evilwriter-originals

[evilwriter-originals]

the five stages of grief: writer's edition

denial: "this draft is amazing. no need for edits. it’s practically perfect as is." you’re so confident that you close the document for the day, smiling like you’ve just discovered the next great american novel (or swedish, or british, whatever). plot hole? who is she?

anger: "why did i ever think this was good? this is garbage. i am garbage. my characters are flat, my dialogue is cringe, and my prose sounds like a robot swallowed a thesaurus and threw up on the page." rage-quit the doc and go aggressively scroll pinterest for "writing inspiration" that you will never use.

bargaining: "if i fix this one scene, the whole thing will click into place. i just need to write one more subplot, maybe five more chapters, a quick rewrite of the entire ending, and then it'll be fine. totally manageable." queue up 17 youtube videos on "how to fix your plot" that you play in the background while staring at your ceiling.

depression: "i will never finish this book. it’s doomed. i’m doomed. why do i even write? who let me have ideas?!" lay dramatically on your bed, considering taking up knitting or rock collecting instead. cry a little over how your characters deserve a better writer.

acceptance: "this is the best i can do right now, and that’s okay. i’ll take a break, come back with fresh eyes, and remember why i love this stupid, broken story." suddenly, your MC whispers something brilliant, and you're like wait… maybe i'm a genius after all.

and the cycle begins again. writing is a joy.

[evilwriter-originals]

Royal whump prompts

“They’re going to betray you. You know that, don’t you?”

“You cannot manage this kingdom alone.”

“Is this how you want the people to see you? To see our family?”

“Do you know what happens when the masses hate their ruler? They rebel, Whumpee.”

“Your family may have gotten away, but you’re going to pay for everything they’ve done.”

“You dishonour our family name.”

“You truly didn’t see this coming? My, you certainly are naive, Your Majesty.”

“Poor little prince/princess, where’s your crown now?”

“You failed us.”

“This kingdom is falling apart. Believe it or not, you need my help.”

“If you cared about your people, you would do something.”

“I would say there are few people we can trust these days. But of course, my loyalties lie with you, Your Majesty.”

[evilwriter-originals]

[evilwriter-originals]

Forgot how much my novel playlist slaps.

[evilwriter-originals]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[evilwriter-originals]

Reblog and put in the tags which one you see

Where do you store your OC’s info chart made by this person

[evilwriter-originals]

Don't write the stories that you think you should write, write the stories that you actually want to write.

[evilwriter-originals]

writing tip #3654:

make your characters in sims 4 so you can play them every time the novel they live in gets too depressing

[evilwriter-originals]

Your wip’s protagonist is forced to attend high school.

[evilwriter-originals]

Winged whump prompts

plucking out ‘ugly’ feathers and replacing them with synthetic ones.

adorning the wings with heavy, gold jewellery that weighs them down.

feathers that can’t grow back.

wings hurting to open properly because they’ve been uncomfortably restrained for so long.

painting the feathers. a small, intimate task that requires time and patience, from both whumpee and the artist.

wings being held up by chains/ropes, on display for anyone to marvel at.

breaking wings as punishment.

wings being removed entirely to go on display in a gallery/museum. are they known to be real? or does someone take credit for creating them as an art piece?

in a medical setting, wings requiring their own set of restraints to keep whumpee from moving.

wings being the only part of whumpee that is valued and cared for. without them, they are worthless.

whumpee forgetting how to fly after being in captivity.

alternatively: not being able to because of how damaged their wings are.

feathers starting to fall out because of how terrible whumpee’s condition is.

[evilwriter-originals]

Got another story rejection. *sigh*

[evilwriter-originals]

Well, usually when I obsess over something I create for it. But I would like to obsess first!

Being obsessed with your own ocs is so so good for you i seriously can't recommend it enough

[evilwriter-originals]

Can someone tell me how to get obsessed with your own OCs? This book would be done by now if I was.

Being obsessed with your own ocs is so so good for you i seriously can't recommend it enough

[evilwriter-originals]

reminder to myself: I create some really cool shit actually

[evilwriter-originals]

Not so kindly telling everybody who voted for Trump, abstained or voted third party to get off all of my blogs. My art/fics aren't for you.