I suffered this now you have to

dried chile

this is cruel and NOT funny. Chile only uses this position when defending itself from predators; whoever took this photo obviously put Chile in a stressful situation for “likes” and “follows”. please stop reblogging this.

Basic Writeblr Etiquette

This is a guide of what I personally consider to be considerate and polite. While I would encourage people to follow this, it is just my personal opinion — it’s not a rule by any means, and it’s certainly not exhaustive.

Don’t add people to your tag lists without explicit permission.

Tag list  — A tag list is a list of users who will be tagged in every post that a Writeblr makes about a certain WIP. It is often included at the bottom of a post, and people are free to ask to be included, or removed from it.

I get it, we all want people to see and enjoy our writing. However, please do not add anyone to your tag lists if they have not given you permission to.

I believe that all tag lists should be an ‘opt-in’, where people request to get put on it. While you might be willing to take someone off of a tag list with no hard feelings whatsoever, it can be really awkward for people to request to be taken off. 

There are a lot of reasons why people don’t want to be on tag lists, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t like your writing. Even if someone is consistently interested and is commenting a lot, don’t add them without permission! Try asking them first!

If you reblog an ask game from someone, send them an ask.

Isn’t it really frustrating when you’re doing an ask game and about 20 people reblog it, but you only get 1 ask? We’ve all been there.

Send them an ask if you reblog! It takes like 2 seconds, and you don’t have to be particularly interested in the answer — it gives the person an opportunity to talk about their WIPs and OCs either way, and you’ll make their day.

If you want people to send you asks, try starting by sending other people some!

Use a “Read More” when you have long posts.

We writeblrs tend to make long posts, especially if we post our writing online. While that’s perfectly fine, there’s often a lot of scrolling to be done when the ‘read more’ isn’t used, especially if it gets reblogged a lot. 

If you have several pictures, or your post requires quite a bit of scrolling to get through, please use the ‘read more’.

Use trigger warnings for sensitive topics.

If you are posting about sensitive topics including but not limited to things like rape, suicide, assault, etc., please use trigger warnings. Not everyone might want to see writing involving sensitive topics, and it might catch some people really off-guard, even if they’re fine with it. It’s just considerate to give your followers a heads-up, so they can decide if they want to continue or not.

Trigger warnings should be at the top of your post, or at the very least, before your sensitive content so people can see. I also tag it as “tw: [sensitive topic]” so that people who have blacklisted it can avoid it.

Please hide your sensitive content behind a ‘read more’! I have seen too many posts with trigger warnings, and no ‘read more’s, making people who want to avoid it, scroll through and potentially see the sensitive content.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Someone’s writing not up your alley? Really don’t like someone’s OC? That’s fine and valid, we won’t always love everyone’s writing. Just move on; unfollow them if you have to. Don’t give people unsolicited criticism if they don’t ask for it.

It can be scary putting ourselves out there. If you’re about to say something that would bother you if you received that comment, don’t say it. Just move on.

If you like it, consider reblogging it.

We all get excited when someone reblogs our posts, and we also get a little bit frustrated if people just ignore it, or like it without leaving anything else. We can all start to foster a better community by reblogging things we enjoyed instead of just liking them — support your fellow writeblrs! Reblogging other people’s posts will make someone’s day, and more people can see their awesome writing. As a bonus, people will be more likely to reblog your work too!

If you’d like to ask me for advice on writing or running a writeblr, please check out my Ask Guidelines and FAQ first.

Ask Guidelines | FAQ | Advice Masterlist

me, posting stuff for over 7 different fandoms at random all on the same blog:

i have a meme suggestion

All I'm saying is, if a fic refers to characters by their physical attributes instead of their names or pronouns ("he smiled at the older" "the blonde laughed") when we know who the character is, and ESPECIALLY if the descriptions include "ravenette" or "cyanette" or other ridiculous words--

I'm clicking out of that fic so fast my AO3 history won't even register I've been there.

I am glad you asked. :D

First, if a writer is using the characters' names every sentence -- they're already off to a bad start. Not every sentence needs to clarify which character it applies to, unless you're writing a "See Jane Run" book, lol.

Overall a good rule of thumb is a) don't repeat unnecessary information, and b) only write things that carry the scene.

So for starters, your readers should know who's in the scene, and you can trust them to have at least a little bit of intuition: not every bit of dialog needs to have a tag ("he said/she whispered" etc.) Now, that established: you do use names when doing otherwise would leave it unclear who's doing or saying things. Example:

It's clear who says what, and if we had just used "he" it wouldn't have been, but we also didn't have to dialog-tag every line. (ALSO. "Said" is not a bad word. Ignore all advice that tells you never to use "said." "Said" is an invisible word and unless you're putting a dialog tag on every line [which you Do Not Need To Do] people won't even notice it. Unlike "shrieked," "whispered," "hissed," "ranted," "whined," etc. Use those words when they'll have punch and impact. Not every dang line.)

But this isn't always how it needs to go.

For example. Let's say I'm writing about a strawberry-blonde elf named Diana and a human bard with black hair named Jerome. I could say:

Okay there are.... several issues here. First off, we don't need to clarify that Diana said the thing after we had her doing an action. Trust your readers! They'll know that a "she" here logically refers to Diane, as they know that "he replied" refers to Jerome.

Next, please strike "referring to characters by eye or hair color" from any lists. This is not good. It's not relevant 99% of the time (we'll get to exceptions in a moment) and also, pet peeve: "ravenette" does not mean black-haired. If you've gotta say it, just say black-haired. Ravenette means "a raven, diminuative" or maaaaaaybe "like a raven." Unless you're imitating an 1800s gothic poet, don't do this.

Physical descriptions used as character indicators/pseudo pronouns are clunky and take up space without telling us anything new. They distance the reader from the character by taking us out of the story and back into exposition land, and they generally repeat information we already know. We can tell our readers in chapter one that Diana has strawberry-blonde hair, and then we don't need to refer to her as "the strawberry-blonde" a hundred more times because our readers already know this. Just call her Diana. Or "she." (Unless it's relevant to the moment -- if she's not our POV character and we need to contrast her to, say, a black-haired beauty at the ball through someone else's eyes, that's one thing. But still, don't continually refer to her by something as shallow as her hair color.)

Exception: visual descriptions are valid to use as character-indicators when we or the characters do not know who that person is. For example, if Diana had been kidnapped by bandits.

Ooooh look! Now we know the boss-man's name. From here on out, we probably should refer to him as either "Gorm" or "the bandit leader" -- not "the tall man" (and never just "the taller." Or "the older," "the younger," etc. That's a side note, but a lot of fics do that too. If you're going to use a comparative adjective, you at least still have to tell us what noun it refers to.)

Also -- did you notice how we never said Diana's name there either? She's the viewpoint character, so unless another person comes along that we need to clarify with, we can usually get away with just saying "she." The reader knows who they're reading about.

When you DO have two or more characters with the same pronouns in a scene, you gotta get creative. Again, readers are intuitive -- they can follow pretty well who's doing what as long as you make it clear. Generally speaking, if you establish which character is doing the thing, you can then use just the pronoun until you switch to a new character. For example:

There's never a confusion that Peony offers Diana her own hand -- not somehow Diana's hand. We don't question that Diana is the one wrinkling her nose, or that they're her pants and not Peony's. Or that Peony sweeps her own hair out of her own eyes. Sometimes you'll have lines where it's a little more confusing, but if it feels awkward in the sentence, always consider if you can re-structure it another way. Like,

Okay, that last line there? That one gets confusing, with all those "her"s. We COULD change it to "Diana reached for her, grabbing the back of Peony's tunic and yanking her down onto the horse." That takes care of a lot of them. Or, we could improve things even further by breaking apart the action, elaborating on things, and just generally stretching out the words so that it's clearer which "she/her" is being referenced at any given time. It's your story! Take advantage of all the room you've got -- there will never be a time when you simply cannot rearrange things to make it clearer for your readers.

It does takes effort. And sometimes a bit of verbal slight of hand. You may have to restructure sentences to avoid repetitive phrases and give yourself a good pace. (That's a large part of rewriting and editing.)

However, like the word "said," pronouns are invisible words. Names are not -- they jump out and say HI THIS IS ME. Use them sparingly -- they have power.

One final exception! Fantasy race and job titles. Again, you don't do this with your POV characters unless you're trying to remind the readers of something, but it IS acceptable to sometimes refer to, say, "the elf," or "the detective," or "the werewolf," or "the duke." Use them sparingly, but this is one exception -- mainly because it tells/reminds us of an important fact about the character. (You might also use, say, "her older sister," or "his father," etc, because that also communicates information about the characters and who they are to each other. But. Again. Use sparingly.)

...okay, I've rambled enough, but hopefully this is somewhat useful/helpful to someone out there.

Again! Read good books! Watch how professional writers do it! Imitate, imitate, imitate! The best writing teachers in the world are good writers.

Happy writing!

wait okay no hold up this says it so much faster and clearer than any of my rambling above: identifying characters by their visual attributes tells us WHAT they are, but not WHO they are.

There. Boom. Short answer. Much clearer, much better. Thank you, tumblr user djtangerine.

yea this is why your exceptions work too! if the narrator only knows a character as “that blond guy” then calling them “the blond guy” isn’t jarring to the reader.

Condensed guide:

- Third person pronouns (he, she, etc.) are invisible. These should be your default. Use these absolutely everywhere unless it would be confusing.

- In situations where the third person pronoun is confusing, use the character’s name. This should be primarily if a new character enters the scene or if it might be difficult to know who is doing/saying something. The more people are in a scene, the more you will need to specify. Names are “loud”, so if you find yourself needing to use the same name several times in one paragraph, it will be clumsy. Sometimes this is unavoidable but usually you can reword it so you can use mostly third person pronouns instead. Do NOT avoid repeating names by using “the blonde” or “the taller man” -- this will read much, much worse than just repeating the name.

There are a couple of situations where descriptions like “the blonde” are useful:

-- If the viewpoint character (or your narrator) would think of them this way. Someone who’s spying on two strangers might think of them as “the man” and “the woman” or “the blonde” and “the big guy”. These descriptions should be dropped in favour of names as soon as the character learns them. Alternately, your viewpoint character might think of people he knows by things like, say, rank or family position. Frank might be “my brother” in his mind; Captain Engles might be “the captain”. In this case, use descriptions if they are consistent with his internal voice and perception.

-- If you are trying to remind the audience of a specific trait in order to make a specific, immediate point. This comes across as clumsy if you do it for drama, but it’s great for comedy. Example: “Of course I’ve been to Roxy’s cocaine orgies,” the priest said. “Who hasn’t?”

My brain will just create new WIPs against my will, it’ll just start going, I have no say in which one I work on, in fact, WIP actually stands for Writer in Peril, help

unfortunately i Do feel better when i clean my living space and eat enough fruits and veggies and go outside and generally remember i am a mammal :| real pity that knowing this does not make it easier to do those things

Reblog to give the person you reblogged from the ability to finish their WIPs

A reminder to all my lovely fellow writers: progress is progress, even when it isn't. Writing four thousand words in a session is progress. Writing a hundred words in a session is progress. Removing an entire scene because it doesn't flow well is progress. Rethinking your plan for the plot in order to get unstuck is progress. Development looks different for every writer and every story.

Usually it’s video games instead of music but this is pretty much accurate hehe

if there's one thing we can learn from this booping experience it's that we need to give people notes and interact with them for tumblr to be fun and thriving

"we need the boop button to stay" no we don't. tumblr already got lots of buttons to press every day. look at those beauties right here ↘

Here's an English version, archive.is will give you a paywall-free version, I just can't link it.

tumblr if people reblogged content as much as they're booping each other rn

Me @ my draft

– Gabriella Fuller