for the love of god, write all the self-indulgent scenes you want. be utterly shameless about including every last fantasy. i know everyone likes to share quotes and quips about how miserably hard writing is, but please please try thinking of it as a joyful act where you get to be a messy human who makes art rather than some pain filled quest for icy perfection.
“authenticity looks an awful lot like self-indulgence but it is the only way to find your true audience”
Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.
Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback…
Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.
Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™
Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.
Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.
To everyone who has lush fields ripe with story ideas but is struggling to go out and actually harvest them with your writer’s scythe: that’s alright. There’s a reason.
I see writers despairing or making self-deprecating jokes about how many wips they have, as if the ability to come up with the idea is equal to the ability to finish it out into an end product.
It isn’t.
A lot of our ideas come about, not because we were determined to be productive writers, but because daydreaming is an internal escape from life’s demands.
Writing is a demand, too.
Resting and relaxing are basic needs, unlike the high level, abstract satisfaction of being creatively productive. That’s why you might daydream (which is a mild and normal form of dissociation) ideas that you feel good about, and then struggle to research, write the words, fill plotholes, check grammar, revise— all the critical thinking and executive function things involved in creation. Your basic needs must be satisfied before your higher needs can be met effectively.
So, if you’re daydreaming about your stories extensively to mitigate stress, it’s expecting a lot of your stressed self to return from fantasy land, sit down in the cold hard real world and do the hard work to write masterpieces of literature. Those operations are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Writing is hard. Making yourself feel guilty is only going to make it harder. You don’t have to atone for entertaining or distracting your mind by making that available to other people. Daydreaming is a valid end in itself.
Don’t feel bad about having ideas but not being able to write them. Scribble some notes if you can, if you want, but above all enjoy the escapism and take care of yourself first. The words will come after.
“We met at the wrong time. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Maybe one day years from now, we’ll meet in a coffee shop in a far away city somewhere and we could give it another shot.”
— Unknown
A SILK AND METAL-THREAD EMBROIDERED PANEL DECCAN, INDIA, 18TH CENTURY.
today is great day to create something, to fill the void with a piece of yourself that wasnt there before and to push back against the darkness. you can create a song or painting or sandwich or a walk in the park or even a MOMENT. use this mighty power to defy the cosmic nothing
hey. don’t cry. crush four cloves of garlic into a pot with a dollop of olive oil and stir until golden then add one can of crushed tomatoes a bit of balsamic vinegar half a tablespoon of brown sugar half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and stir for a few minutes adding a handful of fresh spinach until wilted and mix in pasta of your choice ok?
[ID: A “This Barbie is” generated movie poster with a photo of a hand pointing directly toward you and the caption edited to read “This Barbie is not working on their WIPs.” End ID]
i achieved my wildest little creature dreams this weekend and turned my regular bed into a mossbed and it’s everything i’ve ever wanted in a snooze spot
LIghthouse keepers will never be memorialized like soldiers or cops because they didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job) but they’re like, heroes who saved untold lives through discipline and self-sacrifice doing an impossible lonely job and I’m worked up about it
Clinging to a swaying tower in freezing, driving rain, risking death by everything from pneumonia to a fall to a fucking lightning strike to keep the lantern going when you don’t even KNOW if someone is out on the water!! Working! Class! Heroes!
Love very much the sentiment of this post and also love the specific wording of “didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job)” because what lighthouse keepers did off hours is their own business
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
— Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver (b. 8 April 1955)
friend!
“Thoughts on one of the hardest things: banishing the imagined bad faith reader from your writing process” by Melissa Febos on Twitter is hitting really hard today.
no idea if this is true, but it feels true
I heard an interview, can’t remember the psychologist, but he was explaining this idea and encouraging people to stop and take a deep breath and literally drink in small moments like you’re a dryass plant when something is ever satisfactory, positive, mildly successful, randomly joyful so your brain can code and integrate that experience because our natural lizard brain will quickly tape over it with mostly unnecessary negative survival shit. Sounds dumb and dorky but sometimes I remember this when I’m feeling good about a moment because our cave brains are still catching up with modern life without sabertooths. I like that it’s not just a pollyanna gosh just be more positive thing but more of a legit brain wiring phenomenon can be gradually hacked through small behavioral changes.
Another super important one: Take the time to tell yourself, when something you did or bought or decided works out “That was a good decision and I’m glad I made it! Go me!”
Seriously, it can have a huge impact. suddenly you go from remembering nothing but bad decisions to adding in a series of Excellent Choices You Feel Good About, and it makes things so much better.
(this ask is edited for clarity and length...)
Anonymous asked: Hello WQA! In my story, my characters travel around searching for objects that contain pieces of the bad guy, and battling the four horsemen of the apocalypse who are also after these objects. My issue is the plot feels too light, childish, and repetitive. There is external and internal conflict and my characters all have motivation, but I want the story to feel darker and more natural.
I think this is an ask that will benefit a lot of others, so I edited it down to be shorter and clearer. ♥ Here are some things you can do to make this story feel darker and less contrived…
1 - Give it a Darker Ambience - Never underestimate the power of ambience to make a story feel lighter or darker. Stories with a darker ambience tend to have darker imagery:
//outdoor scenes// nighttime, storms and rain, lightning and thunder, howling wind, foggy days, overcast or gloomy days, treacherous landscapes, crumbling ruins, abandoned buildings, dangerous animals or organisms present, darker landscape and set colors
putrid smells, mysterious or upsetting sounds
//indoor scenes// dark or dimly lit rooms, inside ruins or abandoned buildings, dirty/shabby interiors, inside caves or dungeons and other "grim" interiors
//little details// musty and putrid smells, mysterious or upsetting sounds, dust and cobwebs, shadows, human depravity or signs of it, evidence of an unwell or injured human, death and decay, fire and smoke, broken glass and splintered wood, moss and mold, flies and spiders (or other creepy crawlies), fog and mist, rumbling thunder, creaking doors
See: Horror by Darkness and Horror by Daylight
2 - Give Your Characters Dark Internal Conflicts - Your characters may have internal conflicts, but if they're lighthearted or the kinds of internal conflicts younger characters tend to deal with (coming of age stuff), it's going to make your story feel lighter and... as you put it in your original ask, more like a Disney movie. So, you're looking for darker internal conflicts, based on darker themes like guilt, revenge, hatred, grief/loss, greed, fear, addiction, anger, abuse, trauma, dangerous beliefs, jealousy, hunger for power, corruption, betrayal, manipulation, fear of failure, etc.
3 - Give Your Characters Darker Flaws - Internal conflict and flaws dovetail, so for darker internal conflicts, you need darker flaws. Antisocial, addiction, apathy, callousness, cruelty, cynicism, dishonesty, disloyalty, entitlement, fanaticism, greed, jealousy, hostility, impulsivity, impatience, insecurity, irrationality, manipulation, martyrdom, materialism, morbidity, narcissism, obsession, paranoia, pessimism, recklessness, self-destructive behaviors, selfishness, superstition, vanity, vindictiveness, victimization, volatility...
4 - Give Your Characters Darker Internal Wounds - Internal wounds (something that happened in the past and caused an emotional wound) are a breeding ground for internal flaws and internal conflict, so darker flaws and darker internal conflicts are usually the result of darker internal wounds. It can mean that a character has a tragic past or survived a trauma, but it doesn't have to. Being betrayed by a friend is a pretty dark emotional wound, but not necessarily a tragic or traumatic one. One of my favorite emotional wounds belongs to Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire. It's summed up quite well by this quote about her childhood with her brother, which she says to Sansa Stark during the Battle of the Blackwater: “When we were young, Jaime and I, we looked so much alike even our father couldn’t tell us apart. l could never understand why they treated us differently. Jaime was taught to fight with sword and lance and mace, and l was taught to smile and sing and please. He was heir to Casterly Rock, and l was sold to some stranger like a horse to be ridden whenever he desired.”
Cersei's emotional wound is the result of the gender-based double standard she experienced as a child. Her twin brother, Jaime, served as an example of what her life could have been if only she'd been born a man. He was free to earn or take all the glory, success, and power that he wanted because of his gender, but she was shackled by duty because of her own gender. Whereas he could be a fighter, a knight, and essentially the "king" of his own castle, she was stuck being a pawn, a wife, a consort, and a mother. She didn't get a choice. As one journalist so effectively put it, she was "high-born chattel." And I guess you could say there's an element of tragedy and trauma to that, but not in the same way as being the lone survivor of a village destroyed by an angry ruler, for example.
5 - Creating a Less Contrived Feel - I think part of why your story may feel contrived is because it's probably really repetitive. They go to a place to find the object, fight the horsemen, move onto finding the next object. But I think there are ways you can vary this format a bit. I don't know how many objects there are, but let's say there are five... One thing you can do is make three of the objects relatively easy to find. Those are the ones where they learn where the object is, travel to it and locate it, inevitably fight the horsemen, and get the object. But maybe the other two aren't so easy to find... those those two are sort of like quests within quests, where instead of going directly to the object they have to complete a couple mini-quests to be able to even locate it. Like maybe they first need to talk to a wizard who will give them a key to an old castle, but he needs them to go to a dangerous bog can collect mushrooms first so he can create an enchantment that will make the key work. And then, in the bog, some horrible calamity befalls the group that they have to deal with before gathering the mushrooms and returning to the wizard.
That's probably a bad example because it does sound kinda like a video game (something you said you wanted to avoid), but hopefully you get the idea. The point is it breaks up the monotony of travel to object, find object, fight horsemen, get object, rinse, repeat. Not only does it include the "side quests" of finding the wizard and later the mushrooms--both of which provide your characters with new settings and new circumstances outside of the object/horsemen routine--but it also provides some "down moments" that don't have to take place while traveling to the next object. They're resting at the wizard's cottage, they can eat a hot meal, maybe sleep in a real bed or take a proper bath, patch up their wounds, and let down their guard for a little while. This lets you dive into character development a bit, maybe do a little character bonding or a little character growth. And if you stagger these events so that it's something like: easy object, easy object, multi-quest object, easy object, multi-quest object, you see how that breaks up the repetitive format a bit.
I hope that helps, and thanks in advance for letting me edit down your question to make it a little bit shorter and clearer. I definitely think this is an issue a lot of writers will deal with, especially those writing quest-based fantasy.
Have fun with your story!
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