Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

my followers can have some cave pics, as a treat

Good reference for writers

useful/fun character development questions for couples

there are a lot of “otp questions” lists out there but I just wanted to make a list that was specifically helpful for writers, especially for working out the technical stuff of conveying Romantic Love. so, here ya go, stuff to answer for each character

Interacting with published authors gives you absolutely no comfort when you ask questions about publishing.

They’ll be like yeah the process of finding an agent and getting your book published and dealing with publishers is like being forced to chew your own arm off slowly over the course of several weeks while getting skinned alive by a toddler with a butter knife. You should still try to do it though.

You ask writers about how they got published and they’re like I dunno but the day I started trying to find an agent was the worst day of my life. Don’t let that put you off though.

I haven’t formally had a book published yet but I want to someday and I’m working on a novel and a short story collection right now so whenever I get the chance to talk to published authors or someone in the publishing industry I try to pick their brain about it a bit. And they all make it sound absolutely impossible. They go on and on about how soul sucking the process is and how your book can be rejected for the stupidest of reasons even if it’s good and how your actual skill level and the quality of your book doesn’t matter and how much life is going to be sucked out of you in the process and how much everyone is going to exploit you.

And then they end with “you still need to try though”

Do I? Because you just made it sound like the process is literally going to kill me.

They don't tell me how to find an agent...is my problem lmao like. They don't give me any pointers or tools or anything they just say I have to find one to get a publishing deal with a publisher. Like. Y'all ain't helpful 😅

And don't tell me to Google it; Google is useless 😭

Check out this website. It’s got a big listing of literary agents as well as pages that explain different parts of the process of querying them. Make sure you check out the agents company website and what sorts of other authors they get published before you contact them. The agents I’ve talked to have told me they get pissed at authors who don’t do even the tiniest bit of research about them before submitting.

Poets and writers also has a database but it’s slightly less comprehensive. Poets and writers is a great resource in general though for finding writing competitions, journal submission periods, mfa programs, indie publishers, etc. It’s a magazine/website meant to be useful to professional and aspiring to be professional writers basically and I reference it all the time.

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

[Link to the article for screen-readers]

[ID: The full text of an article. It reads:

"Writing Advice": by Charles Palahniuk- In six seconds, you’ll hate me.

But in six months, you’ll be a better writer.

From this point forward – at least for the next half year – you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.

The list should also include: Loves and Hates.

And it should include: Is and Has, but we’ll get to those, later.

Until some time around Christmas, you can’t write: Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…”

Thinking is abstract. Knowing and believing are intangible. Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing. And loving and hating.

Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like: “The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave. Never his.”

Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.

Instead of saying: “Adam knew Gwen liked him.”

You’ll have to say: “Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it. She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume. The combination lock would still be warm from her ass. And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.”

In short, no more short-cuts. Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.

Typically, writers use these “thought” verbs at the beginning of a paragraph (In this form, you can call them “Thesis Statements” and I’ll rail against those, later) In a way, they state the intention of the paragraph. And what follows, illustrates them.

For example:

“Brenda knew she’d never make the deadline. Traffic was backed up from the bridge, past the first eight or nine exits. Her cell phone battery was dead. At home, the dogs would need to go out, or there would be a mess to clean up. Plus, she’d promised to water the plants for her neighbor…”

Do you see how the opening “thesis statement” steals the thunder of what follows? Don’t do it.

If nothing else, cut the opening sentence and place it after all the others. Better yet, transplant it and change it to: Brenda would never make the deadline.

Thinking is abstract. Knowing and believing are intangible. Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing. And loving and hating.

Don’t tell your reader: “Lisa hated Tom.”

Instead, make your case like a lawyer in court, detail by detail. Present each piece of evidence. For example:

“During role call, in the breath after the teacher said Tom’s name, in that moment before he could answer, right then, Lisa would whisper-shout: ‘Butt Wipe,” just as Tom was saying, ‘Here’.”

One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone. Writing, you may be alone. Reading, your audience may be alone. But your character should spend very, very little time alone. Because a solitary character starts thinking or worrying or wondering.

For example: Waiting for the bus, Mark started to worry about how long the trip would take..”

A better break-down might be: “The schedule said the bus would come by at noon, but Mark’s watch said it was already 11:57. You could see all the way down the road, as far as the Mall, and not see a bus. No doubt, the driver was parked at the turn-around, the far end of the line, taking a nap. The driver was kicked back, asleep, and Mark was going to be late. Or worse, the driver was drinking, and he’d pull up drunk and charge Mark seventy-five cents for death in a fiery traffic accident…”

A character alone must lapse into fantasy or memory, but even then you can’t use “thought” verbs or any of their abstract relatives.

Oh, and you can just forget about using the verbs forget and remember.

No more transitions such as: “Wanda remember how Nelson used to brush her hair.”

Instead: “Back in their sophomore year, Nelson used to brush her hair with smooth, long strokes of his hand.”

Again, Un-pack. Don’t take short-cuts.

Better yet, get your character with another character, fast. Get them together and get the action started. Let their actions and words show their thoughts. You -- stay out of their heads.

And while you’re avoiding “thought” verbs, be very wary about using the bland verbs “is” and “have.”

One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone.

For example:

“Ann’s eyes are blue.”

“Ann has blue eyes.”

Versus:

“Ann coughed and waved one hand past her face, clearing the cigarette smoke from her eyes, blue eyes, before she smiled…”

Instead of bland “is” and “has” statements, try burying your details of what a character has or is, in actions or gestures. At its most basic, this is showing your story instead of telling it.

And forever after, once you’ve learned to Un-pack your characters, you’ll hate the lazy writer who settles for: “Jim sat beside the telephone, wondering why Amanda didn’t call.”

Please. For now, hate me all you want, but don’t use “thought” verbs. After Christmas, go crazy, but I’d bet money you won’t. End ID]

Symbolism Associated With Flowers For Writers

Why Symbolism With Flowers Is Important For Writers

Oh these are lovely! Posts about hilariously bad punctuation become depressing after a while. How joyful to celebrate the witty and masterful!

This is money cat. He only appears every 1,383,986,917,198,001 posts. If you repost this in 30 seconds he will bring u good wealth and fortune.

how are we falling for this anyway reblog

I mean it’s a cat

Wors case scenario: cat

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

Did I daydream this, or was there a website for writers with like. A ridiculous quantity of descriptive aid. Like I remember clicking on " inside a cinema " or something like that. Then, BAM. Here's a list of smell and sounds. I can't remember it for the life of me, but if someone else can, help a bitch out <3

I FOUND IT BITCHES

This is going to save me so much trouble in the future.

@abalonetea said: oops yeah, sorry! books! i've been admiring your works and your books since the start (i have a physical copy!!!) and i'm just always so impressed by how many PLACES you have your book, and how far it has reached! like, it's amazing!

----

Thank you so much! I appreciate it--and I'm glad you enjoyed Phangs enough to have it in the physical edition.

So, here's the thing, my range of availability is less to do with promotion (although that helps) and more to do with where I distribute and how easy I make it for retailers to order it.

A lot of indie authors will sometimes opt to distribute/print through Amazon exclusively, as it nets a higher royalty rate. And that's their prerogative; they know what is best for their work and what they want to do.

If, however, you want to go as far and wide as possible, (you'll see it referred to as "going wide"), you need to know which platforms to upload to and how to set international rates.

For ebooks, I use draft2digital.com to go wide, plus my own payhip storefront. Draft2Digital also enables library lending services, including things like Libby and Overdrive, which is incredibly helpful.

You can also sync your D2D stuff up with books2read.com and create landing pages for your books/works that are not exclusive to Amazon. Books2read will also track audiobook links and most physical outlets as well, though I've had to manually input a lot of my international ones for the physical copies. It's not a complete list, because not all retailers work with them, but a sizeable chunk too.

Draft2digical is also currently in beta for its physical print service, (I haven't used it yet, so I can't talk about it with any authority), but it looks as though that will enable wide distribution in the future as well.

At present, one of the best ways to go wide with print is to use both Amazon and Ingram Spark. There are a few other places, but Ingram is one of the largest. Ignoring the issues I've had with them over hardbacks for this entire the last year (sweary words!!!), they've actually been really good for global paperback distribution. Setting the prices can be a bit confusing, but once you figure out the rates (there are little pop-up boxes that explain things), it's not so bad. Ingram also enables library lending licenses, which is really helpful if you're trying to get into local libraries with physical copies--though some libraries will not buy from indie authors who don't have a publisher.

That's why I set up my own LLC (Humerus Intentions Publishing) to be my own publisher. I could have gone with Joy Demorra LLC, which a lot of authors do, but I've got that one marked for something else.

After that, it's making your links as easy and clickable as possible and trying to be as consistent as possible with advertising across your social media platforms. (or, if you're incredibly lucky like me, having an absolutely feral bunch of followers who routinely rec your work for you because they know you're bad at it.) Having graphics you can use to grab people's attention is super helpful. And make sure to pick out some good quotes to go along with them. Recommended advice suggests short, one to two-lines, but I've found Tumblr prefers longer ones.

You can also pay for ads, if that's something you have money for. I do not, so I have no experience with it. I just have mood boards and a feral Tumblr following.

Networking with other authors also helps when you want to do group promos/share audiences, and that's something you're going to see me doing a lot more of in 2023. Provided I can get my shit together and organize it 😅

So, yeah. That's what I do. Hopefully, this information is useful!

Quick editing tip: Passing time

Hey all, here’s a quick tip about showing the passage of short amounts of time in a scene. I see a lot of beats like this:

Instead of telling us there’s a brief moment of silence or pause in your scene, try showing us by creating the feeling that time has passed through action, description, or inner monologue. Here are a few examples.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Not only does creating a pause instead of describing a pause allow your reader to feel the moment more vividly, it gives you a chance to explain what exactly that pause is about. People hesitate, pause, don’t respond, etc. for all kinds of reasons. Give us as much insight as you can into your weird quiet moment.

Of course, you don’t need to do this every single time. Sometimes it’s fine to say “he paused” or “the room was quiet for a moment”—it could be the best choice for that scene. But look back through your draft and see if you’ve used those “telling” descriptions more often than you needed to. If so, try to create the feeling of a pause—perhaps one that gives the reader a bit more information—using these techniques.

Hope this helps!

Masterpost: How to write a story?

Compilation of writing advice for some aspects of the writing process.

More specific scenarios

If you like my blog and want to support me, you can buy me a coffee or become a member! And check out my Instagram! 🥰

Had an impromptu chat with @ushi418 about fashion history the other day- thought I’d post it here as a quick ref for people!

ok but have you ever seen a parked blimp?

why is this so goddamn funny

they are absolutely not supposed to do this btw, this happened because of unexpected wind conditions. blimps are intended to be docked horizontally. It’s still quite a sight to see.

the metal tower is called a mooring mass. the tallest mooring mast ever designed was the Empire State Building spire, which was originally built to allow airships to dock.

(this was mostly a publicity stun that never actually, ahem, got off the ground)

Dammit, the old future was so cool.

@zagreus

(deep breath of pedantic annoyance at special interest)

NONE OF THESE ARE BLIMPS.

“blimp” means a nonrigid airship without a metal frame, like this

much smaller and very different from rigid airships like the ones above, which have sturdy but lightweight metal frames supporting them

ANYWAY otherwise yeah this is basically true, if oversimplified

On August 25th, 1927, the USS Los Angeles did fall foul of extreme wind conditions while (improperly imo) secured at the tall mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey* and was blown vertical, standing briefly on its nose and causing some very minor damage as tools and equipment fell forward through the ship. No one was hurt as far as I can remember. 

And as far as I know, there were never any SERIOUS practical plans to use the empire state building as a mooring mast, nor was it ever used as such. the picture above is a primitive photocomposite, think 1930s photoshop. not just a publicity stunt but a straight-up fantasy in practical terms, it wouldn’t have worked well. at that altitude the Lakehurst incident being repeated would have been inevitable and probably a lot worse

*(which they replaced with a shorter, more secure one as a result of this incident because no it was very definitely not supposed to happen)

DON’T let airships do this!!! ITS NOT CUTE OR FUNNY

A VERTICALLY PARKED AIRSHIP IS IN EXTREME DISTRESS they only dock vertically when they are VERY STRESSED!! make sure to secure them PROPERLY to their mooring posts at appropriate altitudes, and give them plenty of water and hubristic design flaws. this has been a PSA thank you!!

the goodyear blimp is the Official Bird of the city of Redondo Beach

Blimps are… real?

so a fun consequence of this post is I have heard from multiple people who were under the impression that blimps are fictional

⭕ A cover for chapter 1 of my comic Breaking the Boundary! ⭕

You can read it on tapas or AO3

When I was drawing the cover art for the entire comic, I kept thinking about what new readers will think if they see it, how do I represent BtB's essence. With this art I just wanted to draw the things I love: which are Ryan Freitas and epicness

Writing existing character voices for fanfic

Hey, so, I started doing a writeup a week ago about how to get character voices in your fanfic to sound “in character,” in response to a comment from a new writer I was beta-ing for. 

I’ve been told this is a thing I do well.

As someone who studied dialogue extensively for a theatre degree, I tend to do this reflexively now, and I don’t write out each individual step. But I put some thought into how I might break down the process if I was new at it and looking to get better.

I don’t think it’s actually that different than an actor studying character accents, except as a writer you’re breaking down meaning rather than sound.

Let’s take a look at what makes dialogue unique to a character. I’m gonna list these as bullet points first, and then I’ll suggest some exercises to explore these aspects of speech.

Most important aspects - focus on these first

Important - Check these out if you have time

Deep cuts - Advanced aspects of speech

Okay, this is all well and good, you say. But HOW do I incorporate this into my writing?

Dialogue analysis exercise

Find five (or more, but at least five) representative lines from your character’s canon dialogue.

If they don’t speak, don’t have five lines, do the best you can. (I imagine other forms of communications can probably also be analyzed in this way, but I’m gonna focus on dialogue for now.)

These are going to be your key phrases. They need to be from canon and they need to be words that really show off who your character is.

After all of this, you should feel significantly more confident in writing that existing character into your story. Huzzah!

If you found this at all helpful, reblog and / or leave me a note. I’m curious to hear what you think.

actually I’m re-reblogging this to add a point: Accent isn’t just sounds! It can also be word choice. Dialect occupies a middle zone between “fluency in the language” and “accent” and is also a point to consider. Someone with a slightly different dialect from the rest of the cast may be perfectly fluent, but make different choices in how to express the same idea.

Take for example the classic example of AAVE that white people don’t understand, the habitual be (disclaimer I’m an armchair linguist white guy my usage may not be perfect, Please Consult A Black Sensitivity Reader Before Using AAVE):

AAVE: “He be looking out the window for the mail in the afternoon.” “Standard” American English: “He looks out the window for the mail every afternoon,” or even “He spends every afternoon watching out the window for the mail.”

Dialect has a huge overlap with the bit OP said about considering whether they’re a cultural outsider, because it’s so often culturally based, moreso than just accent. There’s also idioms to consider, but honestly I could spend a whole post discussing idioms and idiom-craft as regionalisms.

FINALLY, unrelated to the above: This is also a really good checklist to work through to keep your original characters from all sounding the same! When you’re first starting out making your own characters especially, you might not have a strong sense of voice that isn’t your own authorial voice. Doing this exercise with fandom characters can help you build voice awareness in general, even if you’re not a fanfic writer, and then returning to the guidelines and things to consider can help you build original characters with believable, not-all-the-same dialogue.

On Creating Characters- Six Points to Get You Started

As much as I like to complain about my weaknesses when it comes to writing, I’m happy to say that creating characters isn’t one of them. So for anyone who wants it- my quick guide on creating characters.

This list is for anyone who has a vague idea for a character but doesn’t have a plot or a role in the story for them to fill.  It’s for people who have a plot in mind, but lack characters to place in it. It’s for people who love those long, detailed character spreadsheets, but don’t have the patience (or know all the answers) to fill them out. The points I’ve listed below will probably overlap heavily and influence one another- for instance, “societal/cultural influences“ may inform both “philosophy“ and “defining relationships“. It pulls the character together.

Keep in mind that this is not everything you want to know about your character- you should continue to flesh them out as you write them. This is just a baseline, a starting point, an I-just-want-to-write-something-with-this-character-but-I-know-absolutely-nothing-about-them list so you can jump into writing with or without a plot in mind. It describes them as they are on a typical, ordinary day. As you continue to write and develop them, they will become more nuanced and take on a life of their own.

 Base Personality

Jot down some base personality traits. Don’t worry about getting an equal number of positive and negative traits down- or even which is which. Just feel out the character’s base personality.

Significant Historical Events

What events have had the greatest impact on your character (that you know of so far)? Again, don’t worry about getting everything- you can always add more here as they come to you later. Hit the major turning points in your character’s life.

Societal/Cultural Influences

What societal and cultural backgrounds do your characters have? Are they living/working/existing in an area where these influences are the majority or the minority?

Philosophy

What is your character’s default philosophy when it comes to right and wrong, or difficult moral choices? (I usually use the D&D alignment system for its simplicity- feel free to be as detailed or not as you wish).

Defining Relationships

What are this character’s defining relationships? Enemies, friends, and family are good places to highlight. Major conflicts and points of contention are great starting points for plots.

Goals

What does your character want more than anything? What are you preventing them from getting over the course of the story?  If any minor goals pop up while you’re writing, jot those down too.