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I suffered a mental break after writing like eighteen college essays and wrote the newest one about a bagel and I just call it college essay bagel and it haunts me but like objectively it’s funny because it’s about a bagel you know? And my English teacher is gonna throw a book at my head when she finally reads it

Hey!! How is your Thursday treating you? Very well I hope. I saw your writing advise and I was wondering if you could give me some pointers. I know your probably busy so answer this on your time. My story’s setting is a very high end posh all girls boarding school. My main character’s family has major and integral ties to the school unknown to her since she was basically raised by her mothers parents (her father is the son of the headmaster) and the school is funded by the “government”. All the parents say that there child had loved the school and curriculum, only every girl that walked out of the school changed. Their behavior, their thoughts, their morals…all changed. They became more isolated and more withdrawn. I say this because the school actually trains the young girls to be assassins. They believe cultivating young minds is crucial. The facade of the school is well done so much so that admission is a long and tedious process. They start recruiting slow. They have a group of young girls who have been through the process scout out for young girls they think would make a good fit. It’s the setting and overall feeling I’m having trouble writing. The school at first should seem like a dream. The school is set in this wonderful eighteen century like building with beautiful grounds and various rooms and various chambers. The new students board in a different wing than the young girls who are in training. It’s all very hush hush. I want it to be scary, riveting, keep you on your toes. What are some techniques you use to write unsettling atmospheres?? I want it to be unsettling. Like you know somethings wrong but you can’t put your finger on it. It’s dark and mysterious and fearful. The teachers are in on it as well. So i it gives “lamb to the slaughter vibes”. The girls who are part of the training and are the leaders are mean and cruel, they like to scare the recruits, make life hell for them. They’ve gone through a lot of trauma and are emotionally broken. Do you have any advice for writing the girls? I want them to come of menacing, but also have a odd sense of sympathy and pity for the girls. Because they know first hand how it will be. This project is proving harder to write 😂😂 I was about to give up on the whole thing but I figured I would ask my favorite author for help first. ❤️

Thank you for the ask, you’re very sweet!

For writing unsettling atmospheres, I normally rely a lot on subtlety, especially when the main character is in the dark.

For example, one of the short stories I wrote ended with the main character getting her identity stolen by a fae. I hinted at it all throughout, but I put it into the characters own thoughts—how the other girl’s laugh sounded like hers, how the other girls hair was the same color as hers but it was better somehow. Going through it, it gives childish envy, but on a second read, it becomes more clear that the fae was slowly transforming to look more and more like the MC.

Along with that, don’t draw attention to unnecessary things to make it seem more unsettling, because that doesn’t feel natural. State something that’s slightly off or unsettling, and leave it. People will think about the implications naturally. Why is that door locked? Why don’t we go on the second floor? Where did the girl from the first week of classes go too, since we can’t go home?

When thinking about the setting you described, with an older house you can make a lot of assumptions about what’s happening. People’s first reaction is never “bloodstain” it’s normally mud, or tea, or paint. So have your character notice some strange staining on the wall outside one of her rooms, and bring it up to a teacher/supervisor, completely innocently, like mentioning they think there’s a water leak. Have the supervisor draw the silence out, make it feel uncomfortable, like she thinks she did something wrong, and then have them dismiss it with a “I’ll have to fix that.”

Leaky roof? Sure. Is it under the training rooms and one of the baseboards leaked blood down the inner wall? We’ll find out, won’t we?

Silence freaks people out, but so does the abrupt change from sound to silence. Make information change on a whim. The character thought this is what the supervisor said, but everyone says she’s wrong—when the information did change, just in order to keep the peace. I think a lot of the unsettling atmosphere will come from subtle environment factors—blood stains and locked doors and a wall around the school to keep the horses in, but the protagonist hasn’t actually seen any horses yet….

Now, for the girls. They can be BIG contributors to the unsettling factor. But you have to decide how you want them involved. Are they mean to the new girls because they’re jealous of their innocence? Are they mean because they’re trying to provoke them into leaving the school before it’s too late? To have them have that kind of “menacing” aura, then any subsequent sympathy or pity will also be a bit gruffer. It sounds like they’re mean partly because that’s one of their only pieces of freedom they have, but also because they’re jealous. I hope I’m making sense, but if I’m not, here’s kind of a snippet my brain spat at me regarding your questions.

She had watched as they demonstrated knife throwing aptly, because scared as she was, she wanted to do it right.

She had listened to all of their advice, sharp tongued as it was, and studied the way the older girls fingers danced along the blades.

She had always been good at learning this kind of stuff by sight, so she had double checked her hand position, and threw.

And promptly sliced the palm of her hand clean open.

She didn’t even have the thought to gasp at the pain as she watched the blood begin to well. Her cheeks went red as one of the older girls snapped her gaze over, fixating on her bleeding palm.

She wasn’t supposed to screw up, she was supposed to be proving herself—

The older girls hands closed around her wrist with a startlingly efficiency, stretching her fingers out to view the wound. When she winced, the girl shushed her, half harsh and half distracted as she eyed the wound.

She just barely kept up as the older girl dragged her into the bathroom, rummaging in a cupboard for a box of bandages.

“Be quiet,” the older girl snapped as she opened her mouth, eyes dark. “I’m fixing your hand right now because you messed up. This is the only time you get to do this.”

She could only watch as the older girl wrapped a bandage through her fingers and around her wrist, leaving her capable of movement and still covered fully. She wondered how many times you had to get an injury like that to learn how to bandage it so well.

“Listen to me,” the older girl hissed. “I helped you this once, and it won’t happen again. You don’t get to make mistakes; we don’t get to make mistakes. So either you don’t make them, or you learn to hide them, do you understand me?”

She nodded, just once.

“This school has a 100% graduation rate.” The older girl’s eyes bore into hers. “And they will never let that change, so don’t try.”

The older girl left her in the bathroom, clutching her aching and bandaged hand, wondering just how many of the stains on the sink were blood.

I hope this helps!

We did a lockdown drill in my school but I was in theatre so our theatre teacher looked at us and grinned and then looked at the audience seats. and. well. let’s just say we ended up on top of eachother laying down between the rows and then somehow it transitioned to an evacuation (idk it’s the education system)? And we ended up in the parking lot of the bank next door and two of us helped eachother scale the brick wall (this is normal) and since everything is built on a hill, the street above us is like split level with the parking lot so it’s vertically above us (do not ask me why our safe evacuation spot was an open air parking lot in which there was a street with an excellent view down onto us) and somehow my class ended up saluting the class that wandered onto the street above us in formation while singing the national anthem (harmonized) while our teacher looked like she wanted to quit her job. (She took a group selfie w us)

This was in downtown btw so like. Somewhere a bank security guard had to watch twelve teenagers salute the street above and sing the national anthem in its entirety. (Also the baseball game song yk the take me out to the ball game)

In a true display of athletic prowess I somersaulted down an entire flight of concrete stairs

You know what was not on my 2024 bingo card?

This tiny baby freshman standing up in the middle of my schools equivalent to homeroom and going (direct quote) “I know I’m so weird and quirky for this 🤪 but have you guys heard of archive of our own?”

But this tiny baby freshman didn’t stop there she proceeded to go “or fanfiction? I just hit 300k words on there, I know it’s so quirky of me and nerdy 😜”

And I just sat there, breaking into a cold sweat, because she used ao3’s full government name and our teacher then attempted to pull it up on her school computer