I'm Basically Shakespeare

having an oc you havent drawn / written about publicly yet that only exist as a concept is so funny. i have special access to this limited edition guy from my brain

✨Having someone who is invested in your story and discusses it with you is like a solid half of the fun of writing. I'm not even kidding.✨

This might be unpopular but I’m not going to use simpler vocabulary in my writing if it’s out of character for the narrator. If my POV character is a botanist, he’s going to call a plant by its name. If you don’t know what it is you can either Google it or move on just knowing it’s a plant of some sort.

I don’t like this trend of readers being angry that not everything is 100% understandable for them. I want my characters to be believable as people and sometimes people use words people outside of their field will not understand. That’s not a bad thing.

You don’t have to understand every word to get the gist of what’s happening. I’m not going to slow down an action scene to describe every weapon because someone might not know them by name. They can just assume it’s a weapon because that makes sense in the context of the scene.

I just had a debate with myself over using the word mezzanine, wondering if I should describe it instead. Ultimately I decided the character would call it a mezzanine, and therefore readers could look up a new word if they didn't know.

It's how I learned words like myriad as a seven year old reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, why would I steal that experiance from someone else by simplifying language?

Here’s some good and easy comment ideas for those who feel shy or don’t know what to say but would like to leave something:

1. A classic: keyboard smash such as

Nrbdbsbbkigq or fhbdboejwbakwjev

2. THEM <3

(Fill in pronouns as needed or refer to a pairing)

3. Screaming, crying, throwing up, ect

Or it’s cousin:

4. Kicking my feet, giggling

5. [Block of copy-pasted text] I like/love this bit in particular; I like how you phrased this

6. I keep rotating [character/section of text] in my head

7. I read this while [insert what you were doing; ie: procrastinating a test, waiting for the bus, ect]

8. Extra Kudos!

9. Encore! Bravo! Magnificent!

10. [character name] my beloved

11. I relate to this so hard

Optional, include [line of text] or situation you relate to

12. Thank you for sharing!

13. 💖💖💖

14. I love how you’ve written [x character trait]

15. I love this kind of AU so much!!

16. I’m so excited to see what happens next! I hope [random story prediction here]

17. I will commit atrocities for this character!

18. This is some hella good soup!

19. This is my favorite [trope, paring, au]!

20. AAAAAA They are so [soft/traumatized/attractive]!!!

Feel free to mix and match these for an extra special comment!

Additionally, if you have some favorite go-to comments, feel free to share!

commenting cheatsheet

Solidarity

the sheer offensiveness of rereading something you wrote, discovering that, hey, it’s actually pretty good, and then reaching the end, wherein you realize that if you want more you actually have to write it

fuck’s sake 

writers will look at their own WIPs and be like “is anyone gonna finish that” and then close the tab

how to write a likeable grumpy character

So for over a month and a half I’ve been told in my Creative writing MA class that my writing is too poetic and abstract to work in the form of a novel and that I need to simplify my meanings and sentences. I did as I was told and lost all interest in writing if I have to write in the same style that every other novelist does. Today I received this note from a classmate and didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it. Don’t change your art just because other people don’t get it. Don’t change your style to fit in with everyone else. It’s your story not theirs.

This post is 4 years old, but for anyone who needs to hear it I want to tack on the advice my Creative Writing professor told the class I was in: "Not everyone is going to get what you're trying to do. So a lot of the advice your classmates write on your papers might feel Wrong to you. If it feels Wrong and you don't think they understand your story, don't take their advice because they are not your audience."

Sounds like the initial advice for OP to tone down her natural voice was incorrect, but thankfully one of her classmates that was part of the audience wants to hear that voice.

I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts. 

May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.

I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.

As it came to me I give it to you.

was reading an old robbie thompson quote the other day where he was like "i don't believe in writer's block, i believe in not wanting to work" and that if he's stuck on something he asks himself if he's really stuck or just being lazy and y'know what? real. i need to hear that. i HAVE been lazy and just wallowing in a little spiral of "no but i can't" when i've had lots of time to actually write and well, we're changing that!

You can take a break from your fic and write notes for another fic

But watch out!!

Oh god you didn’t watch out did you, you started another fic?

That post that's like "stop writing characters who talk like they're trying to get a good grade in therapy" really blew the door wide open for me about how common it's become for a character's emotional intelligence to not be taken into consideration when writing conflict. I remember the first time I went to therapy I had such a hard time even identifying what I was feeling, let alone had the language to explain it to someone else. Of course there are plenty of people who've never been to therapy a day in their life who are in tune to their emotions. But even they would have some trouble expressing themselves sometimes. You have to take into account there are plenty of people who are uncomfortable expressing themselves and people who think they're not allowed to feel certain ways. It also makes for more interesting conflict to have characters with different levels of understanding.

i think people have gotten out of the habit of writing characters being untruthful unless they're evil. sometimes people just lie, or they believe and repeat things that aren't true. people just do not and often Can not tell the absolute truth about themselves all the time even during heated and climactic moments. why are you writing everyone being absolutely honest about their feelings!!

People lie. (Whatever your opinions on the TV show House, they got that very right - people lie.) People lie because - they forget. They weren't listening. They can't quite remember, but it's something like this. They're recounting what they felt rather than what was said. They lie because the lie is easier to explain that the truth and it's nearly the same. They're tired. They're busy. They're not good at explaining things, or putting events in the relevant sequence. They're worried about your repsonse. They're worried about looking bad. They have a self image and the truth doesn't match it. They think they're telling the truth, but they aren't. Emotions are a bit like truth, but even worse, because we're emotional creatures, and we will have emotions about our emotions.

Like. Maybe a character is angry. Maybe they don't know why they're angry, but they are angry. They don't assess where the anger came from, or even if the target is remotely the same as the cause, but they're vibrating with it, angry angry angry, trembling and snarling at everyone - now too angry to listen to what's being said. If asked later they say they think they're angry because someone cut them up on the way home. If they reflected, which they never do, maybe they'd know they're angry because they've been feeling bad all afternoon, and maybe trace it to the person they're intimidated by at work saying something snippy this morning, and then work out the bad feeling is insecurity - but now they're home and shouting, and their SO's shouting back, and they haven't had any practice unpicking emotions - and not a single clue about deescalation of conflict - and their pride is already stinging from this morning so no, they are not going to apologise or be able to articulate any of this.

If I can add one tip about how to write characters' emotional journeys over time, based on my experience both in real life and in writing:

The number one cause of emotional conflict is when people feel an emotion that, for whatever social or personal reason, they don't think they are permitted to feel.

There can be a hundred reasons why they feel like they aren't 'permitted' -- maybe it's a gender socialization issue, maybe it runs afoul of a social taboo, maybe they feel like they're in the wrong in whatever the conflict is and so they are obliged to defer to the other party's hurt feelings over their own, maybe this is a maladaptive coping mechanism where in the past they've suffered consequences for feeling and expressing the feeling, so now they don't dare.

This conflict, this dissonance, between what they think they 'should' feel and what they ACTUALLY DO feel can manifest in a hundred different directions, and drives a lot of seemingly irrational behaviors, but if your characters are not doing it, why aren't they? Are they really that perfectly in tune with their emotions? Or have you as a writer just not identified what the underlying emotion really is?

Also:

Aaaaaaaand

-trying to sleep & making up scenarios like a bedtime story

To all my writer friends who are on the struggle bus/suffering from writer's block/just dealing with life stuff right now!