I Loved Dracula's Ex-girlfriend And I Love Your Channel! I Wanted To Ask You About Alex And His Apparent

I loved Dracula's ex-girlfriend and I love your channel! I wanted to ask you about Alex and his apparent disdain for Fay. Like I understand him resenting her for essentially c0ckblock him in the dessert ordering scene, but he just seems to hate her guts from even before Belladonna show up to the restaurant. Why is that?The movie was amazing and you all look stunning!

I'm so glad you asked because the answer ties into an extremely important job Brandon had in literally the first shot, and he nails it

When the film opens we need the audience to quickly know when and where the story is taking place.

We can see and hear it's a restaurant so we're situated in space but we still need to be situated in time.

The clumsy way to do it would be to have Fay look at a clock and sigh, "Where is she?" But we can do better! Actors are there to serve the text, and Brandon's a great actor so he does it for us!

Alexander's irritated reaction when he flips his notebook shut tells us Fay has been here for a long time i.e. it's late at night.

This is how it looks in the script:

So the reason he dislikes her is she's been sitting here for ages not ordering anything! We set up a little about their relationship, we learn something about Belle (she's late), and we're situated in time.

When Belle finally does arrive Fay orders tap water and a burger - which we can reasonably assume are the cheapest things on the menu. Alexander corrects her: it's not just 'a burger' it's the Oak-smoked California hickory burger, they're not just 'fries' they're organic chipped potatoes twice-cooked in our house spice. Fay asks for ketchup and Alexander is visibly disgusted. We surmise he doesn't think she's classy enough for this restaurant.

🖋️ Confessions of a Writer 🖋️

You know you’re a writer when:

Your coffee consumption could fuel a small country.

You have intense debates with your characters about their life choices (spoiler: they never listen).

You get emotionally attached to fictional characters, but your own plants are thriving better than your plotlines.

Your friends have stopped asking “How’s the writing going?” because they can see the existential dread in your eyes.

You’ve accidentally named a character after someone you know, and now you’re avoiding them like they’re your ex.

In summary, writing is 10% creativity and 90% existential crises. Happy writing, fellow word wranglers! 😂✨

It's really okay to admit you're not ready to tackle a WIP just yet. Whether it's too big, too complex, deals with themes that are mentally exhausting—whatever. It's not going anywhere.

Putting it on the shelf for a while to develop your skills/work yourself up to it and coming back when you're good and ready is Self Care 101.

How I Approach Pacing and Tension in Writing (with graphic!)

(Fuck the gremlins, we're posting things TODAY)

Hi, welcome to the first actual post on my Tumblr page in where I ramble about how to write the goodest things.

Today's lesson is on PACING AND TENSION!

Hard to explain in many words, so behold my crudely drawn graph of how I handle this shit in my own writing (and I apologize in advance for my chicken scratch kekw)

I tend to have very high-stakes plots, but I feel like this could end up applying to any sort of genre or plot. I know a lot of these graphs I saw in school were a single bell curve with a gradual incline into the climax, but in my experience, the best way to build tension, keep pacing as even as you can, and really build into the peak of a story is to have small points of buildup to smaller peaks (aka the tension points) with sharper curves down into downtime (allowing the character to breathe), before building up again. Each tension point gets more and more intense, with the downtime acting as the small buffers between the gradually increasing intensity of the tension until SURPRISE, SHIT HITS THE FAN, IT'S THE BIG BAD ISSUE COME TO A BOIL.

But of course when shit hits the fan, things aren't the same as they were before (or at least, they won't be for a while), so the shape changes. Instead of sharp curves up and down, you're looking at a more gradual downward incline, with dips for moments of recovery/acceptance before there's little spikes in tension as a result of whatever occurred in the climax. This isn't an exact science and definitely can be toyed with, but this is a model I like to attempt to adhere to when I'm focusing on coming up with my story beats and creating the groundwork for the big climactic explosion.

Happy writing!

ZAINAB JIWA AS GERALT OF RIVIA

My characters: so what's the lore? What's our backstory?

Me: great question you see --

*sprints away*