Writing Thoughts - Tumblr Posts
random bitter aspiring authors on "writing advice" blogs: Don't make your main characters super special mary sues. don't make them better than other people or more interesting. your main characters should be boring average guys with the personalities of wood pulp
the Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh was objectively the best man ever. He was the hottest, sexiest, most gorgeous hunk of pure manly awesomeness that ever lived and he used a sword that weighed 120 pounds.
rereading my own writing is just a constant fluctuation between "damn, girl, you wrote this? (affectionate)" and "damn, girl, you wrote this? (derogatory)"
The narrative of ‘this person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their story’ is ableist
“The bottom line is this: You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it…If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. I’m an old-fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world”
— James Baldwin
Writing advice from my uni teachers:
If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.
Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.
Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.
Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.
i seek your finest writing advice
i offer one small facet of my soul
Break every rule, but only after the moment you learn why it is a rule.
how to stay motivated as a writer
Reread your old writing, especially those scenes you’re most proud of
Write something silly. It doesn’t need to be logical, consistent or included in your story. Write something dumb
Compare your old writing to your new writing. Seeing how much you’ve improved can be very motivating
Explore different storylines, those type of storylines that would never make it into your story, but you’d still like to play around with. Create AUs!
Choose one of your least favorite scenes and rewrite it
Act out your scenes
Read old comments from people praising your work
Create a playlist that reminds you of your wip
Team up with a friend, write AUs for each other's characters
Create playlists for your characters
Draw your ocs/make memes of your ocs
Draw/make memes of your friend's ocs
Don’t push yourself to get back into writing the thing that made you stop writing in the first place, try writing something else!
Write what you wanna write, no matter how cliché it might be. If you want to write it, write it
Take a break, focus on another hobby of yours. Consume other pieces of media, take a walk to clear your head
You don’t have to write in chronological order if it isn’t working for you! Sometimes a scene you aren’t interested in writing can become interesting after you’ve explored other scenes in the story
Read bad reviews of books or TV-shows. You’ll unlock appreciation and motivation for your own writing
Create a new storyline, or a new character! Anything that helps bring something fresh into your story. Could even be a completely new wip!
Not writing every day doesn’t make you a bad writer. Take a break if you feel like you need one
Remind yourself to have fun. Start writing and don’t focus all your attention on following “the rules.” You can get into the nitty-gritty when you’ve familiarized yourself with writing as an art. Or don’t. It’s fiction, you make your own rules
Go to sleep, or take a nap. Sleep deprivation and writing does not go hand in hand
Listen to music that reminds you of your characters/wip
Remember why you started. Know that you deserve to tell the story you want to tell regardless of the skill you possess
On using white or light-colored things as a symbol of evil, and black or dark-colored things as a symbol of good: I thought this video might generate some ideas for the writeblr community. A few bullet points to help you get started tearing white away from the idea of inherent goodness:
The color white can be used to demonstrate the appearance of purity/’righteousness’, with an emphasis on the idea of purity being incorrect and/or on the situation absolutely not being pure or righteous
A society all in white is uniform, but not individual (and those not in white may therefore represent freedom and the ability to break free)
White can represent opulence– it’s obscenely difficult to clean, which means someone in white likely isn’t getting into a lot of situations where they’d get dirty, or they don’t clean their own clothes. Think dry cleaning or hoop skirts; it’s long been fashionable to show off how little you work
White tends to look fairly blank– it’s not filled in, not interesting, and not particularly creative. This can point back to a lack of individuality, or it can mean something unfinished…
A white outfit, for example, might mean the character in question simply doesn’t care about their appearance and is throwing on the most ‘default’ notion.
Clearly the sci-fi community (dystopian sci-fi specifically) owns none of these ideas, and just as clearly, each of these ideas can be used symbolically with race; just be thoughtful when writing, as always.
So go out! Write evil white characters! And, just as importantly, give darkness and dark-skinned characters a space to shine.
i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things
oh so when the reader knows something i don’t it’s “dramatic irony” but when i know something the reader doesn’t suddenly i’m an “unreliable narrator” 🙄
i love it when you read multiple works from a writer and you start being able to pick out the things that stick with them. like the themes they keep thinking about, that can’t be satisfied with just one poem or novel or story. or the motifs they like to reuse and recycle throughout their works like an extradiagetic thread. it’s like drawing a map through a writer’s collection of all the things that keep them up at night
me all day: god i can't wait to finish my work and get home and start writing!! my fingers are itching to write. i need to write. i want to write so badly and i cannot because my work is in the way. as long as i get it done i will be rewarded with writing and i will write the best chapter ao3 has ever seen. i will be unstoppable once i get home and open google docs. the world isn't ready for this
me sitting at my open laptop after work: how... how do i write.
my dad–also a writer–came to visit, and i mentioned that the best thing to come out of the layoff is that i’m writing again. he asked what i was writing about, and i said what i always do: “oh, just fanfic,” which is code for “let’s not look at this too deeply because i’m basically just making action figures kiss in text form” and “this awkward follow-up question is exactly why i don’t call myself a writer in public.”
he said, “you have to stop doing that.”
“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.
but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.”
i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”
as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck.
“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”
so, my friends: what are you writing about?
If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...
Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?
Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?
Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?
Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?
Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?
i don't know if it's me being impatient or me believing that it's finally time for me to start writing this fantasy wip...
Since I started writing I really have searched some very odd things. Sometimes very random things that likely make me look very suspicious but at the same time I have learnt so many things that I never would even knew existed if I never started writing. Just to give a few examples, honestly quite a lot of random historical people whose name's I somehow thought of when naming my own characters. That alone has taken up much of my time just reading about these supposedly famous historical people.
Then on the complete other side in one of my later chapters I have one of my races who have made a city basically inside a volcano and I did an absurd amount of research into rocks, lava, magma, how volcanoes work, whether certain aspects would really make any kind of sense and many other odd things.
Though the worse things I have researched are most likely to do with necromancy, I mean anyone who has a load of searches looking up the dead/undead and trying to find out if there are any ancient necromancy books probably look a tad bit suspicious (Not that I secretly want to be a necromancer or anything).
But honestly I think it is all worth it, I really enjoy having the excuse to learn all of this stuff that without writing I never would have even considered.