#Truly the number of times I've read 'he ejaculated' meaning words meaning not sex is just...

[erisenyo]

13 and/or 14 for the ask game!!

For this fic writers ask game!

13. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Something that hit me at the right time and was phrased in the right way to unlock like 18 other simultaneous pieces of understanding was some advice I stumbled across a few years ago around epithets and when to use them.

It talked about how a lot of times new writers can go overboard trying to avoid the usage of someone's name because they don't want to be repetitive, but then you end up with like, "Zuko" and "the Prince" and "the ravenette", and sentences like "Azula wondered what the other ravenette was up to." And it talked about how things like that stand out to a reader, which doesn't mean not to do them but to do them intentionally.

Why would Azula be thinking of her brother and herself as black-haired in a moment, vs just using his name? Why might Iroh address Zuko as 'Zuko' vs 'Prince Zuko' vs 'the Prince,' and what does it tell us about their relationship or Iroh's emotional state in a given moment for him to choose one vs the other?

It seems relatively obvious in retrospect, but it really got me thinking about the little ways perspective can be built into a narration, and the ways someone's dialogue could convey their state of mind even if they aren't our POV character, and how to build in description and exposition in ways that felt more natural to the way someone would actually think. And then I did a lot of fun deliberate editing in my draft of These Things Written for when Sokka uses 'the Fire Prince' or 'the Prince' vs when he uses 'Zuko' in his thoughts haha

14. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Generally anything that is like totally absolute annoys me haha, because there's always a reason to break any rule as long as you know why you're doing it.

The thing I see the most that I tend to side-eye the most is the suggestion that writers eliminate adverbs and the word 'said' from their vocabulary.

I don't think it's ever meant to be like a blanket statement, but it's often written as such, and I'm a big believer that readers need space to breathe in a story. Some lines just need to be rest lines, and not every word needs to wallop you in the face.

Particularly with dialogue, I find that the dialogue tags can draw attention away from the words and toward the manner of saying them. Which isn't *bad*, but again, its better if its an intentional choice than out of an externally-born need to eliminate 'repetition' and ending up changing a perfectly good 'he said quickly' to a deeply jarring 'he ejaculated' (which...I have seen. More than once.)