WRITING TIP: Grammar. Good God.

WRITING TIP: grammar. good god.

just because it's tumblr doesn't mean you can throw grammar and spelling out the window.

COMMON MISTAKES:

Not indenting for paragraphs. I know tumblr doesn't have the 'tab' function, but at least do a paragraph break. When?

If someone new is speaking

If the setting/action has changed

a new thought

think of it like the camera angle changing in a movie. Would the camera break to another room? or would you watch five minutes of bouncing and spinning while the camera moves to the right location. (Hint: it's the first one)

Big blocks of text make me homicidal. Knock it off.

Apostrophes!

It's: it is

Its: belongs to 'it'. We think it can also be it's, but it's not (see what I did there huh huh hee hee hooo boy)

Possession: Jenna's, Jess', The Twins'. NOT Jennas', Jess's, The Twin's. If there is a group, put the apostrophe after the plural 's'. PLURALS DO NOT HAVE APOSTROPHES IF I SEE THAT AGAIN I WILL REVOKE YOUR LITERATURE LICENSE AAAAAH.

Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. "Like this." "Not this".

Dialogue punctuation.

"If you're talking and something happens," she said, dodging past a car, "you'd punctuate with a comma and lowercase." See how I didn't capitalize the bold word, or put a period after 'happens?'

Don't do this:

"If you're talking and something happens." She said, dodging past a car, "You'd punctuate with a comma and lowercase."

bad. wrong. booo.

MISUSING SEMICOLONS.

; this baby. makes a cute face ;) but is also useful!

it explains a clause, like so (an excerpt from my drabble 'Deal With It, pls read xoxoxo): "it was cozy; you'd pulled a blanket over your head and your music played gently." I said something was cozy, and then I explained how after a semicolon. It's not just a fancy comma. Don't use it like a fancy comma. it's like commentary of the actual writing. Professional parentheses.

PARENTHESES.

Don't use them. It doesn't make any fucking sense. use a semicolon or a colon or a comma or hyphens or literally anything else. underscores, even. just not parentheses. it's so weird.

WRITING STYLISTICALLY

Bold, italic, all lowercase, that stuff. use it consistently! you don't have to follow the rules if you make it seem intentional and consistent.

Bold.

emphasis, intense, eye-catching. good for a groundbreaking revelation. not the strongest choice for anger. has a staccato feel to it. punctual, concise.

Italic

wistfulness, pause, contemplation, haunting emphasis. good for flashbacks, whispering, angsty emphasis. If you overuse it, it'll feel kinda weird. i know we love her but give her some space. Otherwise it feels like pumping the gas and slamming the breaks really fast during the sentence.

all lowercase.

she's cute, she's aesthetic, she can get confusing sometimes. we need Capitals so that we can identify the Important Things. names, places, proper nouns, I know you know 'em. if you wanna start ur sentence lowercase, okay sure, but it gets muddy if you do it everywhere.

ok byeee xox

Writing tips: how do I add tension?

plenty of favorite tropes have tension. almost all of them. and, non-romantically, tension adds atmosphere. tension is the not knowing, the road block to the happy ending.

NOT TO DO:

don't make your characters stupid. don't dumb down their decisions to get them in 'difficult' situations. the audience will be bored and annoyed. (the audience is me. this is so irritating.)

don't make shit up. keep it consistent, don't throw something out of left field just for the sake of it. If the plot doesn't have enough material for tension, revise.

don't overdo it. tension is great at the penultimate moment, right before success. if you add tension at every point of conflict, readers will get bored and the story will be slow. put it every once in a while, not at every available opportunity.

GOOD CHOICES:

Push and Pull. give and take. let your characters win some and lose some. if they lose all the time, nobody wants to root for them. give them some strengths with their faults.

target strength and weakness. weaknesses are commonly targeted because duh, and it is a good chance for angst, but a really strong choice is targeting strength. the one thing they were good at and they couldn't even do that right? hooo boy.

unpredictable. if the reader can see it coming, it won't be as nail-biting. but as I said above, too unpredictable makes it campy and dumb.

last minute. Does it go well until the last minute? or is it a shit show until the final save? either are good choices, and have some pretty tense moments.

TECHNIQUE

POV. pov is suchhh a helping hand with tension. switch POVs right at the pivotal moment, keep the audience guessing. Unreliable narrators are great too, maybe peek into the villain's head for a bit.

don't be too descriptive. overexplaining ruins the tension. setting description vs character mindset is what i'm talking about. as the narrator/author, you can describe via exposition or external commentary what is actually going on, but the characters don't know. It's like in a horror movie, when the audience knows the killer is around the corner, but the MC is oblivious.

keep the stakes high! conflict builds until the ultimate plot point. so should the tension. maybe there's a secret or a secondary motive that is slowly coming to light.

it doesn't always have to be a huge plot point. The MC is hiding a terrible illness that will strike at the worst moment. One of the characters is secretly a spy and doesn't say anything until the end.

Hit 'em where it hurts! suprises are great. not crazy surprises, keep it consistent, but a holy shit! moment does terrible things to the blood pressure (which in this case is what you want)

hope this helps! xox

STOP DOING THIS IN INJURY FICS!!

Bleeding:

Blood is warm. if blood is cold, you're really fucking feverish or the person is dead. it's only sticky after it coagulates.

It smells! like iron, obv, but very metallic. heavy blood loss has a really potent smell, someone will notice.

Unless in a state of shock or fight-flight mode, a character will know they're bleeding. stop with the 'i didn't even feel it' yeah you did. drowsiness, confusion, pale complexion, nausea, clumsiness, and memory loss are symptoms to include.

blood flow ebbs. sometimes it's really gushin', other times it's a trickle. could be the same wound at different points.

it's slow. use this to your advantage! more sad writer times hehehe.

Stab wounds:

I have been mildly impaled with rebar on an occasion, so let me explain from experience. being stabbed is bizarre af. your body is soft. you can squish it, feel it jiggle when you move. whatever just stabbed you? not jiggly. it feels stiff and numb after the pain fades. often, stab wounds lead to nerve damage. hands, arms, feet, neck, all have more motor nerve clusters than the torso. fingers may go numb or useless if a tendon is nicked.

also, bleeding takes FOREVER to stop, as mentioned above.

if the wound has an exit wound, like a bullet clean through or a spear through the whole limb, DONT REMOVE THE OBJECT. character will die. leave it, bandage around it. could be a good opportunity for some touchy touchy :)

whump writers - good opportunity for caretaker angst and fluff w/ trying to manhandle whumpee into a good position to access both sites

Concussion:

despite the amnesia and confusion, people ain't that articulate. even if they're mumbling about how much they love (person) - if that's ur trope - or a secret, it's gonna make no sense. garbled nonsense, no full sentences, just a coupla words here and there.

if the concussion is mild, they're gonna feel fine. until....bam! out like a light. kinda funny to witness, but also a good time for some caretaking fluff.

Fever:

you die at 106F (40.5C). no 'oh no his fever is 107F!! ahhh!" no his fever is 0F because he's fucking dead. you lose consciousness around 103, sometimes less if it's a child. brain damage occurs at over 104.

ACTUAL SYMPTOMS:

sluggishness

inability to speak clearly

feeling chilly/shivering

nausea

pain

delirium

symptoms increase as fever rises. slow build that secret sickness! feverish people can be irritable, maybe a bit of sass followed by some hurt/comfort. never hurt anybody.

fevers are a big deal! bad shit can happen! milk that till its dry (chill out) and get some good hurt/comfort whumpee shit.

keep writing u sadistic nerds xox love you

also - this post was not an invitation to share a bunch of enormously traumatic stories. stop messaging me things like 'related to ur last post' and then it's a really upsetting recount of an assault you experienced. this is a writing blog, not a medical newsletter. I'm muting the notifs because I don't like seeing it pop up in my feed - if you have a genuine writing question, please dm me, i'd love to hear it. thank you.

yall.

can we decide on like one specific scent per character. like, the whole fandom needs to come together abt this bc i swear to god i've read fics where "they smell like citrus" and another where "they have a musky sandalwood scent" and my brain is exploding bc unless this person is an entire Bed Bath and Beyond or we need to get our shit together.

so there is a fic on AO3 that had me in a CHOKEHOLD ISTG. It's a Javier Pena fic, basic premise is an enemies to lovers where reader gives him a kiss for every pill he has to take after he gets shot, and by the end...!!!! has all the best tropes guys seriously I love it. it's called 'Ten days" just search javier pena and the title, you'll find it.

well.

I decided that a great lil spinoff will be bestowed on our other favorite emotionally constipated himbo.....Miguel O'hara!

yay

so...stay tuned for that, ig, probably will start posting soon? (I'll link it in this post later)

notifs make me so happy its stupid

im like "hello!!!! hi!!!! hello person!!! you saw my fic!!! eeee!!! yay!!! i love you pls come back!!!! :D"

im like a stupid dog auaUahAAgh