some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

I couldn't remember the word "doorknob" ten minutes ago.

ok but the onelook thesaurus will save your life, i literally could not live without this website

REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER'S LIFE

hey folks; i know we’re all going thru it right now, so I made a carrd masterpost of some stuff to comfort us all. there’s some games, some mental health stuff, and all the crisis lines i could find. i hope it helps; please spread this if you think your followers might find it useful

“And remember: the sky is the limit! You can be anything you want to be!”

“Thank you. I want to be a secretary.”

That stopped them short. “What?”

“A secretary,” she repeated.

“But…” they trailed off, dumbfounded. “Why? You could be a CEO, a scientist, a law–”

“I don’t want to be a CEO,” she said. “I want to be a secretary.”

They scoffed. “You want to answer phones all day?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Schedule appointments?”

“I like organizing.”

“Be a second banana?”

An affirmative nod. “I’m skilled at helping.”

“I just don’t understand,” they said. “HOW could you be okay with all of this?!”

“I enjoy the work.”

“BUT YOU CAN BE WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE!”

“I know.”

“Then WHY?!”

She shrugged.

“Because I want to be a secretary.”

Honestly though, this is very similar to my mom’s experience. She’s always been super bright, but has realized as she’s gotten older that intellectual pursuits just aren’t her jam. She dropped out of her PhD program to have kids, and although she has her master’s and was a pretty good school psychologist, she hated having to make huge decisions. She’s a church secretary now and loves it, and she’s GOOD at it; she’s letting her school psych certification permanently expire this year with zero regrets. If you can be anything you want, that includes the things we don’t tend to value as highly as a society. Not everybody is built for or wants the “respectable” careers.

My grandma did this to me, saying that i didn’t want to get stuck on the outside, making coffee and filing papers. The thing is, that’s exactly what I’ve always enjoyed the most, making and organizing things. That would be enough for me.

Nobody seems to realize that if you tell people they can be anything they want to be they will. And not everyone WANTS to be doctors or lawyers or CEOs or scientists. Sometimes, they just want to be a secretary.

it took me a LOT of therapy before i was able to shrug off the effects of the Gifted Child Upbringing enough to realize that what i really wanted to be was a house husband and Local Queerdad who writes novels sometimes. god, i’m so much happier now.

ain’t nothing wrong with an ordinary life. don’t let anybody tell you you have to be the top dog to be worth anything.

As a secretary for a therapy center—outside of like shitty people in and out of the office, the jobs lit af and you get to look as cute or as Un-cute as you want everyday and it’s totes fine ALSO FREE STATIONARY!!?!?!

Truly the dream.

I agree with all of this and I also feel like the extreme competition for most “respectable” jobs is manufactured by having such a two-tier economy that people are desperate for the financial freedom only a few jobs truly allow.

If someone actually enjoys retail (my mother) and you need retail people why does a retail worker have to be punished with starvation wages?

Also when a minimum wage job goes up to a living wage and someone I work with goes “haha that’s how much I make now I should go work for Dominos” I always just say if that’s what you want to do then you should! You must be so excited that you can! But they just shake their head or admit they’d hate that job. Because when they say that they don’t mean “I should work there and would if I could afford to!” They mean “that job and those people are below me and shouldn’t make my wage.”

In conclusion the entire idea of respectable jobs is bullshit. Do exactly what you want and fight to get what you deserve from it and don’t let anyone tell you you should do anything else.

Normalize doing common, necessary things well. Normalize respecting people who do good work. Appreciate indoor plumbing and functioning electricity and a really good pizza. Appreciate phlebotomists who are good at getting a good sample on the first try.

the extreme competition for most “respectable” jobs is manufactured by having such a two-tier economy that people are desperate for the financial freedom only a few jobs truly allow.

It’s so deeply discouraging when you want a career change and people keep suggesting things they think you’d be good at and enjoy and you can’t do any of those because it wouldn’t improve your position one bit.

Game-Changing Sites for Writers

A recent search for a specific type of site to help me build new characters led me down a rabbit hole. Normally, that would make me much less productive, but I have found a treasure trove of websites for writers.

Bring Characters/Places to Life

There are a few different places you can use to create a picture of something entirely new. I love this site for making character pictures as references, instead of stock photos or whatever pops up on Google Images.

thispersondoesnotexist: every time you reload the page, this site generates a headshot of someone who doesn't exist. This is great if you're thinking about a character's personality or age and don't have specifics for their facial features yet.

Night Cafe: this is an AI art generator that takes your text prompt and generates an image for it. I tried it for various scenery, like "forest" or "cottage." It takes a minute for your requested photo to load, but no more than maybe five for the program to finish the picture.

Art Breeder: this website has endless images of people, places, and general things. Users can blend photos to create something new and curious visitors can browse/download those images without creating an account. (But if you do want to make an account to create your own, it's free!)

Find Random Places on Earth

You might prefer to set a story in a real-life environment so you can reference that place's weather, seasons, small-town vibe, or whatever you like. If that's the case, try:

MapCrunch: the homepage generates a new location each day and gives the location/GPS info in the top left of the screen. To see more images from previous days, hit "Gallery" in the top left.

Atlas Obscura: hover over or tap the "Places" tab, then hit "Random Place." A new page will load with a randomly generated location on the planet, provide a Google Maps link, and tell you a little bit about the place.

Random World Cities: this site makes randomly selected lists of global cities. Six appear for each search, although you'll have to look them up to find more information about each place. You can also use the site to have it select countries, US cities or US states too.

Vary Your Wording

Thesauruses are great, but these websites have some pretty cool perspectives on finding just the right words for stories.

Describing Words: tell this website which word you want to stop repeating and it will give you tons of alternative words that mean the same thing. It typically has way more options than other sites I use.

Reverse Dictionary: type what you need a word for in Reverse Dictionary's search box and it will give you tons of words that closely match what you want. It also lists the words in order of relevancy, starting with a word that most accurately describes what you typed. (There's also an option to get definitions for search results!)

Tip of My Tongue: this website is phenomenal. It lets you search for that word you can't quite place by a letter in it, the definition, what it sounds like, or even its scrambled letters. A long list of potential options will appear on the right side of the screen for every search.

---

Hope this helps when you need a hand during next writing session 💛

Art by Nekro

I want to preface this by saying this is not victim blaming. This not calling people online lazy or grifting or whatever.

But an underlooked proponent on why some people are nearing homeless and crowdfunding heavily rn is bc society has failed you by making it as inconvenient as possible to learn about social systems and programs that already exist to help your situation as well as not having enough programs and aid.

Lemme give some examples. I have been unemployed for 10 months. My mom told me about a paying job training program a month ago after I already decided to mive in with her to find work, because nothing was coming up in my own city. My best friend didn’t know about affordable housing assistance in my state until she talked to my dad about it on a chance encounter. Some people on here have to see posts about much cheaper alternatives to their current prescriptions or medical plans because its not in the interest of their doctors paychecks to tell them about it. I would have waited to get vaccinated and not have crowdfunded for Uber money if I had known they were going to give free vaccine rides the next month. But I wouldn’t have really known this until I opened the app once that program started, because it is in their interest to keep taking my money until its their desired time for me to reap their “generous” services.

What I’m trying to say is that this is an under discussed aspect of how capitalism fails people. When you are forced to make your life and work and finances so singular and self interested, you are cut off from community and equivalent social services to proper government assistance. You literally don’t know that there is help somewhere out there for you unless you’re told.

I believe a professor I had called this “cultural wisdom” but I haven’t been able to find the social science articles that expanded on this. It’s a practical knowledge of local systems that allows someone to function and thrive in that system. The example she used was having an understanding that banks can hold your money, but the practical aspect of accessing your money (in a convenient and easy manor) was knowing about ATMs and how to use them. But unless you have an account or someone ready to inform you, there’s no dedicated time or milestone where someone learns this.

And that’s just with a machine designed to give you YOUR money, let alone complex social service programs.

I want everyone who crowdfunds for hospital bills to know they probably don’t have to oay them at all. Just find the financial aid office of the hospital. It’s on the website BY LAW. Find the form. Fill it out. Get the bills canceled or lowered! You don’t need crowd money, you need the government’s money that’s already set aside for your medical care.

GO TO, MESSAGE, OR CALL YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY. Libraries are focusing more and more on community resources, support, and outreach. If you genuinely don’t know something or feel uncertain or are in a new situation, a reference librarian will not only help you sort your thoughts through their reference interview but then help you arm yourself with knowledge from reliable and often local sources. It doesn’t even have to be a question to Ask A Librarian. You can simply say “I’m in this situation now. I don’t know what to do next./I’m not confident I know everything I should or want to know.”

If you are in America - 211 is your friend. It’s the United Way’s database of social assistance resources. When I was doing resource development for my masters in social work 211 was my holy grail. And there’s things that only workers know about that just calling and asking can reach cuz it sets off the social service phone tree. I will say YOU have to be persistent of you want to access these resources. Most of the ngo agencies are most interested in helping the pro-active clients in my experience. But do use the resources. They’re golden.

reblog this if your blog is a safe space on april fools and won’t have any jumpers, screamers, or anything scary or anxiety inducing

47 more free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Music

Art

Games

Knowledge

Cooking

Work, or relax

Boredom

Just for fun

And lastly...

Earlier post

all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is

okay so i know i said most of this in the replies but it might be easier to actually reblog and say stuff instead lmao

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

tl;dr i like to think of major climate events that might have also shaped the land on top of some basic rules

The Artifexian has an entire series on building your world from literally the stars down and then the ground up.

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

holy shit?

Oh. Oh wow.

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

THIS ONE FUCKING WORKS. REBLOG IT.

this for real fucking works

🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼

The Four Act Story Structure (with Black Panther)

Part 1 - Orphan

Part 2 - Wanderer

Part 3 - Warrior

Part 4 - Martyr

How to use the Four Act Story Structure

On a practical level, how can writers use the Four Act Structure? I would recommend using it both in reading and in writing:

When reading or watching a movie, look out for the major plot points and act breaks. Have you ever felt that a story feels unbalanced? Rushed in parts? It is likely because it does not follow the Four Act Structure.

You can also use this structure in outlining. It will prevent you from going, “What the hell is going to happen next?” and will help you create a story that is well structured. Another reason I like this structure is because it details how to plot the middle portion of a novel.

However, keep in mind that movies are paced differently than books, and that even all books aren’t paced the same. You will not die in writers hell if you don’t follow this structure exactly. Rather, it is good to understand why this structure works so that you can better structure your own novels. For instance, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone does not follow this structure like I’ve laid out (though many argue that the first book is unbalanced; Harry doesn’t get to Hogwarts until 40% into the book.)

If you’d like to read more in depth about the Four Act Structure, Larry Brooks writes about it in Story Engineering. But a word of warning: Brooks does seem to believe that you will die in writing hell if you don’t follow this structure, and he hates pantsers with a passion. It’s still an informative read, but please take everything he says with a grain of salt.

Before The Storm, Skagit Valley, WA

Dear Chester

Your voice was the light that shone in a very dark place for me and many others who connected to your songs and your music.  Your performances were electrifying, memorable and would be talked about for generations to come.

You were the equivalent to Freddie Mercury in the way you performed on stage, got the crowd going and just enjoyed yourself. I just wished I went to more shows.

You are a light that can never be replaced.

You are missed by many.

But we are not sad, we are glad we were there when you graced this world, sung your heart out and left us with music that will carry on your legacy.

R.I.P Chester, always missed but never forgotten.

Stick it to Rainbow Capitalism!

Since rainbow capitalism sucks, here are some small queer shops to support this coming pride month instead of giving all your money to Disney and Walmart!

And finally, it’s not specifically queer, but these shops do custom flags!

If you have a shop or know a shop you want to promote, please reblog with a link!

I have a shop and I’m celebrating my 1 year of making Pride stuff! I make sewn goods (mostly masks, scrunchies, and headbands) but I offer a lot of customization and I’m always down to try something new if nothing quite matches what you like!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/NymphOfNovelties

(use code READY4PRIDE for 10% off)

Not me linking my own shop 🥺

I don’t have a lot of pride stuff, but god knows I can make more

Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

I needed this