raspberrywriting

[raspberrywriting]

If you ever find yourself thinking "oh, I can't write this Cool But Impractical thing into my story, it's just not realistic", here are a few perfectly realistic reasons why people and even whole cultures would rather do something in an impractical way rather than the sensible one:

weird flex

religious reasons

religious weird flex (someone decided that they are So Religious that they consider the practical method Sinful, and people got competitive about it)

tax reasons (some ruler put a tax on doing something the sensible way and people started doing the impractical alternative as a legal loophole)

someone wildly powerful and popular preferred doing it that way, and everyone adapted to it in order to look cool

someone wildly unpopular suggested doing the practical thing, and everyone went out of their way to avoid doing that in order to not look uncool

it just genuinely never occurred to them that there is a better alternative, and their current method has been honed to perfection/adapted to the infrastructure so deeply that at this point altering it wouldn't be sensible

[raspberrywriting]

"How do you write such realistic dialogue-" I TALK TO MYSELF. I TALK TO MYSELF AND I PRETEND I AM THE ONE SAYING THE LINE. LIKE SANITY IS SLOWLY SLIPPING FROM BETWEEN MY FINGERS WITH EVERY MEASLY WORD THEY TYPE OUT. THAT IS HOW.

[raspberrywriting]

editing is so fun. I'm learning what the story I wrote is about

[raspberrywriting]

"How do you name your stories" I don't. I stare at the title box until words come to me and then I type them in with no further oversight.

[raspberrywriting]

[raspberrywriting]

In writing, epithets ("the taller man"/"the blonde"/etc) are inherently dehumanizing, in that they remove a character's name and identity, and instead focus on this other quality.

Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!

They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn't know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later ("the bearded man" is much less likely to show up again than "the man with the angel tattoo")

They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she's acting on behalf of the state

They can reveal the narrator's biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator's mind

But these only work if the epithet used is how the narrator primarily identifies that character. Which is why it's so jarring to see a lot of common epithets in intimate moments-- because it conveys that the main character is primarily thinking of their lover/best friend/etc in terms of their height or age or hair color.

[raspberrywriting]

really love dynamics that are like 'it honestly doesn't matter if you view them as romantic or platonic, the point is that they love each other. the type of love is inconsequential, all that matters is that it's there'. gotta be one of my favorite genders.

[raspberrywriting]

One Castiel Quote per Episode 118/136 → 14.14 “OUROBOROS"

[raspberrywriting]

Absurdist time loop where a guy gets stuck in a time loop for absolutely no apparent reason and tries all this crazy shit and dies a bunch of times and completely reforms his life and then suddenly gets spat out the other side on a completely average loop with no idea what he did that finally fixed it and the answer is like. There was this one (1) ant that he kept stepping on every cycle without even noticing and he doesn’t notice on the last one either he just stopped for an extra three seconds bc he dropped something or whatever. And then didn’t step on the ant. Either the ant is a wizard or a wizard enchanted it to live forever just to see what would happen. The point is the man never knows about it. As far as this guy is aware time just stopped working for six months and then just as randomly started again. He can speak Portuguese and play the viola now.

[raspberrywriting]

two characters who understand each other like no one else does and therefore hurt each other like no one else can

[raspberrywriting]

editing is so fun. I'm learning what the story I wrote is about

[raspberrywriting]

tolstoy saying in an 1873 letter that he’d be done with anna karenina “in fifteen days, if god grants me life” and then taking another four years to finish writing it is both hilarious and deeply relatable

[raspberrywriting]

[raspberrywriting]

Ship trope I'd love to see more of: "Are we in love? I mean, yeah, probably, but that's a problem for future us. Right now we're just trying to make it through the Plot."

[raspberrywriting]

hi neil

my mom said when she was watching good omens with me that they should have hired you to be crowley (she thinks david tennat is amazing but she didn’t know you and she thinks you match crowley vibes )

my question here is have you ever wanted to play a character you wrote?

I play them all when I write them.

[raspberrywriting]

when you haven't written for a while and you're intimidated by the project Looming in front of you, you feel like those baby otters that are learning how to swim at the zoo, crying and screaming the whole time despite being perfectly adapted to doing this activity,

[raspberrywriting]

If you're offering writing tips ... I, also, am recently on ADHD meds that aren't really doing a lot for me, and struggle greatly with executive dysfunction. I've got ideas, a world, a narrative, I think there's something to it, but I have an incredibly hard time actually sitting down and typing this stuff out. I get exhausted just looking at Scrivener, except for like one day every 3-4 months where I bang out five thousand words in a night. Do you have any advice on how to actually get it out?

I’m afraid I don’t really have too much to offer on that one.  :(  I’ve got like the worst writing habits; I’ve had to structure my entire approach around my fun brain problems and I also usually only get work done in great big bursts every once in a while.  Best advice I’ve got is to try to structure your approach to writing around your disabilities instead of fighting yourself, that’s what’s worked for me, but I don’t have ADHD so idk how broadly applicable that really is.