@toughtink / toughtink.tumblr.com
Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!
Heads up that this is a very extensive questionnaire and might be daunting to a lot of writers (myself included). That being said, it is also an amazing questionnaire and I will definitely be using it (or at the very least, some of it).
Bookmarking this…
Encouragment for writers that I know seems discouraging at first but I promise it’s motivational-
• Those emotional scenes you’ve planned will never be as good on page as they are in your head. To YOU. Your audience, however, is eating it up. Just because you can’t articulate the emotion of a scene to your satisfaction doesn’t mean it’s not impacting the reader.
• Sometimes a sentence, a paragraph, or even a whole scene will not be salvagable. Either it wasn’t necessary to the story to begin with, or you can put it to the side and re-write it later, but for now it’s gotta go. It doesn’t make you a bad writer to have to trim, it makes you a good writer to know to trim.
• There are several stories just like yours. And that’s okay, there’s no story in existence of completely original concepts. What makes your story “original” is that it’s yours. No one else can write your story the way you can.
• You have writing weaknesses. Everyone does. But don’t accept your writing weaknesses as unchanging facts about yourself. Don’t be content with being crap at description, dialogue, world building, etc. Writers that are comfortable being crap at things won’t improve, and that’s not you. It’s going to burn, but work that muscle. I promise you’ll like the outcome.
I teach writing at a college level. This is all good advice.
Whole-heartedly BEGGING writers to unlearn everything schools taught you about how long a paragraph is. If theres a new subject, INCLUDING ACTIONS, theres a new paragraph. A paragraph can be a single word too btw stop making things unreadable
Ok So I’m getting more notes than I thought quicker than I expected! So I’m gonna elaborate bc I want to.
I get it, when you’re someone who writes a lot and talks a lot, it’s hard to keep things readable, but it’s not as much about cutting out the fat(that can be a problem) so much as a formatting issue.
You are also actively NERFING yourself by not formatting it correctly, it can make impactful scenes feel so, so much better. Compare this,
To THIS.
Easier to read, and hits harder.
No more over-saturated paragraphs. Space things out.
@s1ld3n4f1l WAIT WAIT WAIT SO TRUE LITERALLY LITERALLY
(a realization about dialogue formatting, from a comic artist turned novelist.)
One of the first things a novice writer learns about speech tags is that they’re part of the “scaffolding” of prose. They should be largely invisible to the reader: use them when necessary, omit them when not, and be sparing in the application of verbs other than “said”. They serve only the function of clarifying who is speaking when it is necessary to do so.
Except:
Sometimes you might want to use a speech tag in spite of the redundancy. The fact that the reader’s eyes slide right over them is an exploitable property. By slicing a line of dialogue in half with a speech tag, you can force the reader to perceive a meaningful pause between two utterances—and the effect is much stronger than you might get out of an ellipsis or an em dash. Developing an intuition for when and how to do this is a huge part of learning to write dialogue, I think.
(And yes: if you ever wondered, this is exactly same the reason why comic artists sometimes “double bubble” their speech bubbles. Same end, different means!)
“But let me give you the dark side of writing groups. One really dark side of writing groups is, particularly newer writers, don’t know how to workshop.
“And one of the things they’ll try to do is they’ll try to make your story into the story they would write, instead of a better version of the story you want to write.
“And that is the single worst thing that can happen in feedback, is someone who is not appreciating the story you want to make, and they want to turn it into something else.
“New workshoppers are really bad at doing this. In other words, they’re really good at doing a bad thing, and they’re doing it from the goodness of their heart. They want you to be a better writer. They want to help you. The only way they know is to tell you how they would do it, which can be completely wrong for your story.”
—Brandon Sanderson, Lecture #1 Introduction, Writing Science Fiction And Fantasy
And this is why many writers (including me) don’t ask for concrit on their published stories - they’ve told the story they want to tell.
If that’s not the story you want to read, you are welcome to write your own version. 😉
He goes on to say that to give good feedback, tell them how the writing made you feel. Don’t say, “instead of that you should do this.” Tell them, “this part confused me.” Or, “my attention drifted during this scene.” Your job isn’t to tell them how to fix it or even that it needs fixed. Your job is let them know what impact their story had on you, the reader. Then they can determine if it’s accomplishing what they want it to and if not, they know which parts need attention.
It isn’t just young writers who do this! Until last fall, this is what I did because this is what my teachers taught me to do. And I hated writing workshops. I kept going to them because I needed to learn how to be a better writer, but…did I actually learn? Mostly what happened was that my work got picked apart and I became depressed and left the story behind because I no longer thought it was any good. My teachers were operating with the best intentions in the world too, but with their help, I ended up with the world’s worst case of writer’s block and a chronic lack of belief in myself.
Then, last fall, my very last semester of college, I took a class with a professor who told us that we were not going to use the classic workshop format. Instead of writing down everything that we thought our classmates should do, we were assigned to ask them questions. And as writers, we were assigned not to sit passively while feedback was fired at us, but to ask questions, to explain what we had been going for and ask if it worked, and if not to brainstorm together how we might make it work.
It was miraculous. Instead of shutting my mind down, this workshop process blew it wide open. Instead of going home after class dispirited, never wanting to touch my story again, I went home inspired, with a hundred new ideas.
So I am a big advocate for this method–and I think it is important to underscore that it isn’t just students who need to be taught it. Writing teachers need to learn it too.
This is so important! And it’s also the reason 90% of “concrit” sucks ass. I have been ignoring “concrit” cheerfully ever since 2003 when people were actually awkward enough to say things like “I’d like this story so much if there weren’t any slash (or het) in it!”
Telling people to write what you want to read isn’t concrit. It’s begging.
Speaking from a past life in journalism, that also counts for changes of style. Maybe you wrote a sentence and used the words you wanted, but an untrained editor might try to change the words they would use instead; to say the same thing but not in your style - or, as we say it, “calling six half a dozen.” Only suggest change of style if the sentence gramatically doesn’t make sense, as it’s often the case with non-native speakers (like me, but I’m blessed with the best friends and betas!)
speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don't say numbers. don't give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it's secondhand.
the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.
you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it's no fun anymore.
YOU GET IT
Sometimes, deleting a few words from the manuscript will not be enough to get an immersive story with no draggin bits.
Here are some ideas.
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The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.
Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.
The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.
It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.
By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.
When your character is standing knee-deep in literal or metaphorical shit with a weapon in one hand and their last hope of surviving evaporating around them, and they’re wondering how their simple smuggling job/adulthood ritual/simple morning in an ordinary village led to ALL OF THIS, both they and the reader need to be able to backtrack through every single choice, mishap, attempt at fixing earlier problems and panicky flight or fib led them unerringly to this moment. That chain cannot have breaks in it, or you lose the whole impact.
I've had this little idea in my head for a while now, so I decided to sit down and plot it out.
Disclaimer: This isn't meant to be some sort of One-Worksheet-Fits-All situation. This is meant to be a visual representation of some type of story planning you could be doing in order to develop a plot!
Lay down groundwork! (Backstory integral to the beginning of your story.) Build hinges. (Events that hinge on other events and fall down like dominoes) Suspend structures. (Withhold just enough information to make the reader curious, and keep them guessing.)
And hey, is this helps... maybe sit down and write a story! :)
You’d known, intellectually, that your heroic nemesis was a teenager, but it didn’t really sink in until the day their school called because your number was the only one on their emergency contact list.
Here’s the thing, okay?
I knew she was young. Like, obviously she was young. A mask and costume can only disguise so much, right? But I thought, for sure, college age. It’s hard to tell for sure through costumes and she wears a lot of padding and armor. (Very sensible, it’s a dangerous job.)
Still, I took it easy on her. No head blows, right? I also tried to avoid any joint injuries, because I suspected she was on a sports team. (Turns out she runs track.)
Like, sure, I’m a ‘villainess’ or whatever, but I’m not actually fuckin evil. I want what I want but I don’t actually want to maim some idealistic coed over it. Like, come on. Life is hard enough for young women. I know that.
And I got the sense that, for her, it was mostly for show as well. Sure, she thrashed the shit out of that fucker with the tentacles, but he was planning some sort of gory sacrifice, fair’s fair. Even as I went easy on her, I got the sense she was going easy on me, is my point. She pulled her blows.
But. You lose sponsorships if you just let the bad guy get away, you know, and college ain’t cheap. Right? So she’s gotta make a show of it.
So the newspaper called me her nemesis because we kept coming to blows, but mostly it was a show, and it was about 50/50.
I should have tracked her down. I made a promise to myself not to, you know? I felt like that was crossing a line. But now that I know… shit. I’m kicking myself. I could have known. But I was like, you know, a young woman, the last thing she needs is some creepy old lady stalking her. I should have, though.
Okay, so here’s what happened.
Not to say there's anything wrong with editing as you write, but if you want to stop yourself and find you can't, here are some tips.
Not only is it more difficult to edit as you write, changing mediums can help you establish new habits.
Cold Turkey Writer won't let you close the window until you reach a certain number of words. The Most Dangerous Writing App will delete all your progress if you stop typing. And I know there are at least a few apps that disable the backspace key.
This relies a bit on willpower, but the timer really helps. I talk about the specific process I use in this post.
While you can’t ever “un-know” what you’ve learned, it’s especially difficult if you’re constantly absorbing critical information while at the same time trying to be creative. Give your right brain some space. Go outside, read fiction, paint or draw. Get away from your Tumblr feed. Turn off the internet while you write.
You’ve developed a habit of editing-while-writing and it will take some time to reverse it. Give yourself short practice sessions of not editing: Try to write 50 words without editing. Do some timed freewriting. Think of it as a muscle that needs to be exercised to get stronger.
Hope this helps!
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@theliteraryarchitect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler, a writer and developmental editor. For more writing help, download my Free Resource Library for Fiction Writers, join my email list, or check out my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.
okay hey real question: what are good ways to describe fat characters?
I see a lot of 'have more fat characters' and I'm Here For It but as someone who is skinny and in a world where most existing literature makes characters fat only as a joke or an indication of some variety of moral badness, I'm not really sure how to describe them in a way that's not objectifying or insulting. like, I've grown up on poetic descriptions of thin characters ('long slim fingers' and 'willow figure' etc etc) but I haven't read flattering descriptions of fat characters and I don't know where to start. I've seen a lot of 'how to describe poc' or 'how to describe disabled characters' or whatever and I've seen art ref posts for drawing fat characters, but no posts about how to write them well. so. open call for advice or for examples you've found and like??
I remember at least two posts about this subject. Alas, I was only able to find one.
Howdy! Fat short white woman here. I've got some hopefully helpful thoughts on this which I will share a little later (I've got a few things to do first sadly).
In the meantime, OP (or anyone else) if you have specific questions about what it feels like for me to be in a fat body or what I personally do and don't worry / think about... I'm more than happy to answer.
In the meantime - I know you said you've seen ref posts for drawing fat characters...but here's one I like (in case you haven't come across it) that is nicely wordy: https://www.tumblr.com/bacchicly/677854396964634625?source=share
Ok here's an actual one about writing fat characters that I've skimmed and that has some good advice!
Ok as promised I've written my own post - idk if it will be helpful to anyone - but here's the link:
Happy writing!
One of the best writing advice I have gotten in all the months I have been writing is "if you can't go anywhere from a sentence, the problem isn't in you, it's in the last sentence." and I'm mad because it works so well and barely anyone talks about it. If you're stuck at a line, go back. Backspace those last two lines and write it from another angle or take it to some other route. You're stuck because you thought up to that exact sentence and nothing after that. Well, delete that sentence, make your brain think because the dead end is gone. It has worked wonders for me for so long it's unreal
I don't remember where I heard this now, but I absorbed the advice, "if you're stuck, count ten sentences back and start again from there". It's not always ten sentences back, for me, but it does force me to look at the last handful of lines I've actually written on a sentence instead of a story level, and that is eminently helpful in unsticking myself most of the time.
I recently resolved a point where I'd been stuck for months not by changing anything in the scene I was currently writing, but by realizing I needed to add another scene before that one to establish key information I couldn't work into the current one
HEY WRITER MUTUALS COME GET YOUR WRITER JUICE
Writing a novel when you imagine all you stories in film format is hard because there’s really no written equivalent of “lens flare” or “slow motion montage backed by Gregorian choir”
You can get the same effect of a lens flare with close-detail descriptions, combined with breaks to new paragraphs.
Your slow-motion montage backed by a Gregorian choir can be done with a few technques that all involve repetition.
First is epizeuxis, the repeating of a word for emphasis.
Example:
Falling. Falling. Falling. There was nothing to keep Marie from plunging into the rolling river below. She could only hope for a miracle now, that she would come out alive somehow despite a twenty-foot drop into five-foot-deep water.
Then there’s anaphora, where you write a number of phrases with the same words at the beginning.
There were still mages out there living in terror of shining steel armor emblazoned with the Sword of Mercy.
There were still mages out there being forced by desperation into the clutches of demons.
There were mages out there being threatened with Tranquility as punishment for their disobedience, and the threats were being made good upon.
Mages who had attempted to flee, but knew nothing of the outside world and were forced to return to their prison out of need for sustenance and shelter.
Mages who only desired to find the families they were torn from.
Mages who only wanted to see the sun.
This kind of repetition effectively slows the pace of your writing and puts the focus on that small scene. That’s where you get your slow pan. The same repetition also has a subtle musicality to it depending on the words you use. That’s where you get the same vibe as you might get from a Gregorian choir.
Damn I made relatable reblog- bait post and writer Tumblr went hard with it. This is legitimately very good advice.
For more neat tricks (aka figures of rhetoric) like epizeuxis and anaphora, read THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE by Mark Forsyth. It’s both educational and delightful, not to mention overflowing with wry wit. Great book.
I feel like many people have a fundamental misconception of what unreliable narrator means. It's simply a narrative vehicle not a character flaw, a sign that the character is a bad person. There are also many different types of unreliable narrators in fiction. Being an unreliable narrator doesn't necessarily mean that the character is 'wrong', it definitely doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything even if some aspects in their story are inaccurate, and only some unreliable narrators actively and consciously lie. Stories that have unreliable narrators also tend to deal with perception and memory and they often don't even have one objective truth, just different versions. It reflects real life where we know human memory is highly unreliable and vague and people can interpret same events very differently
Some types of unreliable narrator:
The Watson: is present for the event but does not have the same level of perception as protagonist
The Lemony Snicket: isn't present for the event, reconstructs the facts based on later research, can get things wrong or incomplete
The Ted Moseby: is present for the event but has romanticised and embellished their memory of it through nostalgia to an extent that you cannot fully believe it; is also prone to misremembering or outright forgetting details.
The Katniss Everdeen: is present for the event, is the protagonist, but is completely foreign to the world and out of their depth so they don't quite understand a lot of what is going on.
The Rose Quartz: is present for the event, but due to their personal agenda or feelings of shame hides and embellishes what actually happened in favour of a version that paints them in a better light.
The Big Brother: overwrites what actually happened in favour of propaganda.
The Jonathan Harker: is absolutely clueless about what is going on around them and the genre they're in so their perception of events is tinted by their own naivety.
The Goob: the narrator's own emotional bias clouds their judgement of what really happened.
The Tyler Durden: the narrator is suffering from hallucinations and doesn't realise it.
The Pi: the narrator has survived a traumatic experience and copes with it by turning it into a wonderful tale.
academically there are 5 examples [although some great arguments are being made for a 6th]
the sixth is "the privileged white male youth" who is unaware that their position in the story skews their perception of it, so a white man in a BLM protest would be treated differently both by his peers and the police because he's white but assumes everyone gets treated like that
ooooh my god the culture around romance novels is so annnoyingggg, especially as fantasy romance becomes more popular. “it’s not romance if it doesn’t have a happily ever after ending”—the fuck are you even talking about? “happily ever after” is for children’s stories. it’s for simplicity. it’s a flattening of all the things a story can be into a coin flip of either happy or sad. romance is about the journey of a romantic relationship—no matter where it ends up. what is the fucking point of genres if they all get cut up to fit the blandest of conventions. ugh.
I hate to say this, and like, rain on everyone’s parade, but after scrolling past three posts about it on a writing tag …
If you are looking up synonyms to exchange words out in your story with the purpose of sounding smarter, more sophisticated, or complicated to your reader, you are probably abusing the thesaurus.
Now, if you *want* to do this, I mean, you can write whatever or however you want! But I just want you to know that this is frowned upon if you are trying to write at a professional level.
I have an old article on this somewhere …
If you want to look at the original article…
