This, This, This Was Exactly What I Needed! A Reminder That, Come What May, I Was Utterly Entranced,

This, this, this was exactly what I needed! A reminder that, come what may, I was utterly entranced, possessed, bewitched, enamoured, ecstatic-high when I wrote my stories, chapters after chapters. And I won't allow myself to forget that! Thank you ❤️

Let’s talk about Confidence

This is a message I just sent to my beta. And I want all my fellow writers out there to know why this isn’t selfish – it’s essential. 

A lot of writblr culture revolves around self-deprecation. I myself have made a lot of posts about drafts, and how the early drafts are “bad,” and the excruciating process of stepping back, seeing all its flaws, and tackling it again and again with another round of edits. 

And that is a very important and necessary part of the process.  BUT.

I can tell you, that as I was writing each of those horrible early drafts, I was in love with them. I felt good when I finished them, I felt they were doing the work they needed to move the story forward. It was only a few days later, or in some cases, months, or in terms of full drafts, years later when I reread scenes and realized they didn’t work anymore. 

Here’s the thing: You can get floods of memes and fanarts and kudos and comments and reviews and messages and asks, but nobody should love the story as much as you do. Because YOU are the one writing it, it’s YOUR fingers on the keys – not a single one of your readers can make your story take a single step forward. That’s on you. 

So I don’t care if you write fluffy oneshots or epic multichapter fics, don’t you for one second berate your own writing or get bogged down comparing it to others’ because it’s “not good enough.” My shitty first drafts of scenes weren’t good enough. But I fucking loved them, I loved the story they were going to tell, and I loved writing them. 

LOVE YOUR WRITING. Brag about it, obsess over it, reread the stuff you wrote and congratulate yourself on the amazing work you’ve accomplished. Because at the end of the day, THAT is what will keep you creating and perfecting your art. 

I write my fics out in Google Docs and then paste the text into Ao3 when I'm ready to post it. Does anyone else have the problem of pasting with italics? If there's a word in italics next to punctuation, Ao3 will add in a space for some reason and it's kind of infuriating.

One of the AO3 translation volunteers (Min) created a Google Docs script to handle issues when copying from a doc into AO3. It’s really easy to use

create a copy of this google doc. It contains the script that will do all of the HTML formatting for you.

Delete all of the text from the document.

Write or paste your fic/chapter into the document.

Go up to the top menu and click the new menu option Post to AO3, then choose Prepare for posting into the HTML editor

Note: because this is an apps script, you’ll need to give it permission to run the first time. 

The script will automatically mark up your document with the required HTML that you can then paste into the AO3 composition window. \o/

To revert your text back to normal, just go back up to that menu and choose Remove HTML. It will look like regular text again. 

Once you have the doc, you can make a new copy of it for each new fic you write and that way you’ll always have that script available when you need it :)

For other cool stuff, read this post from @ao3org - which is where I found this script in the first place ❤

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.

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?

The pleasure is mine too! Your talent is amazing! It makes the inspiration mutual 😉😘

Me and @loyalnprecious were talking the other day about KM, and they suggested them dancing, so this is the outcome! Thank you for always inspiring me ♥

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?