some of you think ‘nuanced’ only means ‘morally grey’ and I’m here to tell you that actually straight up good characters can still be nuanced and unapologetically evil characters can still be nuanced. the character doesn’t have to be an anti hero or morally dubious to have depth. they don’t even have to feel sorry about their crimes to have depth.

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

We often eat pie at work...for morale.

"As a treat" implies a special occasion, a temporary state. "For morale" makes the joy essential, because you have to have good morale to keep going.

“why do you ship them? I thought the ship wasn’t canon?” bro we’re talking about fictional characters, who don’t actually exist in real life, from a media that focuses solely on fictional events that are not real either. so what if these two made-up characters didn’t kiss in their source material? they have lots of nasty gay sex on archive of our own and thousands of novel length slow burn enemies to lovers fics written about them. the fanon content at this point far exceeds the whole canonical franchise. the problem isn’t “it’s not canon” the problem is that you don’t allow yourself to let go of canon and enjoy the wonder of fan contents that are just as good / valid

“that character is problematic” i am sick and twisted. next

“that character is irredeemable” god i hope so. i hope they get worse

Quick Editing Tip: Down & Up

The words “down” and “up” are often unnecessary and can be edited out of your writing. More often than not, their meaning is implied in the words they’re attached to.

Down is implied in the verb “sit,” so it’s unneeded. Same thing goes for “up” in many cases:

Unless you’re a soldier, you probably aren’t going to “stand down,” so you can safely omit the “up.”

Of course, there are times when the words “down” or “up” are necessary. A quick test to see if they’re needed is just to delete them. If the sentence still makes sense without them, you’re good to go. If not, put them back in.

Hope this helps!

Too Many Subplots?

Here’s a scenario that’s never, ever happened: I return a client’s manuscript with the note, “Love the through-line, but you could really use a few more subplots!”

Alas, it’s the opposite. I see manuscript after manuscript with way too many subplots. While sparing, well-chosen subplots can add depth and insight to a story, too many subplots will have one or more of the following ill effects:

Solution: It’s brutal, but you’ll need to decide which story is the story and condense, rewrite, or sacrifice the others upon on its altar. Consider Lisa Cron’s explanation of the subplot’s raison d’etre:

Or, to quote John Gardner, “A story is like a machine with numerous gears: it should contain no gear that doesn’t turn something.”

So your first task is to determine whether your subplots have anything at all to do with your main storyline. If Prince Abernathy’s one true desire is to usurp the throne from his uncle, his unworldly love of cribbage had better intersect with his mutinous plan. Otherwise, truly, it has no reason to be there.

You can use the but/therefore method to track down a connection between your main plot and your subplots. As in,

Prince Abernathy challenges his uncle to a game of cribbage in the hopes of proving him unworthy to rule, but his uncle bests him, therefore Abernathy tosses the game out the tower window, renounces his membership to the Medieval Cribbage Society, and vows to find another way to dethrone his uncle once and for all.

If you cannot find such a connection, you can either create one in your revision, or remove the subplot.

In all likelihood, if you have too many subplots to begin with, at least a few are disconnected from your main plot—except perhaps by a few tenuous threads of narrative summary (e.g. In Chapter One you write “Abernathy absolutely lived to play cribbage,” but there’s not a single scene that actually involves cribbage until Chapter 15).

Other times, you’ve diligently woven all your subplots in the main story… but there are so many of them they’re crowding out the main storyline. Your scenes are almost impossible to write—you feel like you’re constantly juggling 27 balls in the air—and your novel just keeps getting longer and longer.

In that case, it’s time to play favorites, choosing a few subplots you can’t live without and removing or simplifying the rest.

Hope this helps!

Watch out for that unresolved subplot.

Writers: If you enjoyed writing it, that’s enough. Writing can be an end in itself. It doesn’t have to be “good” by anyone else’s standards. It doesn’t have to be published or validated in any way. Delight in putting words on the page. Delight in falling down pretty rabbit holes that might not “make sense” to others. IT’S OKAY TO WRITE JUST TO WRITE, just to have fun, just to please yourself. This is your permission slip. Go forth and create nonsense. I’m cheering for you. xo

PSA: Writing a book can take a looooong time. If you've been working on your project for a year, two years, five years... you're not doing anything wrong. If you've written three drafts and thrown them all away, if you can only write a hundred words a day, if you put your book down for six months and pick it up again only to be baffled by what you've written... Congratulations. You're not inefficient or slow. You're just a writer. Welcome to the writing life.

Writers: You Can Have as Many Fucking WIPs as You Want

Hey friends. I just wanted to throw this out there because I see a lot of posts from writers lamenting that they’re starting new WIPs without finishing the old ones. Some of this is in the form of memes and jokes, some of it is in the form of updates or confessionals, but there’s always this implication that writers are doing something wrong by starting something new before the old thing is finished, hopping from project to project, or working on multiple WIPs at once. So I just want to say this:

The writing process is not linear.

Bouncing between multiple WIPs is totally okay.

Abandoning old WIPs that you’re no longer interested in is totally okay.

Starting 10 or 20 or 30 stories for every 1 story that you finish is totally okay.

Only wanting to work on something that’s exciting to you (a new thing) and not something you’ve burned out on (an old thing) is totally okay.

I get that feeling like you’re always starting and never finishing anything is a big bummer. But it may help to remember that despite years of capitalist indoctrination, the creative process is not an assembly line.

Sometimes it takes writing 100 pages to realize that your idea is untenable, or that you’re not actually that interested in it, or that you want to take things in a completely different direction with a totally new story.

I’m a published writer and I average at least 10-15 WIPs for each one that I actually finish. It may take me two sentences to abandon it, or 200 pages. And sometimes I come back to them and finish them in the future. But after 20 years of writing my computer is full of barely-started stories that were destined, for whatever reason, to die.

If you’re turning your back on a story that really excites you and you deeply wish you could complete because you’re scared or blocked, that’s a frustrating pattern that’s totally worth trying to fix (I’ll be addressing this problem in detail in a new book I’m working on!). But for the most part, having a ton more WIPs that you actually finish is a completely normal part of the creative process and you don’t need to be so hard on yourself about it. You’re doing great, and I’m cheering for you.

Hey Writers

You know that book or story or poem you have a secret, burning desire to write but are scared as hell to start or finish or look at or even think about?

Go do it.

Here’s the thing: We need you to write what you want and need to write way more than we need you to write what you think you should write.

So put down that WIP you’ve been spinning your wheels on—you know, the one you’re white-knuckling out of some misguided sense of duty—and go chase your fire. Start the story you’ve been dreaming about. The one that scares the poop out of you. The one you get all twitterpated when you think about. The one you keep making excuses to avoid working on: “But I can’t write that because [insert really convincing sounding reason here]…”

Or, alternatively, turn your current WIP into the story you actually want to write. A lot of times we start our dream project… then steer it in an uninspiring direction because we’re trying to follow some bullshit writing “rule.” Go back to the last place it actually turned you on and work from there.

Please? (Thank you.)

— Anne Lamott (via theliteraryarchitect)

“what’s your writing process” i put a pathetic guy in a blender and blend blend blend