#all my other writings are either wips

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Hey, I was just wondering - do you have an AO3? I see you referencing some fics/aus but I don't see a link or anything on your page lol. Love the art btw!! I'm living for the fantasy au rn.

Yes! but its all DC at the moment </3

[bixels]

Posting a sneak-peak of this now because I'm about to be In The Shit school workload-wise, so this'll take me a while to finish.

Doing some character design exploration/expression sheets for Celestia and Luna. Figuring out Celestia's weird ass anatomy while I'm at it.

[cowchickenbeefpork]

My two fanfic wips being 4.6k and 5.5k respectively and non derivative short story wip being 1.2k long who’s gonna clap for meeeee

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

5, 18 & 19 for the fanfic ask!

Hello and thank you for the questions!!

5. first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

“I have to say, Blanche,” Rose says, settling back against Blanche’s side, “I know you explained it to me, but I still don’t get it.”

18. if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

I don't really keep deleted sentences/paragraphs, unless they're full concepts for a scene that I might want to use in another WIP, but I did find a couple of sentences from an early draft of i would have said impossible [...] that got heavily edited by the final cut. I'll bold the parts that got kept in the final work:

"She likes to think she hid it well. She tried to, at least; bit back the most acidic jokes, tried to keep a hold on her sarcasm. It's not her roommates' fault if she's had a bad day, is it? So she tries. She listens, and she's patient, and she's affectionate -- and they seem happy. That must count as a success.

And yet, when she's finally alone in her room and ready to call it a night -- then Rose comes, carrying tea and cookies on a tray.

It's strange. She told Ma earlier that she'd like to be alone tonight, and before the door opened she only wanted to get into bed and forget everything until tomorrow morning. Then Rose came in, and she'd be lying if she said a single hint of her perfume and a single glance at her reassuring smile aren't enough to calm her nerves."

The gist of the passage remained more or less the same, but I hope it counts anyway!

19. the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

I'm not sure I can choose the most interesting one -- I love learning and I've had a lot of fun with every rabbit hole I've found myself in for a fic! The most charming one, though, was definitely the little ornithology detour I went on while I was writing sonata for trio, which was a classic case of 'I only needed to find the right simile to add in this sentence, how the hell did I end up on the Wikipedia page for the American Robin?'. I learned a lot, and birds are so cute -- especially robins!! I had a great time reading about them :)

(I'm not counting my research on karst and sinkholes as a valid answer for this questions, because I already knew the topic well enough, but I did spend a lot of time fact-checking what I wrote. I don't want to spread misinformation!)

[✍️ more fic writer asks!]

[delta-piscium]

blatantly making [DnD character’s] backstory a steddie fic for wip weekend please I am so intrigued!!

oh thank you!!! You have no idea how excited I am that you requested this, this fic is my (very neglected) baby !! (and based on my favorite PC who is a human bard called Max in a modern campaign setting, i just wanted to share that lmao)

“Steve? Eddie?” Someone calls from the other room and they spring apart. “Where did you go?” “Uhh,” Eddie says and Steve rolls his eyes. “Just getting water,” he calls back, “we’ll be out soon.” “Get me an ice cream too,” the someone, who Steve now realizes is definitely Dustin, shouts before he hears the back door sliding open and then shut again.  He waits a couple of seconds to be sure they're alone again and then raises an eyebrow at Eddie. “Uhh,” he parrots. “There’s not a lot of blood in my brain, kinda difficult to think” Eddie snipes back but he’s smiling. Steve tilts his head, “I make it hard for you to think straight?”  Eddie gives him an unimpressed look, “that’s the worst thing anyone has ever said to me Harrington, and I had an angry mob with pitchforks after me.” Steve shrugs, “what are you gonna do about it?” Then he lets a slow smile spread across his lips, and glances down at Eddies ‘no blood in his brain situation’ “big boy.” Eddie’s jaw audibly snaps shut and when Steve looks up he’s giving him a wide-eyed look. ‘Yeah, got him back for that one’ Steve thinks, satisfied to have some leverage back between them.  Eddie closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You are gonna have to stay so far away from me Harrington, or I will jump your bones and traumatize all our friends even more than they already are. Then when everyone has left I will deal with all,” he waves a hand between them, “this.” “You keep calling me Harrington,” Steve points out, “what, no more baby? Sweetheart? Princess?” Eddie turns on his heel.  “So far away,” he shouts over his shoulder.

(very late) WIP weekend (Wednesday)/make me write

[violetsareblue-selfships]

good morning!! <333

[blizzardfluffykpop]

my rational brain: "there are ten other members in tbz to write about"

me "and here's another changmin fic..." 😭😭

[cerealmonster15]

i finally made a folder of my google docs re: twst fics/plannings and looking at the names are so fun bc a lot of them i didnt use the final fic name [if it got published] so sometimes it's just a placeholder [especially if it's just notes/ideas and not a fic] and some dont have a title at all and just auto used the first few words of the doc so i have like

i think only like 5ish of these have their ao3 titles on them / on two separate occasions i named an apple juice fic prompt doc the same thing except for literally just one has an extra ! and they were like 2 months apart......... i even checked bc i thought for some reason the doc duplicated themselves but no, those are just two completely different fics, they just both happened to be Apple Juice Kiss Prompts jvdjfdsljg i didnt do that w/any of the other kiss prompt docs but. whatever i guess!!

it's a fun guessing game on looking at the titles and trying to remember which ones they are. they date back to like 2021 when i moved from word docs to google so i could more easily share them with my friend since i wasnt really publishing anything at first lol.

[inkblackorchid]

Btw. I completed chapter 5 of the WIP in between. I've just been so tired the last few days that I forgot to post about it.....

[untoterxhund]

either gonna remake again in the future and hand out the url privately or gonna clean out the followers list again me'thinks. so if you wanna stay mutuals and plan on writing w/ me in the future when I can actually dedicate time to doing so w/out any stressors or anxiety spikes then please, slap that heart real quick for me.

if not, it was a pleasure to write and talk for a bit and wish y'all good luck on your future endeavors 'n stuff.

[altruistic-meme]

2300 words!! yay!! now THATS more like it. i haven’t even quite reached the end of the opening scene, but i need to go do laundry so i’m going to have to set it down for now :( hopefully i can write more later ;;;;

[st4rguy]

🌹

The hero was always the same, they never changed, a different name, a different time, but they were always the same. that the nightmare knight knew for certain. 

It has been like this for so long, it wont change now, is what the nightmare knight told himself when he returned, every single time he would tell himself that and yet every time he still got his hopes up.

[im-still-watching-anime]

hate when i am finally desperately in the mood to write but none of the wips are hitting right

[causticsunshine]

.

[physalian]

How To Make Your Writing Less Stiff 5

Movement

Dredging this back up from way back.

Make sure your characters move, but not too much during heavy dialogue scenes. E.g. two characters sitting and talking—do humans just stare at each other with their arms lifeless and bodies utterly motionless during conversation? No? Then neither should your characters. Make them…

Gesture

Wave

Frown

Laugh

Cross their legs/their arms

Shift around to get comfortable

Pound the table

Roll their eyes

Point

Shrug

Touch their face/their hair

Wring their hands

Pick at their nails

Yawn

Stretch

Sniff/sniffle

Tap their fingers/drum

Bounce their feet

Doodle

Fiddle with buttons or jewelry

Scratch an itch

Touch their weapons/gadgets/phones

Check the time

Get up and sit back down

Move from chair to tabletop

The list goes on.

Bonus points if these are tics that serve to develop your character, like a nervous fiddler, or if one moves a lot and the other doesn’t—what does that say about the both of them? This is where “show don’t tell” really comes into play.

As in, you could say “he’s nervous” or you could show, “He fidgets, constantly glancing at the clock as sweat beads at his temples.”

This site is full of discourse on telling vs showing so I’ll leave it at that.

Epithets

In the Sci-fi WIP that shall never see the light of day, I had a flashback arc for one male character and his relationship with another male character. On top of that, the flashback character was a nameless narrator for Reasons.

Enter the problem: How would you keep track of two male characters, one who you can't name, and the other who does have a name, but you can’t oversaturate the narrative with it? I did a few things.

Nameless Narrator (written in 3rd person limited POV) was the only narrator for the flashback arc. I never switched to the boyfriend’s POV.

Boyfriend had only a couple epithets that could only apply to him, and halfway through their relationship, NN went from describing him as “the other prisoner” to “his cellmate” to “his partner” (which was also a double entendre). NN also switched from using BF’s full name to a nickname both in narration and dialogue.

BF had a title for NN that he used exclusively in dialogue, since BF couldn’t use his given name and NN hadn’t picked a new one for himself.

Every time the subject of the narrative switched, I started a new paragraph so “he” never described either character ambiguously mid-paragraph.

Is this an extreme example? Absolutely, but I pulled it off according to my betas.

The point of all this is this: Epithets shouldn’t just exist to substitute an overused name. Epithets de-personalize the subject if you use them incorrectly. If your narrator is thinking of their lover and describing that person without their name, then the trait they pick to focus on should be something equally important to them. In contrast, if you want to drive home how little a narrator thinks of somebody, using depersonalizing epithets helps sell that disrespect.

Fanfic tends to be the most egregious with soulless epithets like "the black-haired boy" that tell the reader absolutely nothing about how the narrator feels about that black-haired boy, espeically if they're doing so during a highly-emotional moment.

As in, NN and BF had one implied sex scene. Had I said “the other prisoner” that would have completely ruined the mood. He’s so much more than “the other prisoner” at that point in the story. “His partner,” since they were both a combat team and romantically involved, encompassed their entire relationship.

The epithet also changed depending on what mood or how hopeless NN saw their situation. He’d wax and wane over how close he believed them to be for Reasons. NN was a very reserved character who kept BF at a distance, afraid to go “all in” because he knew there was a high chance of BF not surviving this campaign. So NN never used “his lover”.

All to say, epithets carried the subtext of that flashback arc, when I had a character who would not talk about his feelings. I could show you the progression of their relationship through how the epithets changed.

I could show you whenever NN was being a big fat liar about his feelings when he said he's not in love, but his narration gave him away. I could show you the exact moment their relationship shifted from comrades to something more when NN switched mid-paragraph from "his cellmate" to "his partner" and when he took up BF's nickame exclusively in the same scene.

I do the same thing in Eternal Night when Elias, my protagonist, stops referring to Dorian as "it" and "the vampire" instead of his name the moment they collide with a much more dangerous vampire, so jarringly that Elias notices in his own narration—the point of it being so explicit is that this degredation isn't automatic, it's something he has to conciously do, when everyone else in his clan wouldn't think twice about dehumanizing them.

—

Any literary device should be used with intent if you want those layers in your work. The curtains are rarely just blue. Whether it’s a simile with a deliberate comparison or an epithet with deliberate connotations, your readers will pick up on the subtext, I promise.

[osirisdefencesquad]

snippet of Eîr and Vela, as Sanne is being integrated into the clan

Eîr was used to people being uncomfortable around him. This is what he tried to convince himself, at least.

And it was understandable. It really was! Whether they were uncomfortable because of his attunement to the Void, or the Hive mutations, they had reason. ...It never did hurt any less.

"This new one's an interesting find, for sure" Vela informed him as he climbed up to Eîr. Grateful for something to pull him out of his own head, even if it was talking about what put him there, Eîr lept for the conversation.

"Do you know how she's settling?" he asked the other hunter, shifting from the railing to the bed of cushions, accepting the coffee Vela handed him.

"Other than damn near losing her mind every time she comes into contact with someone void attuned?" Vela winced, offering up his scorched right arm for Eîr's observation "well, for where we found her."

"How is Wraith taking that? hasn't he been invested in the new lights recently?"

"Hard, from what I can tell. Kirach has him out on patrols until we give the all clear"

"...which Eva is working on now. do we know why she has such a strong adversion to Void?"

"Nope. Vias is prying at her -she seems more comfortable with other Awoken- but she's barely a month out the grave."

"So something from her past life. Is Zirne still hanging around Osiris?"

"Yep. they've found some new thing to throw themselves at. Saint projects about a week until Osiris takes a break, and I give Zirne 'round four days. She's already low from the strikes."