The TikTok-fication of Tumblr and why it needs to stop before your fave writers are gone for good:

1. “Part 2??”

Unlike TikTok, writing 5,000 words for a fic does not happen in 6 seconds or more. Weekly updates are from a writer who spoils you and is passionate about their story. Don’t kill the passion by demanding for more and not appreciate what’s already given.

2. The DC Conundrum

Many writers on this platform hail back from the ff.net days where dark content is a norm, not like TikTok where even death has to be censored or you could get flagged.

Despite that, writers are doing you a service by sharing fic warnings despite how it may take away from a plot twist or a big reveal. However, there’s a fine line between sharing warnings and downright spoiling our own work. Heed the warnings, don’t be a dick. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Learn how to filter your own content, too, while you're at it.

3. The Wild Algorithm

Unlike TikTok, Tumblr’s FYP is not in your face and you have a choice to not view it. Content often gets buried a few days after it’s posted without reblogs or comments to keep it alive.

4. Passive Content Consumption

Ties back with point #1. If you’re only sitting back and reading works without supporting the writers, they can’t spend 6 seconds to conjure up a fic. Writing takes time, editing, proofreading. Tumblr is a book club, not a delivery service.

5. De(constructive) Criticism

If an opinion isn’t asked for, don’t give it. Many writers choose this craft for their own enjoyment and to share a thought or story about a beloved character to those who love them, too. If an opinion is asked? Be kind when you share it across to them. No one likes their hard work to be shat on by someone who doesn’t understand the time and effort it took to create this piece.

6. Are You My Content Machine?

Again, back to point #1. Writers have busy lives. There are days when we want to scream into the void about our favourite characters. We want to share our thoughts about them or sometimes, we just want to talk about what happened during lunch break. Demanding and expecting that a writer post content without giving a shit about the soul behind the screen? Dehumanizing.

Don’t ruin the experience for those of us who are still here. Do your part to make fandom better for everyone.

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That’s the life.

pls… i beg of you… reblog creations… or else there won’t be any more creations

it makes me so sad to see so many creators talking in the tags about how they’re not creating as much because less and less people are interacting. this is proof that interaction is vital. this is proof that a lack of interaction leads to discouraged creators and leads to less creations. liking—and only liking—does not encourage creators.

and that’s because (1) the purpose of this website is to share things that bring us joy and (2) likes don’t share things or ensure something is seen by more people, not like they do on other sites. so, when so many people decide to only like a post and not share it (i.e. not reblog it), that tells the creator that those people didn’t think their hard work was worth sharing with others. that’s discouraging. 

and the creator isn’t the only one that gets something out of that. you get something, too. you get the joy of sharing something you like; that’s a meaningful experience for both you and for the creator. and that experience—that interaction—encourages the creator to create more, and so there’s more joy to be had for both you and the creator.

long story short, interaction (i.e., reblogging, which is interaction in its simplest form on this site) brings joy. it’s literally all about the joy, people. the joy in discovering and sharing and appreciating and marveling at creations. so please reblog—for everyone’s sake, including your own. 

REBLOG!! Support content creators!

Hey. Minors following me. Internet safety is key!! NEVER include these in your bio/byf:

In general: stay safe. If you're not comfortable with every stranger out there having access to this information, you shouldn't post it on the internet.

Play devil's advocate and ask yourself about what would happen if someone searched for your information with intent to hurt you. You do NOT owe anyone an explanation!

adding on to this post, i agree w all of OPs points, but i also highly advise against super young teens posting their face on the internet, its so easy to take peoples selfies + name and find stuff out like your school and then figure out the rough area in which you live. same with your phone number. be super careful about what you put out there. once you post it, it really is here forever.

OP already said this so I’m just reiterating to emphasize:

The golden rule of information sharing on the internet is: What would happen if someone saw this who wanted to hurt me?

If the answer is that it would make it easier to harass you, identify you, contact you, or god forbid find you, don’t put it online. You can’t fully control who does and does not see that information--not even with privacy settings.

Cat’s Writing Tips: Head Hopping

Welcome to another Writing Tip Monday with Cat. My name is Cat, and I’ve been writing for 16 years. Still not a professional by anyone’s definition, but I have learned a thing or two over the years. Take any of my advice with as many grains of salt as you see fit. Let’s get into it. 

“Cat, what the hell is head hopping?”

Head hopping is the cute little thing writers do where they tell the reader what every character in a room is thinking about in a scene. One minute you’re following the MC, but then you just have to know what their rival across the room is thinking, and who doesn’t want to know what their crush is up to as well? I’ll give you an example from my own writing from a few years ago:

There are several things wrong with that, but as you can see, we start the kiss in Marinette’s POV, then by the end we are in Adrien’s POV. This is what’s known as “head hopping.” 

I think most writers do this at some point in their writer journey, myself included, and let me be the one to tell you, your readers are getting whiplash. Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of people are generally pretty smart and capable of unscrambling your pile of POV soup, but let’s maybe stop making readers do mental gymnastics with you, mkay? 

So, how do you fix “head hopping,” you ask? The easy answer is, pick one person’s head to be in and stay there. 

“But what if I’m following multiple POVs in the story?”

Here’s the thing, you can have multiple POVs in a story without head hopping. Head hopping occurs within a single scene with no indication of a change in POV such as a scene break. Like the example above, I changed POVs within a few paragraphs. That story is frequently told between both of their perspectives since it’s a fake dating story following two friends. There was merit to both POVs because one of them is suffering because they’re in love and the whole relationship is fake, and the other is slowly falling in love for real. If I were to fix the example above, I would pick one person to focus on, so let’s explore a couple ways I could fix it:

Picking Marinette’s POV (also let’s clean this shit up, sheeeeesh):

Or something along those lines. In this version, we stay in Marinette’s head the whole time. We get little glimpses of what Adrien might be feeling based on how he responses to her touch, but Marinette doesn’t really know what’s going on in his head. She’s not a mind reader. All she has to go on are his physical reactions or what he tells her, which is all anyone ever has to go on. If you’re struggling with POV slips, ask yourself what your character can feasibly observe about someone. Most people aren’t body language experts, but there are times when body language is a big indicator. I.e. if someone is slamming doors and stomping around, they’re probably mad, or if they’re sitting in a corner crying, they’re probably sad. Those are logical inferences for characters to draw. However, if someone is just sitting quietly in a chair, and your character seems to know everything the other person is thinking, that’s not how people work. So, keep that in mind. 

Typically, people don’t know what someone else is thinking or feeling unless they actively tell them (unless your character is actually a mind reader). We can guess based on how people are behaving, but ultimately, it’s still a guess. What’s important here is staying in one character’s head for the entirety of a scene. If you absolutely must include different POVs, then you may indicate the change in POV with a scene break. Usually something like a series of **** or —- just anything that indicates to the reader that something is changing be it moving to an entirely new scene or changing POVs. Once you change POVs, you need to establish whose head we are in now immediately. Don’t make the reader wait three paragraphs to figure out who they are following now. Establish that at the very beginning of a scene. 

All of this being said, I would urge all of you to carefully consider POV swaps. Too many changes can be just as jarring to the reader as head hopping. Constantly seeing a barrage of **** followed by three paragraphs of someone else’s POV is just as annoying. We don’t need to know what everyone in the room at a party is doing. Pick one or two key players who actually have important things going on. Ask yourself what a POV shift is adding and if the story can be understood without it. And that’s really the bulk of this topic. What are other POVs adding to a story, if anything? Sometimes, stories are better left to just one or two perspectives max, so do your best not to go crazy on POV swaps. 

Now, go forth and stop head hopping! If anyone has any more questions about this topic or another topic they’d like to see me cover, feel free to let me know in an ask or in the comments on this post. I’m always more than happy to discuss writing any time. See you all next week with more writing tips!

Cat’s Writing Tips: Trimming the Fat

Hello, and welcome to another Writing Tip Monday on a Tuesday with Cat! My name is Cat, and I was busy yesterday. For those that are new here, I’ve been writing unprofessionally for 16 years. I’ve learned a thing or two in my time, but feel free to take any of my advice with as many grains of salt as you see fit. Let’s get into it. 

If you’re someone who constantly has high word counts and are looking to cut them down to fit into a zine or just in general, then this post is for you! I’m talking to all my over-writers out there. Today I want to talk about how to trim down unnecessary words and phrases from your writing to be more concise and less confusing and redundant. Keep in mind that there are times when you can use these things, but I’m just saying that a majority of the time you shouldn’t. And before anyone gets their feelings hurt, I’m guilty of a lot of these during drafting too because sometimes it’s just easier to use them and get the words onto the page. These are all things to eliminate in editing. If it’s easier for you to use them during your actual drafting process, then by all means. Just be sure to go back and edit them out, and eventually, you’ll reach a point where you can avoid them during drafting all together. 

1. Filler Words

“Cat what do you mean by filler words?”

Words like “that,” “very,” “really,” etc. 9/10 you don’t need them, but let’s talk about each one specifically. 

That is one that I’m particularly guilty of. Maybe it’s a regional dialect thing, but I use “that” in my regular conversations when I’m speaking a lot. The thing about “that” is it’s usually unnecessary, and sentences can make sense without it. Key word: usually. I’ll give a couple examples to show you the difference between when “that” is appropriate, and when it’s not needed:

Here, context will matter, but it’s perfectly fine to replace an object in a scene with the word “that” in this context. Sometimes “that” does have a place, so I’m not saying go out and delete all the “thats” from your stories. Just assess whether or not it’s necessary in each context, like my next example: 

In this context, the sentence can work without the word “that.” It still makes grammatical sense to say, “Something told her he couldn’t be trusted.” The word “that” is just an extra word filling up space in the sentence. Delete it. 

“Very” and “really” tend to serve the same function, so I’ll lump them together. These two words offer a scale your readers don’t need. In most cases, it’s best to replace these words with stronger verbs, more specific adjectives, or just delete them all together. I’ll give some examples:

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“walk time”

Cat’s Writing Tips: Keeping Tenses

Hello! Welcome back to another Writing Tip Monday with Cat! My name is Cat, and I’ve been writing for 16 years. I’m not a professional, but I have learned a thing or two in my time, so take any advice I give with as many grains of salt as you see fit. Let’s get into it.

Let’s talk tenses. You have past tense, present tense, and future tense. Typically in writing, people use past or present tense, depending on their preference. Future tense isn’t typically used in an overall sense, so we’re going to focus on past and present tense today. So, what does that look like?

Which one you use is entirely up to preference, one isn’t more “correct” to set your story in than the other (in general). The issue comes when people mix the two because it can be jarring and confusing for the reader. Here’s an example:

Now, this is kind of an obvious example, but I have seen people do this. While it doesn’t necessarily matter which tense you pick, you do need to only pick one. Then stick to it. Whether you’re writing in past or present tense, you need to write the entire story in whichever tense you picked. Keep an eye on your verbs and make sure you are being consistent with your use of tense. 

Sometimes tense slips are trickier than the one I listed above. If you’re worried about slipping tenses, read back through your works carefully and consider which tense each sentence is in. Ask a beta to read over it for you. Tense slips are an easy enough fix if you know how to spot them, and once you learn how to correct them, it becomes easier to spot them during the drafting process and eliminate them from the beginning. 

If you have any more questions about tenses, or if you have another writing topic you want to see me cover, let me know in an ask or in a comment on this post. I’m happy to talk writing any day of the week, not just Mondays. See you all next week!

Cat’s Writing Tips: Protecting Your Self-Worth

Welcome back to another Writing Tip Monday with Cat! My name is Cat, and I’m not really going to give a big disclaimer today because this topic is less about the craft of writing and more about dealing with an unavoidable issue within any writing community: rejection

I’ve mentioned this before, but to be a writer means to experience rejection in some way, shape, or form. Even the best writers face this. If you’re going to be a writer, rejection is going to happen to you. It could come in the form of people not engaging with your work, people not being interested in your story, having your query rejected, getting harsh feedback from a beta or editor, having a reader leave a negative comment or review. Everyone experiences these things at some point in their writer journey, and what I’m going to talk about today is essential for your wellbeing if you wish to continue writing either professionally or for fun: How to detach your self-worth from your writing.

“Cat, what do you mean detach your self-worth from your writing?”

Let me explain. Your worth as a human being is not tied to how successful your writing is. If your stories don’t get any engagement, if no one reads them or comments on them, or even if people leave mean comments on them, that has no bearing on who you are as a person. It does not mean you are worth less than those whose stories are popular. It doesn’t even necessarily mean you’re a bad writer. If you want to make it out of this community alive, you have to learn that. 

It’s natural to feel down when your work isn’t getting the recognition you’d hoped for. I’m not saying don’t be sad about it, feel your feelings, but then let them go. Don’t internalize negative reviews as a personal attack on your character because they’re not that. With any form of art, critique is going to happen. Some people aren’t going to like what you create, and that’s perfectly fine. Just because they don’t like your work doesn’t mean they don’t like you. You are not your writing, and you need to learn to view your writing as an entity separate from yourself. 

Let me be clear here: This is very hard. It’s natural to feel attached to your work because you spent a lot of time making it. Writing is a labor of love, especially in fandom. It really sucks to spend a lot of time planning and writing a story, then have shitheads leave nasty comments on it. Or have people just not want to read it. It hurts, but it is unfortunately the nature of the beast. Even the best writers out there put out things that flop. You are never guaranteed that people will like what you’ve written and want to read it no matter who you are. 

I used to be afraid of having my works beta read because seeing your work picked apart can be intimidating. It’s easy to feel like they are judging you for not knowing where commas go or making stupid typos, but learning to separate myself from my work and view it instead from a lens of wanting to improve ultimately helped me grow as a writer. It also helped me see the value in my work and recognize when someone’s comments or critiques are wrong because sometimes they are. Negative comments don’t faze me as much as they used to anymore, if anything I just kind of roll my eyes at them. 

Getting critical feedback from betas doesn’t make me feel like a terrible writer, it teaches me what areas I need to improve. Sometimes I still get a little down when my works don’t get as many hits or kudos, but at the end of the day now, so long as I enjoyed making it, that’s what matters to me. I write the stories I want to read, so if only me and a handful of people enjoy that particular story, then me and that handful of people are gonna live it up. Write because you enjoy it, and understand that your writing exists outside of yourself. You aren’t your hit count or your comments or your likes and reblogs. You are a person who likes to write stories, and that’s perfectly okay. 

Cat’s Writing Tips: Misbehaving Characters

Hello! Welcome back to another Writing Tip Monday with Cat! My name’s Cat, and I’ve been a writer for 16 years. I’m by no means a professional, but I have learned a thing or two in my time as a writer, so take any of my advice with as many grains of salt as you see fit. Let’s get into it!

Today’s topic might come off a tad harsh and might ruffle some feathers because this is a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like it needs to be said because it drives me crazy every time I see it. 

What to do when your characters just “won’t behave.” 

Here’s the thing: the characters you’re writing are fictional. That means they can’t physically do anything by themselves. They don’t exist outside of your imagination. If you died today, they’re not going to jump out of your head and write the story themselves. Every decision and move they make is because you, the writer, thought of it and wrote it down. You are in control of their story, not the other way around. 

Typically, I see this complaint from people who have written themselves into a corner they don’t know how to get out of, and now they are blaming the characters for “misbehaving,” and getting themselves into this mess. Let me be the one to tell you, the characters didn’t do shit. Your imagination did. The main problem I have with this is it comes off very “well, obviously I’m not the problem, the characters just won’t let me write a good story.” Which is bullshit. YOU are the writer, so it is your job to “make the characters behave.” If a plotline isn’t working out the way you want, rewrite it. If a character isn’t going in the direction you need them to go in, turn them around. Not only do you as the writer have the power to do that, it’s your job to do that. 

“But, Cat! My characters wanted to smooch each other on the mouth in chapter 2!” Okay, fine, but you tagged this as a slow burn, so either ditch the kiss or change the tag. 

“But my characters just didn’t want to do the thing that’s integral to my plot. They’d rather do this other thing that leads nowhere and doesn’t develop them at all.” Great. Let me know how that brick wall tastes when you hit it. 

I know this sounds mean, but some of you would do well to learn the difference between “my characters wanted to make out” and “I wanted my characters to make out.” There is a difference. Trust me. There are numerous times when I’m writing when I get those cheeky little brainworms that are like but what if they kissed? “Brain, they’re in the middle of an epic battle.” Yeah, but what if they kissed? “They can’t kiss right now.” But what if they did? 

It’s my job as the writer to learn to ignore the self-indulgent parts of my brain that want to ruin the story. I have to weigh the options and figure out if my selfish little brainworms are going to steer us off a cliff, and if they are, I have to regain control of the narrative. It’s normal to want nice things for your characters. It’s normal to have those little self-indulgent thoughts, but if the self-indulgent thoughts add nothing to the narrative, or if they detract from the narrative, you have to keep them for yourself. Believe me, I understand what it’s like to just want to follow every fun little breadcrumb trail you stumble upon while writing, but if you set out to tell a specific story, you need to learn how to reel it in. 

I think a lot of this issue comes down to poor planning. When I have a detailed outline to follow for a story, I find it much easier to sift through these pop-up ideas because I can look at the narrative as a whole and decide whether or not it would fit. The outline serves as a reminder of what I’m trying to accomplish and helps keep me from straying off track. The other half comes from having impulse control. Or someone to act as impulse control (like a beta or critique partner). Trust me, I can’t tell you how often I message my beta like, “Give me a reason these two characters shouldn’t kiss in this scene because my lizard brain feels like they should kiss in this scene.” My beta is very good at slapping destructive ideas out of my hands, I trust her with all of the unnecessary kiss scenes I need to get out of my head. 

Look, at the end of the day, your story is your story. You are free to do with it what you will. My advice on this matter is to simply consider your options a bit more and stop blaming dead-ends on your characters. You have the power to fix them. If you really can’t help yourself and need to purge an idea, write it in a separate doc and hang onto it. Go back and read it when you feel that itch coming on again, then get back to the story you’re trying to tell. 

“So, what do I do if I already wrote myself into a corner?”

Turn around. Retrace your steps until you find the part where things went wrong, then fix it. Even if that means rewriting a scene that’s already been published. (obviously you can’t change a published novel, but you can go back and edit a fanfic on literally any website) 

“But, Cat, won’t that confuse the readers?”

That’s what author’s notes are for. You can tell them hey, this thing wasn’t working, so I rewrote it. Hell, I rewrote an entire fic to fix some plotlines, my dudes. Your readers will adjust, and if the fix you make improves the story, I guarantee they will be better off. Don’t be afraid to delete paragraphs. Make cuts, turn your babies around, swat the destructive, self-indulgent little brain flies away. Plan more. Stop blaming fictional people for your shortcomings. Rewrite shit. Profit. 

Okay, that’s all I had. Rant over, see you all next week! 

Cat’s Writing Tips: Building Readership

Welcome back to Writing Tip Mondays with Cat! My name is Cat, and I’ve been a writer for 16 years. I’m not a professional, but I have learned a thing or two in my time as a writer. Take any advice with as many grains of salt as you see fit. Let’s get into it!

Today I want to talk about something I’ve gotten comments on and seen come up a lot among new writers: How in the hell do I get people to read my story? I’ll be focusing more on fanfiction readership for this as marketing and professional publishing are a field I haven’t delved too far into yet. That being said a huge portion of writing is marketing. Books and stories are “products” even if you’re not selling them for money, and if you want people to read them, you have to market them and market yourself. So, what does that look like for fandom?

Most sites where writers post stories have some sort of tagging system in place — learn to use them. For AO3 (and probably other sites, but I only use AO3) make sure you understand the difference between / and & in relationship tags. / indicates a romantic relationship. & is for platonic and familial relationships. Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng. (Lovers). Marinette Dupain-Cheng & Sabine Dupain-Cheng. (daughter & mother). Tags are going to be a big part of what entices readers to your works. Fandom is very interested in specific characters and ships. That’s why most of us are here reading because we want more content for our faves. Clearly advertising what characters and ships appear in your work is going to be the first thing readers look at when considering your story. Make sure you are honest in these tags and only tag the characters that play an important role in the story, or people will get pissed.

After characters and relationships, readers are going to look at warnings next. AO3 in particular has certain tags you can click on the upload screen and the rest can be tagged individually in the additional tags section. If your work contains anything that could be triggering, it’s best to tag it. Character death, abuse, SA, gore, violence, etc. It’s best practice in fandom (and increasingly so in the professional realm too) to warn your readers of any potentially aversive materials within your work, so that they can make an educated decision on whether or not your work is going to be for them. Don’t take it personally if someone skips your story because of content that triggers them. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write those things because those works do have their place, but you need to understand that they won’t be for everyone.

After tags, most people will look at the summary of the work. I feel like fandom is very forgiving on this particular aspect. I’ve seen some stories with very thoughtful summaries have next to no hits while stories that just have author brain dump or just a literal snippet from the story as the summary that have 100k+ hits. The summary is your chance to let the reader know what the plot of the story is. Typically when I write summaries, I point out the main conflict and tease the inciting incident. I try to leave my summaries open-ended, so people have to click the story to find out what happens.

An example of a summary for a story I wrote for last year’s BB:

“When Adrien overhears Lila taking an incriminating phone call, he suspects that his classmate with an allergy for the truth could be working with Paris’s mortal enemy: Hawkmoth. He and Ladybug must team up to figure out if his suspicions are correct, but can these two bumbling detectives out sly a fox?”

The summary sets up the inciting incident (Adrien overhearing the phone call and drawing the conclusion that Lila is working for Hawkmoth), addresses the main plot (teaming up with Ladybug to figure out if his suspicions are correct), and leaves on an open-ended question (will they be able to figure it out?). This is a pretty good basic formula. It doesn’t spoil too much, but it gives the reader just enough to know what the story is about to determine if it’s something they want to read.

“Cat, I’ve done all of those things. I’ve tagged with a popular pairing, my work doesn’t have any big triggers in it, and I wrote a pretty good summary. Now what?”