annacwrites - Tumblr blog

[annacwrites]

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

[annacwrites]

curious to see something

[annacwrites]

Disclaimer these are just a small sampling of some possible writer traits I’ve noticed either in myself or in fics I read. Also consider a rb for sample size !

[annacwrites]

Neglected to shameless plug this when I posted it last week. This is the first thing I've written/posted in... a long time, lol, and I don't know if I'd say that I feel it's good, but it felt nice to finish something.

Brief explanation: hockey AU, a bunch of fluff, mostly just an excuse for me to write a bunch of hockey nonsense partially based on my favorite flightless bird boys.

It also out-monstrosity'd The Monstrosity in terms of length, for those who understand that reference, and probably could've been another 8k words, but here we are.

(I wrote the first ~17k words of this in roughly thirty-six hours last NaNo in order to win, and wrote the last ~6k in a day at the end of October this year in order to finish it. It is rushed and I don't love the pacing and things could be expanded upon in that last section, but it is done, and that's what matters.)

[annacwrites]

twitter is even more of a hellscape than it used to be and not in a fun way so i guess i’m going to resurrect this blog for my stream-of-consciousness writing thoughts because i seem to have successfully pavloved my brain into having a legitimate writing switch for the first time in a solid eight years via one specific candle

also i’m pantsing the hell out of nano so that’s fun i guess, i’ll share some details once i actually figure out what it is that i’m writing

[annacwrites]

Resident Weird Horse Girl reporting for duty if anyone ever has horse-related questions—I’ve been riding for 17 years and a horse owner for nearly three, and have gotten myself roped into pretty much any barn work that you can think of at some point over the years.

Hi I was wondering if you had any tips on writing about animal maintenance specifically horses or know anyone who knows more about this? I’m writing a novel and I want to write about the main character horseback riding and their maintenance but I’ve only rode a pony when I was a kid and I don’t own a horse and my main character owns her own horses on a horse farm. So I am stuck, I hope you can help. Thanks in advance!! 🤞🏼🤞🏼

Hello! This is a great question, and not just because I had a horse phase as a kid that I never really got over. This is the sort of thing that can really trip people up. I might compile a reference masterpost about writing horses at some point, as I've gotten a few asks about the subject.

Your biggest asset: horse girls. More specifically, horse girls with social media. If you don't follow any, I highly recommend it, because they're very informative and often brilliant with the animals themselves.

Equine Helper is a channel which has videos on all sorts of very specific horse training tips, as well as broader subjects, like grooming and body language.

JET EquiTheory is great too, another popular horse youtuber who vlogs about her experiences with horses.

I also recommend youtubers Barrett Houser, JSH Horsemanship, and SimplyHAL. There are plenty of others, but these should get you started.

As for written articles, there are plenty of articles, posts, and forums that describe a typical day on a horse ranch, the daily routines of horse owners, and perhaps the most helpful as a "cheat sheet" for horse care, the daily, monthly, and yearly necessities of horse care.

I also can't emphasize enough how helpful it can be to read guidebooks on the subject, like The Complete Horse Care Manual, The Ultimate Guide To Horse Health and Care, and From The Horse's Point of View.

I hope this helps get you started, and happy writing!

[annacwrites]

Unreliable narrators need to add something to the story. They aren’t an excuse for poor storytelling and inconsistencies.

[annacwrites]

[annacwrites]

Other Important Survival Skills & Information

For whatever reason you’re here, knowing survival skills can save your life or your character’s life (especially for those writers out there that are researching this topic).

Basic Rules If You Are Lost And Alone In The Wilderness

Basic Wilderness Survival Skills

Celestial Navigation & Land Navigation - Navigation without a Compass

Finding True North Without a Compass

Telling Time Without A Clock: Scandinavian Daymarks

Wilderness Survival - Field-Expedient Direction Finding

Wilderness Survival - Contact With People

Wilderness Survival - Clouds: Foretellers Of Weather

Wilderness Survival - Camouflage

Wilderness Survival - Sea Survival

Wilderness Survival - Cold Weather Survival

Wilderness Survival - Tropical Survival

Wilderness Survival - Desert Survival

Wilderness Survival - Field-Expedient Weapons, Tools, And Equipment

Wilderness Survival - Psychology of Survival

Wilderness Survival - Signaling Techniques

Morse Code

The Survivalist - Survival Gear: Make Your Own Signal Whistle

The Survivalist - Survival Skills: Signal Whistle Codes

The Survivalist - Survival Gear: How To Make A Compass

The Survivalist - Survival Skills: Folk Wisdom Weather Predictors

The Survivalist - How To Make Rope From Natural Fibers

The Survivalist - Tying Knots That Work

The Survivalist - More Knots That Work

The Survivalist - How To Make Your Own Tick And Bug Repellent

The Survivalist - How To Make A Toothbrush In The Field

The Survivalist - Insulate You Clothes To Survive The Cold

The Survivalist - Survival Skills: Find Natural Toilet Paper

Going To The Bathroom In The Woods 101

How To Go In The Woods

Plants That Repel Mosquitoes

One Green Planet - DIY Natural Insect Repellent

Preventing Bug Bites In The Woods

Homemade Natural Bug Spray Recipes

Bushcraft Camp Hygiene

Wilderness Hygiene

Preparing For Your First Year Trip — Wilderness Living

Camping and Cramping: How To Handle Your Period While You Enjoy The Great Outdoors

Hiking While Menstruating?

What Did Women Use For Menstruation In Europe and America From 1700 - 1900, And Probably Earlier?

Menstruation, Menstrual Hygiene and Woman’s Health in Ancient Egypt

Survival: Animal Attacks

How to Survive Wild Animal Attacks

[annacwrites]

In which we talk about the extremely limited number of books that I read this year and I have some Thoughts™ about Daughter of Smoke and Bone that are probably going to piss some people off. Oh well.

[annacwrites]

Someone: hey, if you’re a writer, why don’t I ever see you writing?

Me, a writer who’s been daydreaming about three characters, two unwritten chapters, some scraps of dialogue, and a partial plot that still needs to be heated up in the microwave before it’s usable:

[annacwrites]

"old friends" is an underrated relationship dynamic because it's such an innocent boring sounding term for what is usually some of the wildest shit imaginable. it's always like 'oh yeah we go way back, we have history' and then you find out that history includes sex, drugs, murder, divorce, war crimes and The Incident

[annacwrites]

Helpful things for action writers to remember

Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll. 

Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast. 

Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention. 

Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them. 

Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently. 

ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face. 

Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.

Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone. 

A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way. 

If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword. 

ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters.  (CLICK ME)

If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability. 

People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot. 

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME) 

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here. 

[annacwrites]

i might elaborate later but fanfic replies literally develop writer’s metacognition and make them better writers

[annacwrites]

It’s like this…

You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character - because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned - and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.

But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.

And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.

But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.

Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character - Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.

Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.

And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.

Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.

Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”

You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable. 

You tell him - this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow. 

But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo - enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.

And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.

It’s like the world clicking into place. 

And that’s something your brother never had to struggle with.

[annacwrites]

[annacwrites]

I want to be a writer as a job- what tips do you have?

This is a surprisingly challenging question, so I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you mean you want to write fiction as a career. So, here's what I have to say about that

Tips for Aspiring Authors

First and foremost, you need to remember one thing when planning to write fiction as a career, and it's something few aspiring authors like to hear -

Books are products - if you want to make a viable career out of writing, it's time to start thinking about it as a craft.

If you want to write purely what takes your fancy and only when the muse strikes you, I encourage you to do this. However, if you intend to make livable money writing fiction, this approach may hinder your success. Here are my tips:

1. Study the Craft Seriously

Writing is a craft as much as an art and you should treat it as such. Though you don't need to abide by the 'rules' of writing (I honestly believe there are few actual rules to writing) it pays to know them. Learn about tropes and cliches, learn why they work before you discard them. After all, they became common because they were effective when they were first deployed.

Just as Picasso and Dali were entirely capable of producing mainstream, classic pieces of art before they developed distinctive styles, you should learn to deploy basic standards effectively. This will help you as you build your own style, allowing you to break rules and undertake unusual techniques effectively.

2. Read as Often as You Can

Stephen King once said that those who lack the time to read lack the time to write, and while I don't believe only those who read voraciously can write good books, I do think it's supremely arrogant to assume that you can excel at any craft without considering the work of those who have come before you.

Read as often as you are able to, and read widely when you can. In a pinch, watch TV shows and movies - the medium may be different, but there is much to learn from common story structures in any medium.

3. Know Your Market

I don't believe that it's necessary to write in only one genre, but I do think it's wise to consider the conventions of every market before you move into it. Publishers are businesses - they need to be able to sell your books if they are to pay you.

I wouldn't recommend that you chase trends, of course, but simply be aware of which themes are selling well when you approach a publisher. If your story has any of these themes be sure to let agents you approach know.

4. Set a Routine

Just as is the case with any craft, productivity in writing is often dependent on the right work balance. Treat writing as your work as much as you are able to and set a routine. Even 20 minutes a day is better than a sporadic schedule.

If you cannot write every day, set aside time on days that you do have some wriggle room in and do your best to write. Yes, there will be days when the blank page torments you but that, as they say, is the way of life. Learning to cope with this possibility will be a part of your job.

5. Learn to Take Constructive Criticism

No one likes to hear that something they have worked on for months or even years is in need of improvement. Nonetheless, no book is perfect - if you secure an agent or land a book deal you will be in business with people who know the market intimately. It is their job to know it intimately.

As such, it is not a good idea to discount their advice or critique without consideration. Of course, if you feel very strongly about certain points, it is also wise to have a constructive discussion with them. Learning to take critique in a relatively calm and neutral way, without reacting defensively, is crucial - start by getting constructive critique from people you trust and respect. It's often easier to hear it from friends.

6. Learn How to Approach Agents and Market Your Books

Being able to create a synopsis, query properly, and create basic marketing strategies is a part of the authors' job, too, especially if they work with small publishers or aim to self publish. Getting ahead of the curve is a smart idea.

These tips are pretty basic, and mostly matters of opinion. Others may tell you differently, but for what it's worth this is my advice. While they don't actually concern how you can improve your technical ability to write fiction, these tips are important. In all honesty, writing well is only half of the actual job of writing. What's more, it is the half of the job that most people focus on to the detriment of the actual business of making connections, preparing a book for querying, and actually dealing with publishers.

If you want a long, successful writing career, these things are just as important as the actual writing itself.

Here are some resources which can help you to fine-tune your actual writing skills and get started (and here are some story prompts):

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Romance

6 Ways to Improve Romance Writing

6 Tips to Write Better Sex

Ways to Create Effective Horror

The Strengths and Weaknesses of First Person Narration