#(such as it is)

[bardicindignation]

Flower dance, brought to you by a need to keep my hands occupied in class

[dufrau]

say that im trying to write a fic but i dont know how to start it out bc its like a hard fix to start out like this is me trying to ask for advice? so what would be your advice ig? like what is your favorite way to start out a fic? or the best way to start out a fic? like dialogue? or actions or????

Hello! This is a hard question!

So. First of all. If you're writing something long, I would ask @eskawrites this question. she will probably be more helpful than I can.

But if you're writing something short, it only has to have one idea. There is a thing that is going to happen, and that is what you are writing about. And you can start with that, if you want. You can start with "Robin Buckley is going to kiss Nancy Wheeler today" if thats the main idea. And then you just have to explain the why and let the conflict happen and then let her kiss nancy wheeler or not depending on what kind of story it is.

Or you can start with something different entirely. You can describe the room your POV character is in. You can start with a brief history of the world leading up to this moment that hints at the eventual idea you are getting at or deflects from it entirely. You can start with a random fact about, like, birds, that feels relevant to you.

You can start with dialogue. You can start with action. You can start with "Nancy Wheeler was bleeding out in the snow." and then circle back to how that happened.

If you can't find the beginning, write the middle. Write the scene you are excited to write. And maybe it will turn out that that scene is all you need. Or maybe that scene will tell you what needs to come before and/or after it and/or in the middle of it and that will give you a better idea of where the story wants to start.

Putting a bad sentence on the page is more likely to lead to a good sentence than just staring at a blank page and hoping, so my main advice is to just start writing and then refine it later once you have the vague shape of the thing. You don't need to write the perfect first sentence the first time! You also don't need to write the perfect first sentence ever, because by the time they get to the last sentence most people aren't going to remember the first one.

So my terrible advice is: just start. Just write a sentence and another one after that and eventually you'll have a story of some kind.

[chronivore]

[eraserspiral]

next week will be the one year anniversary of passing my truly fucking awful PhD viva (exam/defence)

decided i'm going to celebrate by finishing the journal article based on my thesis.

surviving out of spite 🤝 fuck you.

[thewatercolours]

Podfic: Chapter 7 of "Lost & Found" by GerbilofTriumph

Another shabby narration of a lovely King's Quest fanfiction, this time an excerpt from one of @gerbiloftriumph's lovely longfics, Lost and Found.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

[stastrodome]

You got nothing to lose.

[inconsistentlywrittensoul]

I want to talk about Buffy and Angel's relationship in Ted (and, I guess, Bad Eggs as well, a little). And I think it's a good time to look at them together - for one thing, at this point, post-What's My Line, I think they are definitely in a relationship, rather than the weird murky situation they were in for most of the early season. And in two episodes time, Angel's going to lose his soul - this is basically the peak of their Season 2 relationship, and also of what I see as Angel's pre-'Surprise' arc, of him gradually becoming less of a complete fucking disaster.

So now in Ted, we see them together as boyfriend and girlfriend, and... well, the scene starts with her talking his ear off complaining about Ted and him clearly bored. It's not as bad as it sounds - he's pretty good in this scene, and gives Buffy some sensible advice. (Ignoring the fact that Ted turns out to be abusive and also a robot, which isn't a factor yet.) This might be the first time in the series that Angel actually seems more emotionally mature than Buffy, and he uses that maturity to be a good, supportive boyfriend helping her through her issues...

But...

This is also a scene where Buffy is very much a teenager and Angel very much isn't. (This is also in an episode partly about Buffy's parental issues, which seems relevant to their relationship but I'd like to ignore for ick reasons.) His maturity is an advantage here, but there's also a clear disconnect between them, and that becomes more apparent as Angel gradually works his way towards being a functional person.

Bad Eggs is similar. Again, we see the positive side of their relationship, in the form of fun makeouts, but we also see the shadow of deeper problems in their relationship from a long-term perspective - the fact Angel can't have kids, Buffy's immaturity and inability to think about the future (for both normal teenager and doomed slayer reasons).

I am glad we get this period of them being mostly happy together, of their relationship mostly working - it's not just all-angsty- melodrama-all-the-time, a common failure state for their relationship and for Buffy as a whole. But even at the best of times, the issues in their relationship are always present - not the grand, dramatic problems that are the focus of Season 2, but the mundane issues that are the reason they ultimately break up in Season 3.

[myrandomscribbling]

Random doodles for fun and profit!

[delivish]

more woofs

i'm so sorry about being a little quiet on here lately, but i'm fighting a terrible, horrible, No Good, Very Bad writer's block right now (and. the seasonal depression, tbh). have a snippet

[elljwalker]

These two losers show up to your inn and say they'll provide the evening's entertainment for 2 gold sticks, wyd?

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

[stastrodome]

When I was young, I played it over and over.

[tllgrrl]

Apparently the reward for finally letting a chapter go, was to punish myself for holding onto it and picking at it by installing wee tassels onto the bottom border of a shawl I knitted, while I was editing and nitpicking the aforementioned chapter.

And yes, that’s a little quilting needle.

[fursasaida]

it has only taken me 5 phone calls to three different entities to get someone to agree to send me an email that will allow me to ask someone for help with my health insurance problem! what a tuesday

[myrandomscribbling]

Hands are just as hard as I was told