The creature that wants to kill you will not growl.

The function of a growl is as a warning. It is a communication that violence is available as a tool, but is not preferred. Other outcomes, besides your death, are available and should be considered.

But the creature that wants to kill you will not growl.

If your death is the goal, then growling will only serve as a delay and may result in your escape, which runs counter to the goal. There will be no growl, no warning. There will be no snarl or hiss or bluster. The creature that bares its teeth with the intent to kill only does so to bring closer its fangs to your demise.

The creature that growls does not want to kill you, but will if it must.

I advise you to appreciate the warning. You may not receive another.

How to plant information elegantly

Say, for example, you’re writing a swimming pool scene and you need to plant the fact that Susan is blonde, because in a few chapters, the detective will find a blond hair at the crime scene.

You want the planted information to be memorable, but at the same time not stand out too much. The ideal is to push the information into the reader’s subconscious without a neon light arrow saying, “You might want to remember this, dear reader. This will be relevant!” The planted information needs to feel natural, organic, but memorable enough so when it turns out to be ✨a clue✨, your reader thinks, “I should have seen it!”

Let’s look at some options.

Susan, who is blonde, took a deep breath and dived into the pool.

This feels forced and awkward. The two pieces of information (pool + blonde) are not connected, the fact that she is blonde feels irrelevant and shoved in. If the reader remembers this, it’s because they noticed how the information is forced upon them.

Elegant ⭐

Memorable ⭐⭐

Organic ⭐

The blonde Susan swam across the pool. / The blonde, Susan, swam across the pool.

This feels more natural, but there’s a danger that only the swimming will stick into the reader’s mind because her being blonde is so unnoticeable. There is also a minor danger that the reader will expect an non-blonde Susan to show up in the first variation.

Elegant ⭐⭐

Memorable ⭐

Organic ⭐⭐

Susan was annoyed. She had just washed her hair with that ridiculously expensive Luscious Blonde shampoo and now her friends wanted to go swimming? What a waste of money.

This feels natural and organic, because both elements are conveyed from Susan’s point of view. They are both relevant and connected, and on top of that you get to build Susan’s character.

Elegant ⭐⭐⭐

Memorable ⭐⭐⭐

Organic ⭐⭐⭐

Her friends were already in the pool, but Susan held up her pocket mirror, making absolutely sure that the latex cap wouldn’t let any water in. She just had her hair bleached and after the debacle of 2019, she would never forget what chlorinated water did to bleached hair.

Susan’s POV makes her blond hair relevant to the swimming, as with the example above, but this time you’re presenting a completely different character. It feels organic and personal, and the fact that she is blonde will be lodged into the reader’s mind without screaming “It’s a clue!”.

Elegant ⭐⭐⭐

Memorable ⭐⭐⭐

Organic ⭐⭐⭐

I hope this is helpful! Follow me for more writing tips or browse my entire collection of writing advice now.

Happy writing!

“but there’s no reason for this character to be gay” do u think irl gay people are gay to advance a plot dude

Speed writing isn't all it's cracked up to be

"It doesn't matter if it's messy, it matters if it's written." "You can't edit a blank page." If you're like me, these kinds of sayings are everywhere in the writing community, encouraging you to let your writing 'suck' for the sake of getting something on the page. Speed drafting and word sprints are all the rage.

I get that mentality. I do. I just came back from a multi-year hiatus, and back then, I was known on Tumblr and writing circles for speed-writing. I regularly won word wars by a huge margin. But I've recently gained a new appreciation for slow writing sessions.

The work that I drafted during those word wars? It was also riddled with typos, and errors, and it wasn't my best work. There were occasionally good lines, and it wasn't necessarily bad writing, but there was a lot to clean up after the fact. The time I saved in drafting usually came right back around in editing.

Now, I sit down after work, or on the train, and write 200 or 300 words, carefully selected over the course of ten minutes. It's slower. But it's more deliberate. I let myself edit and tweak prose, and I feel happier with the end quality of the work.

To be honest, from the novel start to the final draft, I don't think that either writing style truly saves any time. Sometimes it's okay to agonize over a sentence for a few minutes. You don't have to rush past it for the sake of getting more words down. The mentality matters more to me; if you speed draft, but can't look at how 'messy' it is without getting discouraged, then speed drafting isn't for you. And if you're getting caught up on each sentence until you feel that it's completely perfect, then yeah, maybe you need to give a speed challenge a try.

But don't feel bad for taking time to be deliberate. It pays off sometimes too.

Honestly when people say their art needs to get "more weird" they usually mean that as in "less commercial/less broadly appealing" and I think the answer to this is not to insert artificial Quirky Weird Style Stuff into it I think you just need to get uncomfortably earnest. What's the thing you really want to draw but feel shy about putting the effort into because it'd be too sincere an admission. You need to draw that. I want to see it

The Revelation

*screams*
Can't believe I managed to complete 12 pages of something!

But yea this was an idea born from the good!Vlad au I'm coming up with; the idea of "what would need to happen for Vlad to actually make the first move and reach out to Jack and Maddie?"

I hope his suffering brings you joy :3

Next >

Dead!! Its here! My dp animatic is finally here! had so much fun with ecto implosion- once my author uploads their fic ill link it here so if youre interested stay tuned!

you can also find this animatic on youtube, so please give it a watch there to support me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG0krA5xsFs

Finished up my piece for Ectoimplosion this year! Really happy with how it turned out and got to work with a really great author as well that interpreted it so well~!!

Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:

In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.

A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.

In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.

you ever accidentally create a recurring theme in your writing. you start putting together an outline for something you’ve never written before and get partway through planning, rearrange the pieces, and go “GODDAMMIT THIS IS ABOUT GRIEF AGAIN”? because let me tell you,