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Nefarious Creature

@aflinley / aflinley.tumblr.com

Writer of original fiction that's a bit on the odd side. Powered by caffeine. aflinley.com
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helloelicia

I never put my art here, but I'm putting my art here today because I feel like it. Ok thank you 💛

[Caption: a realistic digital painting of Dream of the Endless from The Sandman series. Dream is portrayed by Tom Sturridge, a white actor. Portrait is from the waist up with strong, pale light shining down, and Dream is wearing a slender black overcoat with a high, flipped collar. His chaotic black hair is swept to one side. The background is a skyscape of distant, violet-gray clouds looming above and below a band of soft orange dusk.]

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helloelicia

The warm reception this piece has gotten has been wonderful. I was afraid to share my art here again—thank you all very much for your kindness!

#the dreamiest of dreams#like in a dream sense not a... look i just woke up#art!
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vaspider
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sleepybelle-writes

Part of me wants to shift the entirety of Magical Fantasy Adventure Land into the normal world instead of splitting it into a separate realm.

Part of me is still annoyed that this fucker still doesn’t have a proper title. Or at least something that sounds better as a place holder.

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the-knights-are-not-dead

it’s called Mafalia. that’s your world’s name. ‘MAH-FAR-lee-uh’.

That actually sounds really good as a world name. I’m curious to know where that came from?

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the-knights-are-not-dead

it’s the acronym. “Magical Fantasy Adventure Land”-ia becomes MaFAL-ia: Mafalia.

i always find if you need a placeholder name for something, write it out and make up an acronym, adding and removing letters or vowels if need be.

for example:

  • “The House Where Clio Fell in Love With Him”
  • “The HouseWhereClioFellinLoveWithHim”
  • “THoWeCliFiLWH”
  • “ThrowecliFiLWH”
  • “ThrowecliffiLWH”
  • “ThrowecliffiLWH”
  • “Throwecliffe”
  • “Thrawecliffe”

hence ‘the house where Clio fell in love with him’ becomes ‘Thrawecliffe House’. what’s a ‘thraw’? i don’t know. is it on a cliff? maybe; that’s an author’s preogative.

suddenly the name of the house itself throws up new questions which an author in answering goes off down a rabbit hole of worldbuilding.

Holy fuck. That is absolutely amazing advice.

Thank you so much!!!!!

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incandescent-creativity

As someone who regularly smashes words together for humorous purposes, I’m appalled I’ve never thought to use it in my writing. Bless you.

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headspace-hotel

good advice

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mageflow

My favourite example of this is Dragon Age. The setting is called Thedas, which comes from calling it “the Dragon Age setting” in development! The Dragon Age Setting The DAS Thedas

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eruvadhril

The D&D game that my boyfriend is currently running is based in a city called Isan, which is an acronym for “I Suck At Naming”.

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fullmetalmaple

@officiallymyself I thought you would appreciate this

#writing techniques#naming things#okay i need to try this
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fixyourwritinghabits
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nimblesnotebook-blog
Anonymous asked:

How do I deal with flat writing that lacks enough details and kind of moves the plot along too quickly? I'm writing in first person, present tense and my writing comes out really fast paced (as it goes with present tense) but I feel like it lacks...meat, metaphorically speaking. How can I fatten it up without taking away from the action sequence?

nimblesnotebook-blog answered:

Write through it first and then go back to pick out the places that seem to be going too fast. Here are some reasons for why they seem rushed:

  • Word Choice: Your word choice determines the way a sentence flows by itself and how it flows with other sentences. If a section of your writing seems too fast, rewrite it and rearrange it until is sounds right.
  • Not Enough Something: If you look at a scene that is much shorter than you thought it would be, you might be missing detail or story. You can add more to the story by introduce subplots, adding in a little bit more conflict, or adding something else that puts more space between the beginning and the end. For tips on detail, go through the description tag on the tags page.
  • Pacing: Your pacing is probably off. This goes back to the above points. If you need help with pacing, go through the pacing tag on the tags page.
  • No Down Time: You need some down time in a story. The action scenes can go fast, but after that something should slow the story. The reader needs time between fast paced scenes to wrap their head around what had just happened, but this doesn’t mean it should be a pattern of fast-slow-fast-slow. Mix it up. Entire chapters or scenes shouldn’t be fast or slow. They can be a combination. There can be little moments of quiet in an action scene where you can catch up on everything that happened within the narration and where you can put in more detail about the world around your character.
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#writing advice#description#details
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6stronghands
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tanaudel

I've been learning short story structure, and "reading like a writer" by making notes on a lot of short stories, breaking them into their three big moods, and seeing what falls out.

If you want to follow along, I've started collecting my rambling Twitter threads into giant posts:

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tanaudel

Screenshot lists of the stories I made notes on for the first third of the year (they are listed at the end of the posts linked above)!

Some emerging fascinations (I'll write posts on some of these eventually) include general structural patterns, how list-and-vignette stories get away with it, the similarities between revolution and chronic-pain stories, the evolution of certain story-shapes, the habits of purgatorial stories, unexpected approaches to dealing-with-death stories, different ways of approaching fairy-tale retellings, how to manage a monologue, classic Gothic shapes, and how stories that are told over a character's lifetime shape the momentum of the story.

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tanaudel

The big giant May short story reading post is now up, featuring the following stories:

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tanaudel

Now updated with the June short story reading thread: https://tanaudel.wordpress.com/2022/06/29/june-2022-short-story-reading-thread/

#writing advice
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