when no one was around, showing just how displeased he was with the situation.

Remember that you do not always have to contradict or complicate anything. Sometimes all you need to do is emphasize and that will be just fine. You don’t always have to have an underlining complicated for an emotion to make it more enhanced.

Do be afraid to use the Thesaurus to also improve an emotion. Such things as “happy” is a nice emotional word, but think of how much more powerful it is when you heard some is “overjoyed” or “content.” She how these emotions matched up with a body language can give two different styles of happiness? Mix and match to find what works best for your character at the time.

More In Depth Information

What I’ve stated above is more of a simplistic overview. IF you truly want to improve yourself, go to this

LINK HERE

To see just how much body language can reveal about a person. You will find things such as how a person lies, how the eyes reaction, the positioning of a person in personal space, mouth, and head body language and so much more.

Use these resources to greatly increase the reactions of your character to another and create a more life-like world.

Just like @kate0072, I’m a rather young reader, fanfic-wise. Reading-lover since forever, I fell into the fanfic-rabbit hole two years ago, after swearing on everything that’s precious to me that “NOOOOOOOO, THEY SHALL NOT HAVE ME!!!” (It’s not that I didn’t have a ticket to Hell already; let’s say I might get a better seat)

And then came the fanfic-writing sin (even better seat...) 

And I’ve been reading you today, my dear fellow succubuses. because yeah, RPF is my shit, but I never spared it a thought before. How come? 

Because everything I’ve been reading in this post and the comment section underneath makes total sense to me and has me wondering (like, never too late, right?)

I can totally understand how it can make someone feel uncomfortable to read about two real people getting together, living experiences together, having sex, drinking peyolt, eating grilled locusts and whatnot. I was myself beyong shocked when I stumbled onto a one-shot starring the president of my country with his political nemesis (I mean, WTAF?)

Is there somehow a psychological boundary that our mind has already decided that cannot be crossed? Because all the RPfics have been reading before I started writing my own were perfectly fine to me. The talent I read was mind-blowing, and I was just in awe with what authors, young ones even, could produce. And that was what counted - and still does - the most: the talent.

How would I feel if I were shipped with somebody else than my actual partner for instance? Would I like to know about it? The fun fact is, as a female teacher, I know I’ve already been “shipped” with all the male teachers around my age by the students... (why male only? Why my age? Don’t ask...). Do I want to know what crossed the minds of my oh-so-innocent-little-nippers? No, thank you very much! Is it intrusive? Yes, it is. Can I do something about it? I mean, without looking/sounding like a total freak?  I don’t think so. Why not? Because my status as a teacher makes me a public person, whether I like it or not. It has his pros, and well, its cons. Don’t make me start when one kid meets me at the hospital, or at the terrace of a café with my best friend, who’s male too. (Hang on, maybe I should start looking up for my name on ao3...)

So what to say about all these actors, singers, TV hosts, Youtubers, my president... whose public lives are already under heavy scrutiny by journalists, photographers, ready to bounce on any bit of words, moves, news... to feed their appetite for gossip, fuel rumours, create new ones and turn them into the new canon? It’s base and vile, I hear. Okay, I get that. That’s why I don’t read, listen or buy any of this. 

But on ao3, I do. Because it is fiction, fiction that is comfortable with itself, not trying to prove and lead us on with anything. And I’m sane enough to make the difference, even if there are canon elements inside the story. And the authors’ talent makes me completely forget that there is some extra-linguistic reality attached to it (there is an extra-linguistic reality to very noun and verb by the way)

On the other hand, the fact that I’m pretty comfortable with reading/writing RPF might be also due to the fact that the celerities my stories are about, know pretty well what shipping is, and even ride the wave themselves on a high level. They don’t act dumb or ignorant about the phenomenon. One could argue that they are being used by their industry, that it doesn’t mean they are comfortable with it. There again are the cons of a public person. 

Hearing public people deny this, or feel offended, sounds a little hypocritical to me.

So for us, readers and writers alike, our level of acceptance comes down to where we put our own limit to shipping. And this is a personal matter. For instance, I’m not comfortable with Main Character/SI fics. So, I’m going to avoid them (thank you ao3 and your tagging system) but certainly won’t judge them. I’m sure there are awesome ones, from amazing writers, with great plots. 

Talent should be what counts the most, to me. All the more so when it’s free.

Edit: just a passing thought: what to think of Shakespeare's historical tragedies? To ship or not to ship Anthony and Cleopatra?

Hi! I'd like to know other people's take on RPFs. Cause to me it seems that when I first started writing fanfics in the early 2010s, many writers were publishing RPFs for the most diverse fandoms and nobody thought there was anything wrong with it. Recently however, especially on Tumblr, I have seen so many people trying to explain why it's bad, when all I do is writing AUs and I'd never bother the real people with it, so I don't think there's anything wrong with that...

RPF is a semi-squick for me, and I think a lot of that comes from the unfortunate events of the last decade or so where both fans and journalists have shown actors fanfiction (of various kinds) involving them. 

Everyone imagines stories about strangers all the time. I’ll see someone on the train on my commute and take a guess at what they do for a living or what they’re studying at uni etc. Sometimes I’ll see two strangers together and think ‘aw what a cute couple’ with no reason for saying that except they seem to be having fun together. 

But I don’t have to worry about those stories ever getting back to those people. They’ll never know I had those idle thoughts, and I’ll forget about them within thirty seconds of moving past them on the sidewalk. 

Beyond the idea of the stories somehow getting back to the people involved, there’s also the fact that some people out there don’t have the best critical thinking abilities. If they read a story in a tumblr post, for example, they’ll assume it’s true rather than finding the original post and seeing the fandom tags on it. Ditto someone telling their friend about this story they read and someone else overhearing and assuming it’s a news story instead of a fic. That’s what takes a fictional story and turns it into gossip/rumour. 

I’m not crusading against RPF. If writing it makes you happy and you’re able to keep it away from the people you write about, fair enough. These are just the arguments against it that I’m aware of. 

Blog? Any thoughts either in favour or against?

This is something I wrote in one of my fics (🔞)

"Typical French pastry that you can find in every respectable bakery, wherever there is a bakery, that is to say everywhere. What’s the éclair, I’m asking you, if not the ultimate proof that the French are dirty-minded in every aspect of their lives? I mean, the most basic pastry that every baker learns first is nothing less than a long, thick, full and firm cock. And the best way to eat it? With your fingers, shamelessly moaning and shutting your eyes as you take it into your mouth, even on the street, in front of everybody’s salad;"

And that was a real conversation I had with a real friend in real café, eating a very real chocolate éclair 😋

i'm from California, and I'm writing a character from California right now. Should I add in stuff that I do, when I talk, to this character? For example, I've been told that I say "like" a lot ("there was, like, ten of them") and I talk really fast. So should I add that?

Go for it! I’ve lived in various parts of Canada as well as a few other countries, and I love putting in details from here and there. Even if no one else notices, I know it’s there and it makes me happy. Like when I watch TV shows and see my neighbourhood :)