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Forbidden Knowledge: if you make a writer feel good about their writing, then they will keep writing.

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fanfic culture has done so many good, amazing things for young writers BUT

it’s gotten to the point people don’t even know they’re writing an original story anymore and thats kind of sad?? like, i see it a lot with roleplayers especially.

“i wrote a fic based on my dnd/pathfinders/whatever campaign and added some og characters and a friend’s character cameos too!”

“so i have this character from pathfinders that i tweaked a little and then added another character from world of darkness with some different traits and THEN i thought it would be cool to throw in a star trek inspired character and make a fic out of it!”

honey that is not a fic. that is an original story. own it. be proud of it. you just created something brand new from your noggin!!! sure it might be based on something, but most fiction is. stories spring forth out of inspiration from other stories, or from liking how a certain world was set up in general so you use that as a base and then craft it into your own.

yall are out here making amazing original stories and building worlds and acting like it’s just silly fanfiction when it’s super awesome original fiction!!!!!

anyway i don’t really know what the point is but these writers are wonderful and i hope they realize that!!

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Beyond this, consider how these professions might vary depending on who the customers are - nobles, or lower class. Are they good at their job or just scraping by? Do they work with lots of other people or on their own? City or village?

For younger characters:

Apprentice to any of the above

Messenger/runner

Page/squire

Pickpocket

Shop assistant

Student

Looks after younger siblings

(Images all from Wikimedia Commons)

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friends, what are your favourite “touch-starved character”;tropes, I need inspiration

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i keep having these, like, incredibly beautiful but also very vague concepts and story ideas that make me desperate to create, but the problem is they’re always very challenging. with enough skill they could be turned into a wonderful work of art, but when i try to really grasp the details so i can write it, i find i’m not able to. i struggle to outline them and i can’t even try writing a thing, i feel like i’m not good enough and the challenge is so big it’s scary

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i haven’t officially started a new project. i promise.

….. i tell myself, as i indulge completely into all the daydreams of yet another wip, carelessly pushing the started but abandoned ones aside

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Stop following writeblrs...

If you start comparing your writing to someone else's and it's starting to affect your confidence as a writer.

If you feel afraid to used words like "said" or "looked" because they've told you they are not good enough.

If you think you should force yourself to make an outline or plan ahead just because you've been told you have to.

If you feel your characters are not interesting or flawed enough, just because they don't fit someone else's requirements of what a fictional should be.

If you are too focused on writing in a certain way to actually enjoy the process of writing.

If nothing you write seems good enough because it doesn't fit certain standards.

If you feel like you are not a good writer because none of those "tips" and "advices" work for you.

Write whatever you want, however you want. Not matter how shitty you think your writing is, I promise you someone will absolutely love it.

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Just a daily reminder from one of my favorite authors.

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Intellectually I want to write, but physically I wanna nap

Why must this physical form have needs

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i see a lot of valid posts about loving your friends’ OCs but 

man you ever just look at one of your own characters and it’s like

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you know that trope where someone pushes their powers far beyond their limits for an extended period of time & when they finally burn out they stagger back and almost collapse from exhaustion but their love interest is there to catch them… hoo 🤧🤧🤧

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i don’t know who’s gonna read this, but if you’re in the middle of a story and you’re stuck, or you’re having trouble finding motiviation to write, remember that one paragraph is still progress! one sentence is still progress! heck, even one word is better than nothing. just write something. one small step forward still counts as moving.

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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. 

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I love the ambiguity of the term ‘WIP’. Is it a project in it’s third draft? A final draft being queried? An idea I came up with six months ago and haven’t written anything about yet? You don’t know. Nobody knows. 

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having been involved in the publishing industry for seven years and having looked at a lot of contracts (my own with my literary agents, friends considering literary agents*, friends teaching me about their publishing contracts, my agent explaining shit to me when i am clueless about any given thing), lemme elaborate more on the “you should never pay an agent or editor to look at your work.”

so a typical agency contract will detail what the agent is representing of yours (most agents are career agents rather than book-to-book agents), the way they’ll represent you in foreign and domestic markets, and any and all fees that might crop up, amongst other details. you will never pay an agent out of pocket. they will receive absolutely no money from you or for you until they’ve done their part of the job: you, the writer, have provided a product (a book, novella, article, what-have-you), and your agent must try to sell your product. if they don’t, neither of you gets any money. that’s why most agents don’t have salaries; their money comes from doing their job by selling your work. domestic agents will 99.99% of the time (i can’t think of a single instance where this didn’t happen, but there’s always exceptions) take 15% of the money you receive for selling a book, foreign agents will typically take 20%, and media rights can vary, though it is still typically 20% (it depends on the agent/agency. my agent sells film rights for his clients, so we don’t pay an outside agent). if any extraneous fees crop up (for example, sending material overseas) your agent will take the money for the fees out of the paycheck you receive (at the same time they take their 15%). publishers send paychecks to your agent first, during which your agent will take their 15%, and then your agent will send the paycheck on to you. your publisher won’t directly send your paychecks to you (apart from special circumstances, but let’s just stick with the norm).

when querying, if an agent or editor (of an indie press, largely, since most traditional publishers don’t accept work unless it’s being sent to them by a literary agent) asks for a reading fee, they are scamming you. you do not pay anyone to look at your work unless they’re a freelance editor, a sensitivity reader, or something similar. then, after deciding not to query that scammer, you peruse this site and this site and spread the word about said scammer.

and i think that’s all there is to say on the subject. i’m surprised i haven’t made a post like this yet, but better late than never! as always, my inbox is open for any questions. :)

* when an agent offers you representation, ask for the agency contract to review before you make your decision (ask for the contract, if the agent hasn’t already offered to share it, as most of them do, during The Call). if an agent doesn’t want to share their agency contract, time to raise your brow and do some serious sleuthing to figure out why they don’t want to share it bc that, my friends, is shady behavior.

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Me: *Makes something OC related*

Me, obsessively refreshing the page: 𝑤hät dø ÿõū thįñk ôf mÿ šōń