Writing A Book - Tumblr Posts
I saw a video about making a book family tree and thought it looked fun so I made my own!
So how it works is the grandparents are the books that inspired your book but are pretty different, the parents are books that are thematically similar, the cousin(s) is the book you would use for a comp title, and the sibling(s) is the sequel.
For mine I didn't include a comp title because I never heard of it before and because I ran out of space on my doc. But here’s my wip’s family tree!
This is the third of my wip's clans. Here is my first post and my second post.
The Fang Clan
Colors: Brown and gold
Symbol: Paw Print
The Fang Clan is known for being the feistiest clan. Witches of this clan are physically stronger than those of any other clan, and they love to entertain themselves by having fights. They are not a fan of rules and are quite spontaneous. This is one of the two clans that doesn’t have a secret.
Fang powers include strong, animal-like senses, each witch having a familiar, and the ability to communicate with animals. Their physical traits include blond or brown coarse hair; gold, brown, or hazel eyes; and sharp canine teeth and nails.
The Fang Clan gets along best with the Arsonite Clan and worst with the Spiritwalker Clan.
Not me rushing to work on my wip 10 minutes before midnight last night so I can feel like I did enough work in 2023.
It’s officially been a year since I finished my first draft!! 🥳🥳🥳
How to make your writing sound less stiff
Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.
1. Vary sentence structure.
This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.
So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.
2. Vary dialogue tag placement
You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.
Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”
“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”
“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.
Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.
They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at
They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~
They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.
It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.
3. When the scene demands, get dynamic
General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.
Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.
Drip Drip Drip
Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.
You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.
Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.
4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.
The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.
If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.
—
Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.
This so works
If you’re experiencing writers block, make a playlist with songs that remind you of your WIP and go on a 30 min walk.
Trust me.
If I could find a community to help motivate me to write my book and give me opinions and ideas, I’d die happy. After writing the book, of course.
I know where it eventually goes. I know some of the steps to get there. I’m not sure of the start nor the rest of the steps, and that’s part of why I haven’t worked on it in forever. It also doesn’t help that I’m scared it’s too much like the series I’ve read and loved, or my characters are too plain or too typical, or that it won’t end up right.
You think a few years would be enough to get at least some idea, but nope!
Writing is hard.
I've always wanted to write a book about my childhood and my experiences. But I want to write it in a sci-fi way because of how "alien" I felt and sometimes still feel. Being able to use metaphors and different creatures to represent different characters and people that affected my childhood.
I've always love mysteries and thriller books, so being able to incorporate that love with a telling of my own abuse and trauma, would definitely heal a part of me. Plus, I would be able to use the book as a type of therapy. Allowing others to know what happened to me but not go into exact details.
Plus it would feel weird to have to refer to my own experiences in the third person lol
How to make your writing sound less stiff
Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.
1. Vary sentence structure.
This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.
So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.
2. Vary dialogue tag placement
You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.
Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”
“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”
“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.
Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.
They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at
They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~
They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.
It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.
3. When the scene demands, get dynamic
General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.
Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.
Drip Drip Drip
Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.
You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.
Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.
4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.
The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.
If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.
—
Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.
Here we go! Here's your first taste...ENJOY!
Something Beastly
Male Beast x Female Human
Warning: Language and NSFW 18+ only for sexual content
{From @turtle-babe83 : As most of you know, @exovapor (aka @wynndigogh ) and I have been working on a side project that is not TMNT related. We are going to release some shorter stories from our upcoming novel a little bit at a time on both this blog and @wynndigogh’s blog. This story will continue later. Here’s a little taste of what’s to come….}
Her pale skin glimmers in the moonlight. The water droplets catching the moon’s beams and making them sparkle like diamonds upon the landscape of her skin. The journey so far has been arduous and, at times, perilous. A shiver passes over her shoulders remembering all the creatures that have sought after her blood. The events too recent, the danger still too near, she reverently closes her eyes and thinks of home. She can’t help but miss the hot spray of a proper shower, but this waterfall has to suffice. It is like entering a private lagoon all for her. The cascade thunders before her, but the water surrounding her is surprisingly calm. Still, she remembers all too well how looks can be deceiving.
A movement to her left catches her attention and for one soul-sucking moment, her heart stutters in her chest. Fear grips her throat in its fierce, domineering grasp until slowly, her eyes adjust and discern just the barest hint of rough hide and familiar nodules breaking the surface. She smiles to herself, knowing full well he wouldn’t be able to resist. She begins to hum a languid melody to herself, hardly audible above the din. Breast deep in the water, she trails her fingers over the top of the pool’s surface and watches the ripples fan out.
He swims silently through the shallow pool, his large muscular body barely above the rocky floor. Keeping his head low, he eyes his prize. The dimness of the night’s sky and the murkiness of the lagoon’s water, setting few limits for his beastly vision. Just a few yards before him, dark blonde curls hide her treasure at the apex of her creamy thighs. He nearly shakes with the anticipation of tasting her sweetness on his tongue.
…SOMETHING BEASTLY THIS WAY COMES
TO BE CONTINUED
@harlownoire
To read the rest of Teaser #1, click here!
@harlownoire
So I’m try to write a book and it’s about a astronaut named Luke and his husband bane so bane was still on earth and then dies went Luke is in space and he can’t got to his funeral or leave the space station for a couple more years And it’s futuristic book so the team on earth makes a robot clone of Luke’s husband named Luke and sends him to the space station Luke hates him at first then they fall in love 🥰 pls tell me what you think .
“Hey your bleeding” Luke and Damian
Luke tried to ignore the robot but it was hard he looked just like his husband but this wasn’t him. He knows that but every time he would look at that thing he just wanted to wrap his arms around him. “Hey, You're bleeding,” Damian said. Luke looked down at his leg, He was bleeding and a lot at that but he didn’t want to acknowledge him or it, he didn’t care he just didn’t want it around him anymore. Luke starts to walk away but Damian stops him “ Captain you need to go to the medical bay so I can take care of your injuries.” Damian smiles at him and it warms his heart just the smallest amount because he looks just like his husband but he’s also disgusted for the same reason.
And
“So much pain for someone so young”
Luke was sobbing at this point just looking at him hurt. He has the same hand movements, the same face twitches, everything and it hurts. Damian just wanted to help, he just didn't know how, “ Luke, sweetheart. “ He started thinking it would help.”SHUT UP, STOP TRYING TO HELP ME.” Luke looked at the floor, his eyes were burning and he hated it; he didn't like showing his emotions. “YOU'RE NOT HIM AND YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO REPLACE HIM.” Damian stopped and just looked at him. What did he mean replace him? He wasn't made to replace Luke’s husband, he was made to help and he couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. He looks at him with pity “ You have some much pain for someone so young” Luke just looks at him. What the hell was this thing on about. “ Get out” He sighs tiredly “I need to sleep , and I don’t have time for you’re random shit.”
So I’m try to write a book and it’s about a astronaut named Luke and his husband bane so bane was still on earth and then dies went Luke is in space and he can’t got to his funeral or leave the space station for a couple more years And it’s futuristic book so the team on earth makes a robot clone of Luke’s husband named Luke and sends him to the space station Damian hates him at first then they fall in love 🥰 pls tell me what you think .
"A very bright person she seemed"
Finally started chapter II of my book today! So far so good
Started chapter II...
More writing because I find this scene to be entertaining
"The one who I adored so much!"
"A letter to Mikhail"
September 4th, 1870 I have lost count of how many letters I have written addressed to the same man, but as much as I write nothing seems to ever be enough to ease my anguish. My most adored, beloved Mikhail, why not embrace me in your arms and make me yours, and only yours? The love I feel for you dare not to be spoken of, for it is believed as abhorrent and uncivilised for me to do so. None ought to know about the nights I wished you would make love to me, about the nights I longed to hear your lovely voice that enunciates words with such delightful accent. My dearest, if only I could spend the rest of my days in your company, then I shall be the happiest man in all of England. You know of my loyalty to you, and I know of your loyalty to me, I do suspect you hold some sort of interest in me, and I hope I am right to suspect such things. My longing worsens day after day, the turmoil only grows stronger the more I remember your face, and your gentle laughter, and the ways in which you make me feel so treasured. You're a wonderful gentleman, Mikhail, and I daresay that you're an angel in disguise that descended upon this wretched world to bestow upon me the utmost demonstration of love and grace. I truly hope you do return my unspoken love one day. All yours, L.A.