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@chibiarmygeneral / chibiarmygeneral.tumblr.com

This is the personal of mine. [18+] Feel free to nickname me how you want.
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WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

  1. E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;
  2. Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);
  3. BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;
  4. Charlotte Dillon - Research links;
  5. Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;
  6. One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;
  7. One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!
  8. Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;
  9. National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;
  10. Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;
  11. Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;
  12. The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;
  13. Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;
  14. QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);
  15. Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;
  16. Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

(Also, check my blog if you want to!)

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Visible Mending

Introduction:

Visible mending is a decorative way to fix up an item. Instead of trying to make your mend as invisible as possible, the idea is to make it part of the garment's design.

Visual mending is not a single technique: it's more of a mindset. If you've got an item you love, it deserves to be mended, and if you're going to put that love into stitches, why not show them off?

That being said, there are some specific techniques that are popular with visible menders. Let's take a look!

Sashiko:

Sashiko is a type of traditional Japanese embroidery that is used to both decorate and reinforce fabric. In visible mending, sashiko is often used to cover up holes with patches or to reinforce thinning fabric. This technique uses a variation on the running stitch.

Some resources on sashiko:

Embroidery:

Regular embroidery is also a popular technique to accentuate your mends. Check out my embroidery 101 post to learn how to get started. You can embroider patches, or use embroidery to hide or accentuate any stitches you've made to fix holes. Embroidery's also a great way to cover up stains.

Patches:

There are many ways to add patches to a garment. My tutorial on patches is a good place to start if you want to make custom-shaped patches to sew on top of your fabric. You can also sew your patch on the inside of your garment and have it peek out from beneath the hole you're trying to fix. Fun ideas for this are lace or superheroes.

Darning:

Darning is a technique used to repair holes in fabric by using running stitches to weave extra fabric over the hole as to fill it up again. While traditionally darning is done in an invisible way by using the same colour of thread as your fabric, you can also use contrasting colours to accentuate your fix. Check out this written tutorial on darning by TheSpruceCrafts.

Conclusion:

Visible mending is a creative way to fix up your clothes and give them some personality at the same time.

You should be proud of the fact that you took the time and learned the necessary skills needed to mend your clothes! Show off what you did!

A fun side effect of wearing these obvious mends is that people will notice them. They'll remember your fixes the next time they're faced with a hole in their wardrobe, and it will make them more likely to try it for themselves.

These are just a few ways to visibly mend your garments. Want more inspiration? Check out Pinterest or r/Visiblemending on Reddit.

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elcrivain

Show, Don’t Tell

“Show, don’t tell,” was what I was taught at school.

You, too?

Here’s a simple example of “show, don’t tell”:

Show: The skin resists the blunt knife, dimpling slightly before bursting open in a splatter of red liquid. All over my hands. All over the kitchen counter. What’s inside is worse: a viscous mess of seeds and soggy flesh that oozes across my plate, and turns to a fragrant mush in my mouth. It isn’t the taste, but the texture that makes me long to spit it out. Tell: I hate raw tomatoes.

In my example above, the difference between the two approaches is marked. However, in practice, it isn’t always so easy to distinguish between showing and telling.

In this article, I’d like to explore the techniques used by 3 famous authors to blend showing and telling in order to unfold the plot, the characters, and the world.

Here is a general comparison of showing and telling:

  1. How vs. What – showing is more likely to explain and describe how something occurs, whereas telling can simply state what happened.
  2. Detail vs. Overview – showing focuses on providing details in an effort to imitate the character’s experience, while telling is more useful for providing a broad overview or generalisation of the situation.
  3. Verbose vs. Succinct – since showing requires more detail, it’s usually wordier than telling.
  4. Slow vs. Fast – another consequence of providing more details is that the pace of the narration slows down. Telling, in contrast, usually speeds up the story.
  5. Character vs. Narrator – because showing often relies on the way the action of the story is perceived, the character becomes more dominant. However, this character may be the narrator themselves.
  6. Perception vs. Context – even if the perceptions are shown from the point of view of a disembodied narrator, they’re usually more focused. Telling, in contrast, is better suited to provide context.
  7. Personal vs. Impersonal – because it foregrounds perceptions, showing can feel more personal, whereas telling can impart a universal quality as exemplified by the fairytale formula: “once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a…”
  8. Writer vs. Reader – showing requires a writer to expend skill, time, and words. Although it can help to draw the reader in, I think it can be argued that telling a story demands more of the reader, who has to fill in the details through the work of their own imagination.

The aim of the “show, don’t tell,” rule is to encourage writers to describe the action of the story in a way that draws the reader to experience it alongside the character.

It’s a useful reminder to think about how you convey information.

However, as I think the examples in this article will demonstrate, showing and telling are more effective when used together.

The techniques of showing and telling are essential to fleshing out your plot structure.

Telling can impart a lot of information very quickly, which is why it’s often a good choice for setting the scene.

Showing, on the other hand, conveys story information slowly, but more in-depth. It’s more entertaining, so I recommend you use it in abundance for scenes that you want to linger in.

One of Ernest Hemingway’s writing tenets is to pare down story information as much as possible. His aim is to erase the narrator, and thereby the filter between the reader and the characters, but this doesn’t mean he shies away from telling. Quite the contrary!

For example, here is the very first sentence of THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA:

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

This telling sentence brings the reader up to speed, introducing the character, the location, and the situation.

You might argue that the rest of the novella is Hemingway showing the first sentence and its consequences.

A writer can often give away a surprising amount of information about the plot, because the reader can still enjoy the pleasure of the details unfolded through showing the character’s journey.

After his first telling sentence, Hemingway continues to weave showing and telling throughout the novella, creating the oceanic rhythm of the old man’s monologue.

For example:

“Bad news for you, fish,” he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders. [showing]
He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all. [telling]

You can use this technique of alternating lines of showing and telling as a way to break up long sections of introspection.

Hemingway has another interesting trick that combines the functions of telling and showing.

Glossing over boring passages of time is one of the chief advantages of telling.

Throughout The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway repeatedly tells how much time has passed, but simultaneously shows its effect on the character through the perceptions of the old man…

The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.
He rested for what he believed to be two hours. The moon did not rise now until late and he had no way of judging the time. Nor was he really resting except comparatively. He was still bearing the pull of the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the gunwale of the bow and confided more and more of the resistance to the fish to the skiff itself.
For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.
He had sailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat from the marlin, trying to rest and to be strong, when he saw the first of the two sharks.

To use this trick, look for descriptions in your story when your character is fairly still for a long period of time. Instead of mentioning the passage of time, and what your character does before and after, describe their sensations during that time period, and how they perceive time passing.

Notice how this technique doesn’t take up much space in the narrative. It seems to create contrast by speeding up the time it takes to tell the story, while slowing down time for the character.

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Misc. — pt. 3  {Sentence Starters}

  • “Bite me.”
  • “Just kiss me.”
  • “You’re NOT okay.”
  • “I’m just doing my job.”
  • “I won’t let them hurt you.”
  • “What, are you TWELVE?”
  • “There’s no shame in crying.”
  • “You need to leave. Right now.”
  • “Do you need a hug right now?”
  • “If I don’t do this, then who will?”
  • “Is that a warning? Or a THREAT?”
  • “Just punch me. It’d hurt a lot less.”
  • “Time to destroy my sleeping schedule.”   
  • “I get what you’re trying to do… but stop.”
  • “Well, karma’s just a bitch, now isn’t she?”
  • “You can’t keep hiding. You need to fight this.”
  • “Why can’t you just leave me ALONE already?”
  • “Who needs friends when you have french fries?”
  • “What if I just punch them in the face… repeatedly?”
  • “I can’t ever help myself, but I know I can help others.”
  • “This doesn’t change the fact that you still really sicken me.”
  • “I try not to make a habit of fraternizing with people like you.”
  • “Wait, you’ve never played _____? We’re fixing that right now!”
  • “Go away. Don’t come back. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
  • “I’m neither overwhelmed, or underwhelmed. I guess I’m whelmed.”
  • “Listen, stop me if I’m being too forward… but I wanna hold your hand.”
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🧶✂️🧡CONTRIB APPS for Creati’s Craft Compendium are Extended! 🧵🖊🎨

We’ve gotten a couple messages from our 15- audience looking to be contributors. After a quick discussion, we agreed that they are welcome to apply! To make up for this oversight on our part, we’ve decided to extend Contrib Apps! Thus, we have two important announcements!

🧡 13+ Contribs are now welcome to apply!

🧡 Crafter, Writer, and Artist Apps are EXTENDED until JAN 25!

If you haven’t heard of us before, we are Class 1-A centric craftbook zine! Creati’s Craft Compendium (CCC) will include fics and page art, but will foremostly be a craftbook! This means we will be looking for dedicated crafters, fic writers, and artists! 

With that, here are the applications! There is more information listed under the requirements link, as well as in our original post, which is pinned on our page!

We are looking for more Crafters and more Spot Illustrators in particular! Here are some of the Class 1-A members that have few or no craft pitches: Bakugou, Shouji, Kaminari, Kirishima, and Ojirou. So if you’re feeling inspired by any of these characters, we definitely encourage you to apply, no experience required!

Bring your ideas! :D

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Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

Mute Characters

Blind Characters:

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

Deaf-Blind Characters

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

Updated with more resources, specifically for characters who are blind in one eye.

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