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[alena-r-zuart]

Great tips.

maintaining the tension in your story

Maintaining the tension in your story is crucial towards the development and quality of writing. It must be present as often as possible, regardless of the situation as it will provide for the audience a reason to keep reading. Below are some ideas as to how you can do so.

1. Create complex and three-dimensional characters who have both pros and cons: Your readers do not necessarily have to agree with every single one of their beliefs, however, you should allow them to put up a good argument. Remember, the audience doesn’t always have to like the character, simply care about them.

2. Allow your characters to clash: Letting them get along too easily may become a bit bland. Instead, let your characters be a little selfish. They can have different opinions, and more often than not, it will provide some depth to the story.

3. Chose a conflict that is important to the protagonist: Since we read from the character’s perspective, we will become more invested if they are as well.

4. Raise the stakes: Let the problem grow larger so your character can care more. Raise their motivation. This is similar to the point above as we too will care more.

5. After you resolve a conflict, introduce another: There should be several points of peak tension, some higher than others.

6. There should always be tension but vary the amount: Let your audience have a break once in a while. Keep the tension but let it rest for a bit. Have a filler scene, a small conversation, etc.

7. There should be tension all around, not only concerning your character: Yes, your character is the centre of your story but not of the world. Have other things going on and let other people have the spotlight once in a while.

8. Make the sources of tension different: There should be numerous issues going on, many rooting from others but still different. I’m sure that Rob is devastated because of his divorce but with it also comes financial issues, housing, and more.

9. Never make things easy for your character: They should be allowed to fail. It’s only human. Along with this, don’t let them have what they want straight away. MAKE THEM WORK FOR IT.

10. Pick up the pace: You don’t have to do this 100% of the time, but be sure to have some moments where it is flashing by for the reader, similar to the character. Add in time crunches and deadlines; it will help.

So, those are my ten tips, however, you can find more yourself. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions as I’m always here to help. Cheers!

[alena-r-zuart]

We gotta stand together.

HELL YEAH!!!

[alena-r-zuart]

My friends, my pals, my buddies, my fellow writers:

Stop putting yourself down because some professional author with three best sellers writes better than you.

Writing is a difficult skill that takes persistence and time to master. It takes writing bad books, then mediocre books, before you can finally write the good books, and then eventually the amazing books. (And often rewriting the same book fifteen times to get it good.)

It takes, not years of occasionally working on a few little stories here and there, but years of writing and editing and reading, often for hours a day, five days a week.

It takes a lifetime.

All the best authors have drafts – and often whole books – you’ve never gotten to see because they absolutely sucked. They all started out doubting their writing. (Many of them still do, even after three or seven or ten best sellers.)

So stop looking at other authors who’re better than you and feeling discouraged. They’re not better than you. They’re just father along your journey.

If you follow the path they did, you will get to the same destination.

#and to those of you who go ‘but the writers who are better than me aren’t even professional authors, they’re just other amateur writers online!!’ #you don’t know how long and hard they’ve been practicing. #People online, even writers and bloggers, have a tenancy to subconsciously make their own efforts look less and their achievements greater. #I promise you they’ve spent more time on that writing than you would expect, or had more practice before hand, or just plain pulled their best lines from an otherwise awkward mess that still needs editing. #Don’t compare your today’s mess to their week’s highlights.

[alena-r-zuart]

Lmao

i have NPC energy cause most of my replies consist on

ok

NICE

hell ye!

no…….

yes?

sdfghjhghjkjDFGHJKGHJJDFGSS

thank you so much!

fuck!

[alena-r-zuart]

Miraculous Fanfic

MariChat - Adrienette - LukaGami - Small bit of MariGami

This is my first attempt at miraculous fanfiction, if it goes well, I’ll update as much as I can :P ~ Enjoy

-Eventual Reveal-

~~~~~~

Summer had been a welcome arrival for Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Even with her summer job working in her parents bakery, the lack of schoolwork to complete allowed her to drop one of the many responsibilities she juggled daily in the circus she lovingly called her life. Being Ladybug was incredible and allowed her to be above and beyond what she had once been able to do to help her fellow Parisians; but, over the summer, Chat Noir, her partner, had disappeared. For the first week of the holidays, patrolling without him had been strange and daunting. The constant presence of her jovial partner had never been a weight in her already heavily anchored life; despite not knowing who he was behind the mask, Mari trusted him with her life and her secrets, even if she couldn’t tell him the whole truth. She wouldn’t admit that she missed him, not even to Tikki, her constant companion, but she’d accepted weeks ago that she did and that she was anticipating his return.

Alya and Nino had kept Marinette company during the few days when she wasn’t laden with pastries and overwhelmed with deliveries. Her best friends may not have known that they kept her mind from wandering to the cocky green eyed boy in the skintight catsuit, but they did and their presence had been one of the few things Mari would admit to herself that had kept her from wondering who the boy behind that mask was. Some of their classmates had been whisked away by their families for the holidays, opting to spend the next few months basking in all sorts of paradise. Adrien and his father had gone to New York, Gabriel’s newest designs had dropped in the States so Gabriel had taken his son and muse with him to present this seasons collection. Luka and Juleka, as well as Rose, were travelling through the inland rivers of Europe on Anarka Couffaine’s houseboat. Kagami had gone home to Japan for her cousin’s wedding, spending the months in the humid heat of Tokyo with her family.

Adrien made sure to send Marinette pictures from the shows, the gorgeous fabrics he sent images of had her wishing that she’d slipped into his suitcase and made her way to New York with him. He enjoyed calling her and telling her about the people he met, the things he saw and the ins and outs of the bustling New York fashion elite. She envied him but Marinette knew that it had been a long time since Adrien had spent more than a minute with his father, so she knew that his trip was far more important than the silly details he spouted over the phone. She still had a crush on him and she was thankful that he couldn’t see the blush that painted her cheeks whenever he told her how much she would love it in New York or told his new American friends to give him a minute because he was talking to his best friend. If being his best friend was as good as Marientte could get, she wasn’t going to complain, it was better than being no one to him at all.

Mari had saved the songs that Luka sent her while he was on his trip, making a playlist of them on her phone to listen to in the long, hot hours of the night when she missed the soothing presence of her musically talented friend. Talking to Kagami wasn’t as easy as speaking to the boys. Adrien tended not to sleep as New York didn’t either and Luka was never more than a text or phone call away, but Kagami kept a strict schedule, attending kendo lessons when she had the spare time and fulfilling the wishes of her mother and grandparents. Kagami always tried to make time for Mari, but the differences in their time zones had made it hard; when Kagami had time to talk, Mari tended to have fallen asleep beside the phone waiting for her friend to ring. They’d eventually resorted to texting and using snapchat over calling; that way they could talk and see each others faced without the immense stress of coordinating times.

Kagami sent Mari pictures of the ornate fabrics that surrounded her in Japan as well as the Japanised western fashion that filled the streets around her. Marinette had been inspired by the clothes Kagami had shown her and had decided to surprise her friend with a hand-painted, hand-embroidered kimono jacket when she returned home; something that Kagami could wear to an important function or on days when she opted to dress down. 

Patrolling as Ladybug had been strange without Chat and Mari had been ever so slightly sad that she couldn’t call on Ryuko to join her; Rena Rouge and Carapace had been more than enough to fill the void of her other companions, both Alya and Nino had questioned where Chat was, leaving Marinette to make up a half-assed excuse about his whereabouts. Alya, ever the curious and thorough reporter, had managed to weasel the truth out after a few days; Mari finally admitting that she didn’t know where he was and that she hoped he was safe. Alya, as Rena, had assured her that if Chaton had gotten in trouble with Hawkmoth they would definitely know about it; that had eased Mari’s worry slightly but not so much that she stopped missing the blonde cat. Master Fu had been the bridge between Mari’s civilian life and Chat Noir’s, behind the mask he was still nameless but Mari trusted Fu to make sure her messages reached him. Fu was gone now, he had been for a while. Since Chloe had become Miracle Queen and called other Miraculous users to her aid, and Hawkmoth had made off with Master Fu’s tablet, Mari had been the guardian of the miraculous box but she hadn’t been brave enough to ask Chat to reveal himself, to possibly put himself at risk, before summer had come and the two person patrols had become one person patrols.

It hadn’t been an easy decision on Mari’s part to give Alya and Nino the Fox and Turtle miraculouses permanently; but she knew, especially after the battle with Miracle Queen, that she would need Rena Rouge and Carapace in the future. She was still debating giving Luka the Snake miraculous permanently when he came back but the longer he was gone, the harder the decision seemed to become. There hadn’t been an akuma attack since summer had begun, though Marinette hadn’t been willing to take chances and stop her patrolling, which had been almost as much of a miracle as Tikki’s existence but she guessed that even super-villains needed holidays too. Mari had spent longer than she was happy to admit mulling over the possibility that Hawkmoth could have a family. Maybe he was a father, a husband, a brother; for some reason, the idea of him being part of a family seemed far fetched and strange.

She promised herself, though, that she wouldn’t consider all the reasons why he would need the Cat and Ladybug miraculouses if he was indeed a father or husband, a family man in general. Mari knew the possibilities the joining of Tikki and Plagg would give, they could save a life or end one; if Hawkmoth needed them for the former, Mari didn’t know if she’d be able to withhold them from him. She tried to picture Hawkmoth sitting next to a child in a hospital bed vowing to cure them and she’d felt a deep, devastating pang in her chest; so Mari tried to abandon the notion of who Hawkmoth could be behind the mask. Those questions though, had raised more. Could Mayura be Hawkmoth’s wife? Could they both be fighting to save someone incredibly dear to them? They were thoughts not easily banished from Marinette’s head, so she thanked Alya and Nino’s almost constant presence for stopping her falling down an endless rabbit hole.

~~~~

After a day spent lounging by the pool with Alya, supervising her younger twin sisters as they splashed in the crystal blue water, Marinette had retired to her balcony with a book. The heat was getting to Tikki, tiring the kwami out quite a lot even when she wasn’t helping Marinette patrol as Ladybug, so she slept on Mari’s pillow, curled into a tight ball. A soft breeze came off the Seine and stirred the wispy hairs of Mari’s fringe as she lazily turned the page of her book. The sun was beginning to set, painting the world in golds and pinks and oranges, gilding the metal railing skirting the balcony and causing the teal polish on her toes to turn a glowing green. With a contented sigh, Mari wriggled slightly backwards into the plush pillows of her daybed and basked in the warmth of the evening.

“You look comfy there, Princess,” the sudden voice caused her to jump, dropping her book over the side of the daybed with a thunk. Brushing her fringe behind her ear and picking up the book, Mari looked at the boy now lounging on the railing in front of her. “Sorry to scare you. If you’d thrown that book any further, it would’ve been a cat-astrophe.”

“Kitty? When did you get here?” Mari pressed her bookmark between the pages of her book and placed it gently on the daybed, walking over to the railing to lean beside the lounging, black-clad boy. 

“Oh, did ya miss me, mi princesa?” Chat Noir purred, resting his angular chin on a gloved fist, looking at Marinette with intent green eyes. An unwelcome heat rose in her cheeks, he’d been gone for weeks and she’d missed him. She wouldn’t tell him that she’d missed him because she couldn’t stand the thought of inflating his ego but that didn’t stop her cheeks from flushing with red at his words. “You’re no fun, princesa, but I got here just now. I saw a pretty girl sitting all alone on a balcony and thought she could use the company of a rather dashing cat.”

Mari swatted Chat’s arm playfully, the boy had the good humour to pretend that her weak smack almost sent him tumbling over the railing as he laughed with her. Adrien had almost always been on Mari’s mind but since summer started and Chat had disappeared, it had been the leather wrapped boy who had plagued her thoughts. She’d missed his smile, the hint of elongated canines that peeked between his lips when he grinned; his dimples, the elegant richness of his laugh, the corn-silk gold of his hair. She’d missed his jokes too, even if they were bad.

“Kinda,” Mari looked out toward the fading sunset, the rays rippling along the Seine. Chat looked puzzled, the pupils of his large eyes growing wider, almost dwarfing the green that ringed them.

“Kinda what?” He tilted his head lazily, his eyes scanning Marinette’s face.

“I kinda missed you, okay, you doofus?” She let out a loud laugh as she admitted it. Internally cursing herself. She wasn’t going to tell him but she had missed him, she’d missed him a lot.

“Well, I kinda missed you too, Princess,” A smile broke across his face, his dimples dipping in his cheeks and causing his luminescent green eyes to glow with a welcome mirth. He slipped off the railing and leaned beside her, his elbow resting centimetres away from hers, Chat could feel the embarrassed warmth rolling off Marinette as they stood together in silence. Silence never felt awkward for them, it was welcome and cleansing, he never had to hide who he was when he was with her. Chat had never asked Marinette if he could show her who he was behind the mask and when he’d made the choice to befriend her as Chat, he understood Ladybug’s hesitance to show him her identity. He knew Mari was her friend, or he guessed that she was, Ladybug always seemed to protect Marinette just when she needed it; and he couldn’t imagine anything worse than Hawkmoth using Mari to get to him or Ladybug. Mari always seemed so delicate, so fragile and breakable, the thought of her being hurt scared him more than anything.

“Where were you, Kitty? Where did you go?” Mari nudged his elbow with hers.

“A cat never hunts and squeaks, princess, but I’ve been here and there and everywhere, just wherever I wanted to be,” 

“So you didn’t want to be here?” Mari frowned, her forehead creasing as she met his gaze with her own. Eyes of blue met eyes of green and a calm, trusting energy sizzled between them.

“Well, if here means where you are then it depends where you are. If here means your balcony then I must tell you, Princess, that there is more to see of the world than the view from your balcony. You may not have been on my travels in person but you were in spirit and I wouldn’t return from my trip without something as pretty as you,” Her cheeks heated further as Chat pulled a small glass figure from a hidden pocket in his suit. The figure was a carved glass rose, the petals a pale, dusty pink held on a delicate green stem. Mari took the figure gently in her hands and held the beautiful glass rose with as much protective gentleness as she possibly could.

“Chat…it’s lovely! You really didn’t have to!” Mari’s smile shined brighter than the stars that had begun to pinprick the quilted navy blue sky. Chat had spent his months away thinking of her, unaware that she’d been thinking of him too. When he’d seen this little glass rose in a display case in a jewellery store in New York, he’d thought of her. The delicate beauty reminded him of the dark haired girl standing before him, shining brighter than anything he’d ever seen.

“I’m glad you like it, mi princesa,” Chat’s smile widened, those dimples growing deeper and causing Marinette’s heart to skip a beat. Looking at photos of Adrien in New York gave her the same fluttering feeling as Chat’s smile did. “It appears that I’m going to have yo leave you now, sometimes a cat’s work is no play. I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

“Of course! I’ll be here, waiting, as always,” The stars shone in Marinette’s eyes as she promised to be here for him tomorrow. Since Ladybug had rejected him and his feelings toward Kagami had become slowly more confusing, his solace had been Marinette and he would be lying if he said that he hadn’t developed feelings for the quiet and unbreakable girl on this balcony. Chat took a mental picture of the constellation reflected in her eyes as he saluted her, climbed up onto the rail and jumped, using his staff to catapult himself to the next building. “Au revoir, Chaton!”

“Au revoir, Marinette,” Clutching the rose gently to her chest, she watched him disappeared into the night. Abandoning her book on the daybed, Mari carefully placed the rose in one of her empty jewellery boxes, tucking the box into a drawer. Climbing beneath the light sheets of her bed, Tikki snoring faintly next to her ear, Marinette asked herself if it was possible to love two people. If she could love whoever was behind Chat Noir’s mask as much as she loved Adrien.  

[alena-r-zuart]

“But it didn’t break me. Nothing can break me unless I let it.”

— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

[alena-r-zuart]

Yes! I love this.

Tropes that get me every damn time, in no particular order and with no particular rhyme or reason

a group of morally grey criminals/thugs/assassins has a Mom Friend in the group 

Incredibly broken character trying to love, knowing they don’t know how to accept or show affection and trying anyway 

Gentle and Good™ character who would Never Hurt a Fly goes into absolute beast mode after their family or someone they care about is hurt or threatened 

Group of characters who hate each other’s guts forced to team up 

Literally any book-within-a-book device is used: excerpts or even mentions of a made-up in-universe book within the book. Bonus points if it’s some kind of Fantasy Textbook being included purely for infodump purposes. 

Independent, self-serving character ends up forced to be a hero and do good. Bonus points if this happens multiple times and independent self-serving character is just resigned to it at this point. 

On that note: universe/world has to rely on a bunch of criminals with 0 moral fibre that were more or less dragged out of a dumpster to save everyone 

any scene wherein the strong and stoic™ is getting patched up post-battle by their love interest for whom they have not yet admitted their feelings, probably shirtless and definitely wincing in a brave manner as bandages are applied 

Smol and Cute character turns out to be full of terrifying darkness 

Character finds terrifying monsters cute and/or endearing. 

Character doesn’t understand sarcasm or figurative language. Literally. Any. Use. Of. This. Trope. 

Character’s somewhat embarrassing or weird backstory comes out only when it is ABSOLUTELY necessary. Example: In the seventh book of a series, the characters must go undercover at a Zyrg’hnrrian ball and the Strong Stoic Axe Warrior Guy, who we have known for all seven books so far, must grudgingly admit that he knows how to dance a Zyrg’hnrrian Waltz. 

on that note: characters must disguise as something and go undercover but their already super shoddy cover starts falling apart, resulting in your entire body cringing at the page. bonus points if their disguises start LITERALLY falling apart 

on THAT note: only reason characters are able to infiltrate something is that the guards are bored and not paying attention 

Characters who are a couple team up in battle and start absolutely kicking ass 

Criminal mastermind getting himself involved in multiple recursive layers of double-crossing that all fall apart at the worst possible time. 

A character who has spent the whole book acting like he doesn’t care suddenly throws himself into harm’s way for another character and comes out of it battered and half dead 

Literally any scene where a badass character comes out of something that should have killed them covered in blood and wounds and with fire in their eyes. 

Any scene where a character puts on a brave face for something that no person should be able to bear or endure, on behalf of someone they love. 

Literally any story where MC goes to school to learn the art of murder/to be an assassin/to be a villain/the ways of evil and darkness in any sense  

S N A R K 

Over the top plots where shit is just hitting the fan and the characters themselves are somewhat aware of how crazy it all is and are just like “this might as well happen” 

A Good, rule-following character forced to collaborate with morally-grey trash can. 

character bonds with an animal that annoys them at first but by the end they are willing to lay down their life for the varmint. Bonus points if they rush back into danger cursing about how annoying and ungrateful their animal companion is while actively risking their life on its behalf. 

Bar fights. hhhhhhhh

Character who has never really received affection and love receives loving physical touch and has no idea how to respond or process what’s going on inside them other than oh god don’t stop 

On that note: hideous, monstrous-looking creature/character is shown gentleness/affection for the first time. 

Any scene where a monologuing villain gets slammed with a comeback that makes him realize all of a sudden what the heroes’ plan is all along and that he’s lost 

villains have great fashion sense 

on that note: sexy villains hhhghghhhh. Yes you can write a callout post. 

[alena-r-zuart]

I rarely describe minor character with eye or hair colour, I add minor descriptions as "beautiful hair" or "pretty eyes". I really like how the readers all have different opinions on their looks. Leaving a bit of space to breathe allows the readers to connect better with the character because they make them a bit of them.

Think of "beautiful dark eyes". It tells us they are dark, and beautiful, but there are many ways the reader can imagine dark, some will think of black, some of dark blue or dark brown — They all know the basic, and they develop the rest of the appearance. That's why vague descriptions sometimes are better than deep, detailed ones.

My favorite thing about being ambiguous with “and they were attractive” descriptions in a fantasy book is that honestly?? who said what constitutes being attractive. Not me. You can envision them however you want buddy I didn’t say what’s in fashion for beauty standards in Fantasyland.

[alena-r-zuart]

if we want to call ourselves writers we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of actually writing 

[alena-r-zuart]

Stay strong: we have almost reached the point where you can go to a library or bookstore in the snow and come out in the darkness, watching giant flakes drift down in an almost eerily quiet parking lot and drive home past houses with warm lights coming from the windows.

[alena-r-zuart]

Oldie but godie

[alena-r-zuart]

These are so funny.

[alena-r-zuart]

This is awesome.

A dramatic fantasy story.

“From the perspective of the ‘chosen one’?” No. You are one of the minor characters. Not even a ‘minor chracter’. One of the nameless characters. And you want a name.

[alena-r-zuart]

This is so inspiring

Look look look, writing isn’t easy. When you sit down to do it, you’re rocking up to a bare-fisted, no-holds-barred throw down with your own imagination. Sometimes writing isn’t possible. Or you don’t meet your goals, or you procrastinate until it’s too late to start and you meet the new dawn with a word count of zero. Some writers might hate themselves for that. But listen, you showed up to this fight the moment you decided to give it a shot. You sized up your opponent, and said, “I got this!” Being a baby writer is the scariest this shit ever gets. It’s also the bravest you’ll ever have to be when it comes to exploring and learning this craft, because you have nothing but pure nerve to convince you it’s worth the fight. If you can stare down an endless literary canon and decide you’re gonna add to it, then you can survive a zero word day with honour intact. I know you can’t shake the self-doubt and disappointment overnight. I feel the same way, and half the reason I’m writing this is because I’d be comforted if I read it at the right time. But listen.

You’re a writer.

You started this war, and this is the secret – you can only ever win it.

[alena-r-zuart]

We defied the universe, and we lost

It's a known fact that the human being has always felt superior than the rest of the species. The human greed never let us feel satisfied with what we had. More — We always wanted more. Nothing was enough. Forest, rivers, lakes... Where life once blossomed, now just a gray, empty echo remains. An echo of what it was, and will never be again.

Human apathy is incredible. It allowed us to take over everything, and sit on our glorious throne of ashes, supported by a pile of lifeless bodies. Woods, and ponds faded into a distant memory, and soon, turned into a forgotten fantasy.

The end came quicker than we thought.

We were so egocentrics, thinking that we could conquer everything without facing any consequences. We asked, asked, and asked, and did not give anything in return.

Only when masses of people dropped death — only then, the human looked up to the starless sky, and felt regret.

We didn't even know what laid at the sea bottom, and we were already searching for a new planet, trying to run away from our sins and faults. We thought we could outrun them, bury them, and fake we never did them.

The universe was endless, surely we would find a new planet. This time, we would do it correctly, we said. This time, we wouldn't ruin it. We were so wrong.

We fell into the same ditch thousands of times before realising our mistake. And a thousand more before changing our perspective and trying to correct what went wrong.

But we were late. Too late.

Now, humankind is nonexistent. There is only a desolate of pain and misery, full of corprses and ruins.

We thought we were little gods.

We defied the universe, and we lost.

-Alena R. Zuart

[alena-r-zuart]

I love hero-villian tropes.

“You’re injured,” the hero said, hurriedly. They hadn’t expected to hurt the villain so badly, to have blood running down their chest. 

“Injured? No, it’s a… a…” The villain couldn’t breathe. 

A panic attack. They hated the sight of blood. 

The hero gently put a hand over the wound, blocking the sight of it. 

[alena-r-zuart]