Tips And Tricks - Tumblr Posts
Audition Do’s and Don’ts
Here are a few (well, more than a few) audition do’s and don’ts that can help you in your upcoming audition!
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✏️ what no one tells you about how to journal 📒
i was sick of all the "how to journal" content out there recycling the same advice that sounds great but doesn't always work in the reality of daily life. you're welcome 😏 (also low-key a shitpost, but there are nuggets of wisdom in here, i promise 😇)
✍️ what to journal about ✍️
sure, you could journal about self development and treat your diary like your therapist, OR you could write about:
the pettiest grudge you're still holding onto from elementary school 😤
all the gossip about other people's lives that you have Strong Opinions™️ about, but you're a good person, so what goes in the journal, stays in the journal 🤫
all the witty comebacks you never say to people's faces because you're a sensible, non-confrontational person, but also you didn't think of it until later 🙃
the possibilities are endless, let your imagination run wild, and/or feel free to contact the blogger for more 🤭
🚫 when NOT to journal 🚫
this is just as, if not more, important as when to journal.
nothing to say — forget morning pages, i can barely string together a coherent greeting before lunch. also, a whole night's sleep is like a total memory wipe, so i have nothing to write about 🤷♀️ and don't listen to whoever says to just write "i have nothing to write about" because if you start enough entries with that, you're gonna begin to feel there's no point BUT THERE IS!! just not right now. and that's okay ☺️
too often — personally, i think it's important not to make journaling your one source of clarity 🔮 continue to think things through in your mind, confide in people you trust, and have moments (in nature, perhaps) that simply can't be transcribed to words 🌼
not feeling it — if you're too tired OR feel fulfilled and clear-headed enough about your day, don't make journaling a chore you have to do no matter what. if that means you don't journal everyday, then so be it 🌝
so when do you journal? in general, when doing so would add something to your day ☀️ whether that's peace, humor, gratitude, or something else.
🎁 materials 🎁
now for the fun part: let's go to the stationery store! 🛒
✒️ GET A PEN THAT WRITES SMOOTHLY! you are literally lowering the physical resistance that's keeping you from journaling, trust me it works. also pencils suck.
🔐 get a journal with a band, lock, clasp, button, etc. — just because it's fun, but it has the added benefit of securing your intellectual property(?)
have a separate journal for writing thoughts vs. schedules vs. todos vs. collections (TBR lists, recipes, etc.) — beats having to make and maintain a whole index to keep it all organized in just one (1) notebook 😵💫
🌸 stickers — are a pretty substitute for correction pens 😻 (in theory, but i have yet to use all the washi tape i bought 😅)
or just journal digitally, idgaf, do what works for you, okay? 😇
Hello there 🙂
Sorry to bother you but I've been admiring your art for a while now and I really love it!!!!
I've been doing some drawings too but they just don't look right.
If it's not too much trouble, could you give me some tips?
Once again i love your art, these monkeys look so cute in your style!!!♥️♥️
😚Hi and thank you so very much! that's sweet of you to say💕 I try my very best, I still have a lot of things to learn myself. I don't have a lot of tips but here are two I always use.
When drawing I always use a mirror as a reference when I want a certain pose.
I prefer a mirror, but you can also use the internet if you want a more unique pose when the imagination isn't enough
🌸And here's one for coloring your doodle or just coloring your sketch for a better idea of what you want. it's fast simple and easy!✨
☺️I hope these tips help you along the way on your journey to Art.✨
safe travels👋
Do this four times repeatedly and you’ll be out. But how does it work? There’s some real brain science behind it.
Some writing advice
that I like to use when I write. None of this is meant to be taken as hard and fast rules, they’re just things I like to do/keep in mind when I’m writing and I thought maybe other people would enjoy! <3
Never say what you mean
This is an offshoot of the very common “show don’t tell” advice, which I think can be confusing in application and unhelpful for scenes where telling is actually the right move. Instead, I keep the advice to never say exactly what I mean in stories.
By using a combination of showing and telling to hint at what you really mean, you force your reader to think and figure it out on their own, which makes for a more satisfying reading experience.
You might show a character getting angry and defensive in response to genuine care and concern. You could tell the audience that the character doesn’t see/talk to their parents often. But never outright give the real meaning that the character feels unlovable because of their strained relationship with their parents and as a result they don’t know how to react to being cared for.
Your readers are smart, you don’t need to spoon feed them.
Be sparse with the important things
You know how in a lot of movies there’s that tense scene where a character is hiding from something/someone and you can only just see this person/thing chasing them through a crack in the door? You get a very small glimpse of whatever’s after the character, sometimes only shadows being visible.
Do that in your writing. Obscure the important things in scenes by overdescribing the unimportant and underdescribing the important.
You might describe the smell of a space, the type of wood the floor is made of, the sound of work boots moving slowly across the room, a flashlight in the character’s hand. And there’s a dead body, laying in a pool of blood in the far corner of the room, red soaking into the rug. Then move on, what kind of rug is it? What is the color, patterns, and type of fabric of the rug?
Don’t linger on the details of the body, give your reader’s imagination some room to work while they digest the mundane you give them.
Dialogue is there to tell your story too
There’s a lot of advice out there about how to make dialogue more realistic, which is absolutely great: read aloud to yourself, put breaks where you feel yourself take a breath, reword if you’re stuttering over your written dialogue. But sometimes, in trying to make dialogue sound more realistic, a little bit of its function is lost.
Dialogue is more than just what your characters say, dialogue should serve a purpose. It’s a part of storytelling, and it can even be a bridging part of your narration.
If you have a scene with a lot of internal conflict that is very narration-heavy, breaking it up with some spoken dialogue can be a way to give some variety to those paragraphs without moving onto a new idea yet; people talk to themselves out loud all of the time.
Dialogue is also about what your characters don’t say. This can mean the character literally doesn’t say anything, they give half-truths, give an expected answer rather than the truth (“I’m fine”), omit important information, or outright lie.
Play with syntax and sentence structure
You’ve heard this advice before probably. Short, choppy sentences and a little onomatopoeia work great for fast-paced action scenes, and longer sentences with more description help slow your pacing back down.
That’s solid advice, but what else can you play with? Syntax and sentence structure are more than just the length of a sentence.
Think about things like: repetition of words or ideas, sentence fragments, stream of consciousness writing, breaking syntax conventions, and the like. Done well, breaking some of those rules we were taught about language can be a more compelling way to deliver an emotion, theme, or idea that words just can’t convey.
Would love to hear any other tips and tricks other people like to use, so feel free to share!!!
Important thigh high tip! also, when you take them off its much easier if you roll down instead of pulling!
oh my god did yall know you can just drag the tags around on your posts to reorder them instead of having to delete them and redo them?? CUZ I DIDNT-
You don’t suck at Lineart, you’re just not familiar with line weight👍🏼!
I'm stressed out. It's going to be $700 to fix the AC and we don't have enough. My husband is scrambling to get overtime, but it may not be enough/soon enough. I'm really hoping the additional fans from my mother this evening will make the main living space/kitchen bearable. As it stands I try to stay down here but it triggers my tachycardia so fucking bad it's not even funny. Not even 5 minutes in the living room and I'm shaking. I can handle being cooped up in my room but the kids can't. They'll go stir crazy and honestly it's not good for them to stay in a bedroom day and night, for the now week+ ahead of us.
I'm currently alternating which bedroom we hang out in. I sit or lie on the floor in front of one of the fans while they run around and play. To keep them active and engaged and not festering in the same place for too long. My only issue is that despite the fans being fine for them, I'm still overheating in their rooms.
(My room haulted in the middle of a re-do so it isnt really the best/safest space for them to be poking around into everything in there. Only reason we don't also all pile into my room.)
I'm sorry I'm really mostly venting lately. Complaining. Worried. I've just got so much anxiety about this situation I can't stop trying to talk and think of anything that can remedy it sooner rather than later. Thank you for listening/reading.
If anyone has literally any tips on cooling down themselves or their living space please pour in the ideas. I can't rightly buy anything to help but if there are simple home hacks y'all have figured out I'll try anything.
Currently I've been hydrating like crazy, cycling through ice packs and damp cold cloths on my body (chest, feet, back, neck, etc) and wearing an uncomfortably minimal amount of clothing.
Suggestions welcome 🙏😭
If you’re someone who struggles with executive dysfunction I cannot emphasize how important it is to set reasonable, attainable goals for yourself. If your goal is “I need to clean my entire room today” but you’re not used to doing so often enough for it to be habitual, chances are pretty good that that isn’t a reasonable, attainable goal for you. Start small. Start with something you think you could do even when you’re struggling. Pick something that makes you feel good about yourself afterward. And don’t put pressure on yourself to do more than that if you’re not able to, because that pressure will make it harder to do the small thing.
For me, it’s making my bed. It’s simple, it takes me about three minutes to do, it makes my room look 300% better even if everything else looks like a lost game of jumanji so I feel proud of myself for doing it, and I don’t expect myself to do any more than that. Interestingly, once I’ve done the small thing it often gives me a burst of motivation to do more, but even on days when I can’t do more I still feel good about making my bed.
It can be anything. Make your bed, brush your teeth, pick up the clothes off your floor and throw them in a pile, remove the mugs from your room (no pressure to wash them), make one phone call, do five minutes of something creative, anything that feels small and simple to you. And don’t beat yourself up on days when you can’t do the small thing. Executive dysfunction is a bitch, but starting small is much easier than giving yourself big goals that feel completely overwhelming.
DEAR EDUCATIONALLY NEGLECTED HOMESCHOOLERS
I’ve gathered some resources and tips and tricks on self-educating after educational neglect. This is only what I did and what I know helped me. I’m about to graduate college with honors after having no education past the age of 9. I wouldn’t be here without the following. Everything is free, and at/well above the standard for education in the US.
The holy grail: Khan Academy. Nearly every course you could take is available here, in order and by grade level. Their open-source free courses rival some of the college classes I’ve taken. This is your most solid resource.
For inattentive types: Crash Course offers a variety of courses that are snappy, entertaining, and extremely rewarding. They work for my ADHD brain. They also have college prep advice, which is essential if you’re looking to go to higher education with no classroom experience.
To catch up on your reading: There are certain books that you may have read had you gone to school that you’ve missed out on. This list is the most well-rounded and can fill you in on both children’s books and classic novels that are essential or at least extremely helpful to be familiar with. You can find a majority of these easily at a local library (and some for free in PDF form online low key). There are a few higher level classics in here that I’d highly recommend. If it doesn’t work for you, I’d always recommend asking your local librarian.
*BE AWARE* The book list I recommend suggests you read Harry Potter books, and given their transphobic author you may or may not want to read them. If you choose to, I’d highly recommend buying the books secondhand or borrowing from a library to avoid financially supporting a living author with dangerous and damaging views.
TEST, TEST, TEST: Again, Khan Academy is your go-to for this. I don’t personally like standardized testing, but going through SAT and ACT courses was the best way I found to really reveal my gaps so that I could supplement.
Finally: As much as you can, enjoy the process. Education can be thrilling and teach you so much about yourself, and help shape your view of the world. It can get frustrating, but I’d like to encourage you that everyone can learn. No pace is the perfect pace, and your learning style is the right learning style for you. In teaching yourself, be patient, be kind, and indulge in the subjects you really enjoy without neglecting others. You are your teacher. Give yourself what others chose not to.
