#The author is so masterful at storytelling. I'm awed

[tolerateit]

had been meaning to read elena knows for a while now and finally got around to it. need a few days to think about it, dead sure the book will stay with me for a long long time and i definitely recommend it if you want to read something raw, brutally honest and absolutely wonderful

[oatflatwhite]

Whenever I see you post about hbo war I'm always really curious what it is? Is it a tv show? (If so is it good 👀)

ohhhhhh anon okay okay okay okay i am going to be completely normal answering this ask agajdhdjdhd

OKAY SO "hbo war" is more like... an anthology, i guess??? it's what the fandom calls a series of hbo-produced miniseries about war. so far it encompasses band of brothers (2001; wwii western front), the pacific (2010; wwii marine pacific campaign) and generation kill (2008; iraq war). currently masters of the air is in production (and has been since i first joined the fandom in 2015 💀) which will be about the air force in wwii. all the series so far are based on real events, veterans, memoirs etc. so all the characters are people who actually fought in those wars; but they're obviously fictionalised portrayals, turned into drama tv, and each cast has such CHEMISTRY that's why you'll see a lot of shipping if u dip ur toe into the fandom hehe.

band of brothers is personally my favourite, it is the og, it has so many now a-list actors who were virtual unknowns back then (michael fassbender, james mcavoy, andrew scott, tom hardy, damian lewis, even jimmy fallon has a random cameo) and has the most personal involvement from tom hanks (who also directed one of the episodes). like, even if you're not super into war media??? i recommend it SO hard. it's only 10 eps, and though there's a huge ensemble cast each episode hones in on one character and follows them through one aspect of the war. the storytelling, the acting, the cinematography is just... mwah. and not to toot the fandom's horn but some of the best fic i have ever read has been in the band of brothers tag (you want some bourbon i want some oranges by jouissant i'm looking at you!!!) so, yeah.

the pacific is a little different as it has three main characters with different and interweaving storylines instead of following one company through the war like brothers. it's also much darker, more sombre, and with a lot more gore (and band of brothers already has a lot) but it's just as fantastic! generation kill can be a tough sell to people outside the fandom but it's a really nuanced story of how absolutely fucked the war is and the way it leaves you feeling very.... hollow and awful and tender in the final episode (gen kill only has 7) is like. really powerful. again, famous actors in both series who got notoriety later on - james ransome, alexander skarsgard, rami malek to name a few! a lot of people in the hbo war fandom are history buffs and have only seen the two wwii series; but i really do wholeheartedly recommend gen kill because despite the tonal shift it's still very much in the genre. AND has like. one of the best fics i've ever read in any fandom (a pacific rim crossover called you can fight the hurricane, i can't remember the author off the top of my head!)

ANYWAY this got like. long but at the end of the day. yes they have their issues mainly like an entirely male ensemble cast and for the pacific and band of brothers almost entirely white. but i might be biased bc i love war history but like. the stories they are able to tell about humanity and love and loss and grief and violence and gentleness and friendship is just so!!!!!!!! beautiful. gets me every time. i think i've rewatched brothers at least once a year since 2015 and it continues to never miss!

tl;dr hbo war refers to three separate hbo miniseries about war that are all worth watching!!!

[thelegendofjenna]

Jenna!! beloved!! how are you?? I'd love to hear about your list of favourite books (and if you don't mind your thoughts on them) <33 hope all is well 💝

Myle <3 I'm doing well, and I'm even better now that I have your lovely presence in my ask box!

I'm so bad at picking favorites, so this is going to be a pretty haphazard collections of books that I like a lot and can remember right now 😅

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen: My whole adolescence was kind of defined by reading Sarah Dessen books, and I think she's a masterful storyteller in the genre of teenage-girl-slice-of-life. I think Dessen has probably influenced my own writing more than any other author. The Truth About Forever is about grief and finding healing in unconventional places, about discovering who you are beyond the family and trauma that has defined you, and of course it's about a romance with a very hot guy. What's not to love?

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald: I know that this is like the most stereotypical "I was an English major" favorite book, but - it is not overhyped, it's so good. It was the first piece of capital-L Literature that I ever fell in love with. Fitzgerald's language is so gorgeous and even though it's a very short book it packs so much in. Every time I reread it I'm in awe of how good it is.

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Steifvater: There is so much to love about this series. It's deeply atmospheric - I've never been to the hills of rural Virginia, and maybe they don't always feel like they're steeped in an ancient and unknowable magic, but by reading Stiefvater's work I feel like I'm there. The characters are all so well-developed and distinct and I love them. The books meld genres and tropes so effortlessly that they feel unlike anything else I've ever read, while being completely cohesive. I need to reread the series because I've only read the final book once, but I don't think I'll ever get this story out from under my skin.

The Mediator series by Meg Cabot: So I've loved these books since I was like 12, and they have a deep hold on my heart. They're about a sixteen-year-old girl who can talk to ghosts, so in each book she deals with a different spectral conflict while having the larger arc of learning more about her powers and falling in love with the very attractive spirit of an 1850's rancher's son who haunts her bedroom. I recently reread the first two in the series, and while they're not literary masterpieces, I think they're very effective at being what they want to be - fun, fast reads with the right mix of action and humor and teenage drama.

And then I'll give a lightning round of books I've read more recently that I really liked:

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, all three of Sally Rooney's novels, Beach Read by Emily Henry, both Red White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston, and I'm currently reading a book called There's a Word For That by Sloane Tanen that I'm thoroughly enjoying.

Thank you for asking me to ramble on about books, it was very fun 😊

[touchmycoat]

I LOVE YOUR PORN AU!!!!! LIKE SO MUCH - and i'm just. if you don't mind me asking, how - the way you flesh out the characters, their motivations, and feelings in every scene in such an eloquent way, and just little things here and there, a habit or an activity that adds dimension to who they are, and - your prose is wonderful. you achieve this addictive, engrossing narrative space that readers just absolutely melt into, and i have to ask - how did you develop your writing style? 1/2

what books did you read that formatively shaped the way you write? or you know, what did you do to improve your writing? i'm so in awe of how you world-built and established the porn au - like lqg & hc being national taolu champions?? how do you come up with that stuff? i cannot comprehend the amount of research and effort that must've gone into porn au, and i'm just so deeply thankful that you decided to share that with us. i apologize if i'm coming on too strong, but wow. thank you 2/2

--

oh my god please don't apologize, when i saw your ask i rolled on the floor giggling hysterically for a solid 15 min, bless your heart

part of the answer to your question—i've taken like, 8 years' worth of creative writing classes/workshops! there was also a transnational literary component to my degree so whenever possible, i took literature classes fksjdfksd so whatever you see and like is definitely the result of a lot of work. My writing from not even 10 years ago but like, 5? horrid, ridiculous, wild, cringe. The Porn AU itself is the second draft of a MUCH more lackluster piece.

about my writing style. gosh, you really know how to make a writer blush. "I like your writing style" is literally an instant kill LMFAO okay okay, the useful answer: my primary criteria for choosing what to write is, don't be obvious, be interesting. Fiction tells us to show, not tell, right? Poetry is about concretizing the abstract. Screenwriting says cut all useless lines. A lot of writing rules and advice—never start with the weather, avoid detailed descriptions of the characters, don't use adverbs, etc.—are all really about this exact sentiment.

I once took a seminar on writing for horror movies. The golden rule of the horror genre is Never Show the Monster, because whatever the audience is imagining is always going to be scarier than what you actually show them. There are obviously exceptions to this (to all writing rules), but in my mind, it's all the same principle.

LONG answer under the cut

So you start with building a scene. I approach it like essay-writing—I state my thesis for the motivations/main propulsion of the plot. "In this scene, LQG and SY are motivated to save Cang Qiong's porn production, so they have sex on camera." Then you build the sub-motivations: "LQG is also doing this because he's pining after SY."

I learned this "thesis-writing" from theater, specifically from writing 10-min plays. Theater is all about characters being driven by their wants and needs, and the reason I say 10-min plays in particular is because longer forms of writing will give you more leeway, but in 10-min, you pretty much need your character motivations established from their very first line. That's why you need that very clear thesis for yourself—if you don't even know what the character wants from the get-go, then you can't establish who they are, what they want, and where they're going to go in a dynamic and interesting way.

So this thesis drives EVERYTHING that happens in your scene, just like an actual thesis for an essay, just like topic sentences for your paragraphs. Once I do this, I have the emotional direction & narrative scope of how much this scene will cover, I have a sense of where it begins and ends. "Begin with the dynamics of their sex. LQG starts showing signs of his feelings. Reveal LQG backstory for exactly what those feelings are and why he isn't telling SY. The rest of the scene implies that LQG's feelings may not be so unrequited, but also sets up the fundamental problem at the heart of the whole fic—SY's inability to comprehend his own feelings." This is kind of my new thesis now. They're having sex; LQG pines; SY doesn't know he himself is pining.

Now it's time to manifest. This is the "storytelling" part, and the hardest lmfao.

Personally, my approach is largely shaped by my very cool screenwriting teacher, who hammered into us: don't fucking waste lines. The Golden Rule of screenwriting is that every line should reveal something new. I found my old writing kind of repetitive, especially on the emotional front, so this is kind of my editing mantra now—is this line either propelling the story or revealing character? If it's revealing character, is it a revelation that has to happen right now, or is it slowing the momentum of the scene?

But these aren't rhetorical questions! "Momentum" doesn't just mean tumble forward as fast as you can, it also means taking the time to draw the bowstring back further, so your next move has even more propulsion. That's why you get the little "LQG has been in love with SY..." cut scene in the middle of the fucking (at least, that's my reasoning for putting it there). Every line has to bring a fresh revelation that "proves" your thesis further.

That brings me to the details. You said you like the details I inject into the world-building, and honestly that's so gratifying to hear, because that means I'm successfully manifesting my intentions, y'know? "Every line has to bring new info" kind of sounds like a tall order, but the most effective way I've seen it done in books and onstage/onscreen is with these hyper-specific details. If you're writing a scene in which someone feels dirty, never have them just say that—have them say they want to take a shower. Show them running out of bleach again as they scrub down the stall after they wash. Begin the scene like "Steve always washes his throat first now." Then pack the scene with even more revelatory details: "Soap in hand, he heard the pipes above his head groan for a half note on adagio, and readied himself for the blast of icy water that always followed." Shitty shower, probably not rich, is likely a classical musician.

By the same token, I want to build LQG's character. The "Liu Qingge has been in love with Shen Yuan" section is the first insight we get into his background and perspective, right, so: I need to establish LQG's emotional context for filming this scene -> I can characterize him as a nut for martial arts in the same stroke -> so this takes place at a gym, beating up sandbags is a classic way of showing manly emotional distress -> so give me more details on this gym -> Puqi Gym, XL the martial god is obviously the owner -> how do I have XL & LQG a relationship beyond gym owner & client? They spar together -> I want XL & HC's position in this AU to mirror their god/ghost king statuses in TGCF canon -> how can I concretize their fighting prowesses in real-world details? -> they're martial arts champions -> what's an actual competitive martial art form that involves weaponry? -> wushu -> wikipedia Wushu, find taolu weapons sparring

(I just realized that in my songxiao daycare AU, Hualian are Olympic gold medalists by the same narrative logic laksjdnflaksjdnflsd)

So, that's the flow of logic behind my world-building lmao. It's all in the details. Leverage is one of my all-time favorite TV shows and the way they build their stories is super inspiring. If their thesis is "the rich and powerful take what they want, we steal it back for you," they manifest it in the most specific and concrete narratives: mine workers who like the work but are fighting for workplace safety vs. the money-grubbing mine owner who will blow up their livelihoods if it means a bigger payday; the little girl from Iraq with refugee status forced to be an accomplice to antique smuggling vs. international smuggler with a fetish for British royalty.

Last pieces of writing advice I've gotten: pay attention to the real world. A writing exercise we did was just sit in a public spot and make concrete observations on our surroundings. There are stories in everything!!! I learned to observe things like weird holes in the concrete (earthquake? drilling accident? bullet mark?), odd patches of moss or bird shit (look overheard: it's an AC unit dripping water for the former and nesting swallows for the latter), ladies in flipflops walking alongside ladies in high heels (excited mother walking her antsy daughter to the bus for the daughter's first job interview—the daughter's shirt collar is unfashionable and she's taking the bus, so there's a good chance the shoes were passed down, maybe from an office lady aunt. Maybe she's even overdressed for the interview, so will her outfit be an unintended source of tension once she gets to the interview? Is it a group interview, to make the comparison more stark?).

Also, write what you know. You know why SY is a video editor in porn AU? Because I'm a video editor. One of my more popular MDZS fics is set in a plant shop 'cause I worked in a plant shop. SL was First AD in Bachelor!AU 'cause I was First AD on a set once. Concrete details like the editing software having a split-screen, always answering questions about how often to water plants, and being up until 3AM editing call-sheets are the ones that will fully immerse your readers.

And if you can't do the actual things, just watch someone who is, listen to them talk, pick up lingo, and fake it. I watched like a 15-min vox video on fencing for the fencing!AU and a 45-min music theory video on the hospital pianist!AU (also I started learning piano sklfjnlsdjlfkjsd). Of course, I just finished reading a wangxian fic that had me going, "holy fucking shit, the author is literally getting their masters in a music program" so my 45-min youtube video ain't shit, but if you just need a little bit of character establishment, then it's enough to do the trick.

Anyways, tl;dr. Find the details, find the tension. Never tell outright what the tension is supposed to be, manifest it instead. Make the manifestation as interesting as possible, and if it's meant to be funny, make it funnier.

Sorry this turned into a fucking lecture lskjnflskdjnflskd but last thing, someone asked me before if I had formative authors, and this was the list I wrote at the time:

Angels in America (play) by Tony Kushner

The God of Small Things (novel) by Arundhati Roy

The Penelopiad (novel) by Margaret Atwood

“Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out” (poem) by Richard Siken

Night Sky with Exit Wounds (poetry) by Ocean Vuong

Giovanni’s Room (novel) by James Baldwin (and then Go Tell it on the Mountain and then his essays)

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

And, ooh, now that I have this list I think I can even roughly sort it as such: Kushner, Atwood, Siken, and Salinger I really latched onto for their dialogue and very present narrator voice—same is true for Go Tell it on the Mountain. Roy, Vuong, and Giovanni’s Room, I think, are texts more representative of the kind of saturated figurative language I like, and emulate. Of course they all do imagery and voice and overall structure amazingly, but that’s the rough dividing line I’d draw.

But yeah James Baldwin is my fucking hero.

[lee-yan-druh]

Hi. I'm in a reading slump and saw your favorite books almost equal mine, so thought I'd ask for help in finding a new book that I would finally break through and read. I like fantasy, hate love triangles, love historical, and am sick of re-tellings. Thanks, and hopefully that's not to vague!

Hi! Sorry to hear that, reading slumps are awful! I hope I'll be able to recommend some books that you haven't yet read. 😃❤️The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater: I binge-read this series this May and OMG IT WAS SO BRILLIANT. It's fantasy-paranormal, has a lot of unique concepts, has more focus on friendship than romance, though there is a bit of romance, is written beautifully and has plot twists that'll just blow your mind!The Shades of Magic trilogy by V.E. Schwab: I doubt that you haven't heard of them, but I'm recommending them anyway! It's got a simple but wonderful fantasy world, lots of adventure and sass, intense FEELS everywhere and characters that will really stay with you. I read this before The Raven Cycle and I'm still a little hungover! The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: ONLY MY FAVORITE BOOK OF EVER. I'm yet to find anything even remotely like it. Very magical, kind of an adult-fairytale, though not a fairytale retelling, set in the 1800's all over Europe, and has a pretty understated romance. THIS ONE IS A MUST READ!My Lady Jane by Jodi Meadows et.al. This one's a good read if you want a light and funny piece of historical fiction. I was recovering from the flu and in a slump myself when I read this one, and it brought me out of that slump so it might work for you! It's kind of a different take on what would've happened if Lady Jane Grey lived plus there's the addition of people who can shift into animals through some sort of magic! The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Another must read for bookworms! It's a historical fiction book set in Barcelona about a boy who finds the lone copy of a book written by a relatively unknown author with a very mysterious background. It's beautifully written, and it'll really suck you in with all it's mystery. There's a little romance in it toward the end, but that's not really the focus of the book. And there's a lot of talk about how books are magical and all that so that's great!The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant: I read this in high school and I think it's what actually got me interested in historical fiction! It's set in Florence during the Renaissance and it's about this girl named Alessandra and this mysterious painter her father brings home one day. There's a lot of drama and mystery, and a lot of emphasis on the importance of art and beauty. There was just something about it that made me not want to put it down, and I've actually been thinking of rereading it sometime. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman: This one is strangely creepy yet also gives off a magical feel. Simply put it's kind of about a boy whose parents hire a babysitter and this babysitter turns out to be some kind of monster?? I really need to reread this one as well, but I remember it being very mysterious and gripping and having no romance, and Neil Gaiman's a master storyteller so you really can't go wrong with this one!So yeah I hope one of these interests you and gets you out of that slump! And thanks for sending me a message! Happy reading! 😊❤️📚