#also the last bullet point in the outline page !

[roughdraftmonth]

what's the plan? outline methods & tips!

Hey, Rough Drafters!

This is for all the outline fans out there. Here are some tips on different outline structures that might help you while you blueprint your Rough Draft! I hope there is something helpful here whether you are new to outlining or a veteran. This is not a comprehensive list. I totally recommend digging into other narrative structures, seeing how they tick, and deciding what works for you!

✏️ The Hero’s Journey • Created by Joseph Campbell (using the simplified terms from Christopher Vogler)

The Hero’s journey is the backbone of most outline structures. The only difficult thing is a lot of these terms are still derived from classic mythic structure and are less applicable today. However, since it has been so well dissected and discussed, there are so many resources to help transpose the terms to narratives that involve less sword-and-shield-heroism. It might take a little time to understand each beat and what it can mean for you and your story, but this is such a well loved structure and will give your story some solid backbone! This structure is best suited for an adventure story where characters travel from one place to another, but you can get creative about what that adventure or journey looks like. At its most basic, though, the hero’s journey will help take your characters on quests in a far off place—whether it’s in the stars, across the continent, or in a world of your own making.

⭐ Great media examples of ‘journey’ narratives are: Star Wars (pick one really), Little Miss Sunshine, Lord of the Rings, and Life of Pi.

✏️ Save the Cat • Created by Blake Snyder

Save the Cat was originally intended for screenwriting. Its best application is in scripting, whether that be screenwriting, plays, games, or comics. The first and last beats help to set a tone for your story, which is crucial for script writing and opening/ending shots in films, but this concept can be just as important in prose. Consider using guidelines from this structure to plan your first and last scenes before you get to November.

⭐ You will recognize Save the Cat in most films, and you can find beat sheets to match films for example on the Save the Cat website.

✏️ Six Stage Outline by Michael Hauge

This structure is great to keep simple with bullet points or expand for more depth. In this outline there are only 11 beats—6 stages and 5 turning points. Turning points are the highest moment of external conflict. Ideally, internal and external conflict escalate at each turning point. Identity deals with character’s misbeliefs about themselves as the narrative drives them to be their most authentic self. This outline focuses on developing both internal and external struggles. If your story is particularly character-driven, this structure might be the one for you.

⭐ Many stories follow this structure but the one I was taught off of is the greatest movie of all time. Shrek.

Try drawing your arc with notes out on paper. This arc can silly: include dead ends, drop offs, spirals, tangles, anything! This helps visualize the ups and downs of the narrative. Also great to do after you’ve completed outlining for a visual aid.

Sometimes... one outline model is not enough! Mix and match your favorite terms and structures in the manner you feel best assists your narrative structure. Don’t be afraid to make it your own!

Read in your medium (novels, scripts, poems, etc.) and notate pages and scenes where the major beats happen. This really helps engage your brain and makes you more familiar with plot structure!

My favorite method to outline is the MLA outline structure. Using a template like this helps me put all of my ideas into place. I don’t have an excuse for not knowing what to do. This helps lock me in!

✏️ Uh oh, Secret Plantser Agenda!

If outlining the ending first doesn’t work for you, outline everything EXCEPT the ending! Leave something for you to discover once you get there!

Sometimes you need to take a step back. Maybe don’t make a 10 page outline. Maybe make 10 bullet points. Outline as much or as little as you need to.

Occasionally overplanning can cause me to lose the joy in my writing! Make sure to really experiment to find what works best with you and your style! Sometimes that means... making a less in-depth outline. This is a call out post for me (Sarah with an ‘h’) specifically.

✏️ Technically, I like to combine elements of all three of these plot structures, but Michael Hauge’s 6 stage outline is my favorite. It’s a very good structure for adjusting to your outlining style, whether you want to do just the bare bones plot points, or you want to use them as the waypoints as you plot out scene by scene. I like to use the stages and turning points as the headings and subheadings to my outline. I hope these tips are able to help you in your outlining journey, both planner and plantser alike. If you know of any other helpful tips for outlining, please share them with us!

Thanks for tuning in, happy drafting!

-Sarah with an ‘H’

[amelias-zelda-calamity-quintet]

More Writing Advice - MoaH Edition

I got an message (thank you @doubtfulloser) asking for more writing advice, and I figured I'd try to get some more thoughts on the page. Right now I'm not entirely sure what else to add to my current list as more tangible advice, so I'm going to try instead to summarize the energy I try to get with Mark of a Hero, my current ongoing writing project. This is honestly going to be a little funky to word, so bear with me as I try to capture a vibe. This is also mostly about fanfic, but I've applied similar processes to my original works as well. Again, this is what works for me, but I hope it helps.

MoaH is very roughly outlined for the whole series. I know where the books need to go on three different levels: act arc, book arc, and series arc. Some of these are like. Three bullet points long, but it helps give me a trajectory. It helps too that in writing this specific type of fic (Legend of Zelda original legend/AU/there's no fandom name for this yet), I can benchmark the books by dungeons. Each book of MoaH has an introduction arc, at least three "shrine" arcs, a bonus dungeon arc, and a full dungeon arc. Those can be moved around, mostly, into the order they need to be to keep the books a little more varied. That's also a very pulled back way to look at it, but it definitely can help imagine a five act structure that way.

Also, don't worry as much about stories seeming formulaic. If someone knows there's a formula in storytelling, they'll find it. And in telling a story, you're going to see behind the curtains the most. Of course you will see a formula. But if MoaH is an example of anything, it's that playing with that formula can be part of the story itself too. The story sets up very clearly that Link in MoaH is in fact the Hero. But to everyone in the story, they don't know that. And MoaH plays a lot with expectation. Because the reader has expectations from the series, the characters have expectations from living in the world, and there's still the story being told because the premise of the characters being adults at the start of the story already skews expectation (this is why outfits have a huge role narratively as much as mechanically too).

And, if my other major fic, Goddess of Secrecy, taught me anything, it's that as long as the formula is fun (there were 14 dungeons in that one and people stuck through it), who cares? Sometimes a routine can be comfortable. And there's plenty of storytelling out there. You can be the comfort part of it and let other people write the mindblowing formula breaking stuff. (This will also get me into a tangent on accessibility in fantasy but we need more base expectation media too, particularly for adults to get them back into reading.)

But that was a lot more actual writing advice than I thought I'd get so I need to get back to what I said I'd actually talk about and that's vibes. Generally in writing MoaH, I'm trying to capture the energy of Zelda as close to Nintendo as I can. It's the biggest compliments I've gotten that have told me I've managed that in my stories. It's also the hardest to describe, so I'll try to outline the thought process my story beats go through to make sure they reach that vibe:

First, would Nintendo do it? In general, in any of their franchises, would they tell this kind of story? Usually this forces curbing the level of "maturity" of the story (Nintendo has never gone passed rated M), but it means relying on environmental storytelling and implication in exchange. This is the biggest cutoff of them all, but it also means figuring out ways to be more original with the ideas, and usually leads to better stories. To that point, Nintendo has also been a company that has used ever last bit of their tech to make good games, despite limitations. This moderation strives to do the same.

Second, is it fun? If we want to capture the energy of Zelda, even if it's going to include timeline junk, the core of Nintendo's philosophy has always been "make good game first, good story second." Writing an original Zelda novel then needs to have a similar approach. Is the plot focused on the spirit of exploration first and the enjoyment from exploring that world that the games have or on the larger narrative stuff I'm trying to do? How do we balance that better?

Third, how would it play out in a game? This is harder for MoaH because I don't think it could be a game ever. Not because the mechanics aren't there but because of scale (there are 9 countries). Still, in general application, how would the mechanics of MoaH play out. Using RPGs (western and Japanese) as well as TTRPGs like D&D to track power scaling helps a lot with this. The abilities should never be one to one, but as a reference point, this can help. It can also double back into the previous point, would this be a fun section of a game to play? If not, how do I fix that? It's also important on this point to remember how game plots and book plots are differently driven. Game plots can be paced by the player, book plots have to be paced by the author.

Fourth, honestly, can I picture this happening in an anime? Not to be an absolute massive weeb, but genuinely. Having not read Journey to the West (yet), capturing the energy of Zelda storytelling requires looking at Japanese storytelling. And my closest point of entry on that is anime. On what those stories focus on. And the basis of storytelling in Japan, like the Odyssey is in the west, is Journey to the West. From the Sparksnotes version of that I have, that's a higher emphasis on character(s) and interpersonal growth over the journey itself. There are still obstacles (dungeons) that will result in a journey, but the interactions on your three-to-five-man-band are way more central. This is, again, where RPGs can be good reference points. And it's why MoaH always has multiple named characters in the scene as often as it can.

Finally, maybe surprisingly to be last, does it fit Zelda? I mean lorewise generally with this, mostly because, Nintendo does not care about the lore connections between their games. While the timeline is fun to mess with, it should always be secondary to the narrative being built so that the games can be standalone. MoaH can be standalone, even though it has lore connecting it to my other big fic, GoS, and the timeline. The legends have always been loosely strung together. If it can incorporate the lore of another game, fantastic. But it is always the last concern because lore connections have never been the goal between Zelda games. And it's not the goal with MoaH. And to that point, as a narrative element within MoaH, there is reason to believe that in canon, that lore loss is due to time. How stories change over it, how they get recorded, how they get retold, how they become legends over history.

As a last half point to the previous but that paragraph was massive already, is this relying on a Zelda trope as a crutch or does it add to the story? It's very easy to namedrop a character. It's another thing to make them feel like that character in game. I can call my main duo Link and Zelda all I want. Do they feel like them? How are they still original to their plots? I think with MoaH a lot of folks will get thrown off on this one because it starts rivals to lovers. Zelda hates Link (he did also break into a temple and she currently sees him as a criminal). That's kinda antithetical to their whole eternal love story though. So why? Spoilers, mostly. But a huge part of Zelda's personality is following through with how Nintendo characterized her and how I see her growing up as an adult. Personally, I don't know a spirited, politically conscious, highly empathic femme who didn't grow up to be an angry (justified), politically active, still highly empathic adult. Of course she would be mad at Link for a flagrant disregard for the law and disrespect to a holy cultural site for self-imposed vigilantism. There are laws that need to be fixed, but there are systems to fix them (this is also a chaotic good x lawful good relationship).

There is probably a lot more I could break down on MoaH and its structure but it would inevitably give away the entire books and all the major themes. For now, I think that's all I can say (and this is already a lot), but I'll try to circle back on these points after one of the books is all the way out.

I guess, if anything else, read everything. Genres you like, genres you don't, traditional publications, self publications, fanfic, the gambit. If the goal of art studies is to improve your art, then reading is the closest comparison we have for writing. And also, it's ok to be kinda bad at something. That's where we all start. It's ok to be pop fiction, there's a reason it's popular. The more hoops you add to yourself about how original or stylized a story should be or the kind of reputation it's going to have, the more you're going to get in your own head about whether or not you can tell the story. Someone will always find a way to be judgemental. Don't let that someone be you.

[misc-obeyme]

i just had a major breakthrough last night and wrote four pages of bullet points with random plot ideas, scenarios, and dialogue in my sketchbook 😅 IT WAS SO LATE AT NIGHT I CAN BARELY READ MY OWN HANDWRITING

I'm still trying to figure out the proper term, but Solomon is majoring in music composition !! Wiki says his favorite genre is classical music, and I like the idea he would want to create his own. His main instrument is piano !! But he has basic knowledge of guitar and the violin. (It'll be mainly running into the coffee shop together separately and living their lives, but once they get closer, Sol tries teaching me piano because i wanted to learn- THERE'S A BACKSTORY TO THIS AND ANOTHER PLOT IDEA !!!)

Simeon is also studying at the same college, and is writing TSL online. He has his own website, and Solomon creates pieces to go along with scenes in the book. (This is a whole other plot point)

I think right now it's going "Horror Night/Realizations" (the three of them going to see a movie that Solomon was excited to see, end up at a diner afterwards) -> "Burned CD's/Mammon Playlist Drama" (hehehe- WAIT IT'S NOT ANGST, GOTTA CLARIFY THE RECORD STORE DOES N O T BURN DOWN) -> "Halloween Party w/ Asmo" (A vampire, a werewolf, and a devil. What could go wrong? Or right? 👀) -> "Retail Therapy/Talks" (bookstores are a girl's best friend)

I haven't decided what role every character will play, but Levi makes an appearance with the CD stuff, Asmo throws the party and is studying to be a fashion designer, Satan owns a bookstore that I frequently visit (ANOTHER PLOT POINT AHAH), and Lucifer makes another appearance.

i keep writing things down and then getting more ideas and it feels like one big web, BUT IT'S ALL CONNECTED !! This is so much fun !! So technically yes, apprentice ish on the side, and Mammon does confess (kinda). I HAVE THIS PLANNED OUT BUT I DIDN'T WANT THIS TO GET LONG (IT DID ANYWAY), I JUST WANTED TO SHARE BECAUSE I'M WRITING THIS AS I GET READY FOR WORK AJDJJSD OKAY BYEEE

- ✨ anon

Wow this really is turning into an epic love story for the ages!! I love it lol!

Ohhhh music major, eh?!? My main instrument is also the piano! What a coincidence! Okay, actually, that's really easy to figure out considering my OC is a music demon and he is also known for his piano skills alskdfj. But Arsenios is a demon so he has magical talent that allows him to play any instrument. He's like everything I wish I could be as a musician lol!!! But anyway, got a bit sidetracked there, sorry. I love Solomon as a composer. That just feels like something he'd get lost in, you know? Music can be simple, but it can also be really complicated. And just imagine that guy getting lost in writing some kinda orchestral masterpiece... Or if he did a little conducting too, that baton is basically a magic wand...

Anyway, I love how we're getting all the other characters involved now, too!

See, you've already got the timeline, too!

I mean, what you're doing right now is basically outlining a story! I never outline anything because I am a degenerate, but that's exactly the kinda thing that a lot of people do before writing. So you're setting yourself up for success, I'd say! I mean, it's all whatever, writing is a personal process!

I'm loving your ideas and I'm loving the enthusiasm!! This right here is exactly why I write - because it's fun!

I hope you continue to enjoy coming up with ideas and if you do decide to write it, I hope you enjoy yourself!!

[ashweather]

Daily RPG Readings

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, Part 1

So! I'm part of @anim-ttrpgs book club on discord, and right now we're reading through Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy! Right now, as I do a second readthrough of a rule book, I'm posting my thoughts on my daily reading. Hopefully, I can have a log of my thoughts for plenty of rulebooks going forward.

For day one, I dropped down to page 8 (where the main body of text begins), and read up to page 28, stopping at the heading "Rolls, Investigation, & the Eureka! System."

We start off with the usual housekeeping, introducing players to the system, what it's for, and what materials one needs for play. Of particular note to me in this section is the "Quickstart / What Do You Need to Read" heading, which is not a feature I've seen very often in TTRPGs. Its a very useful feature, and I'm always glad to see it, because it means the designers are interested in facilitating all players being knowledgeable about the system before play. As a forever GM, its also really nice to see the book encourage players to help lighten the workload! Its also extremely nice to have little bullet-point summaries available at the end of each section so the reader can quickly review what they've learned.

After the changelog and small "Quick Terms" section (I appreciate it being small by the way, frontloading too much terminology right out the gate can get overwhelming or boring), we move on to a discussion of what types of stories or adventures one can play with the *Eureka* system, as well as an outline of a few different game styles and how compatible they are. Long term campaigns, episodic campaigns, episodic anthologies, and one-shots are discussed as options, with a note that long-term, single story campaigns may be a difficult fit for the system or require a lot of extra work. Notably absent is my favorite structure for mystery games - the miniseries! A miniseries is a small, tightly focused story told over the course of 4-8 sessions, and I find its a structure that gives mysteries and characters room to breathe while requiring that a story maintain its focus and a relatively tight pacing.

The last section begins with the heading "Consequences, Making Rolls, and Modifiers. This is definitely the most crucial section to understand so far, as it outlines the primary dice & roll mechanics in *Eureka* - the lifeblood of most TTRPGs. *Eureka* uses a 2d6 system with three degrees of success: Full Success, Partial Success, and Failure. Anyone who's played a *Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA)* game will recognize this roll structure (although it is one of the *few* things *Eureka* shares with that system), and it remains a very solid baseline for determining the outcome of dramatic scenes in my opinion. Having an additional option other than binary success or failure, and having 'Partial Success' be the most common outcome of a roll is a very smart move, ensuring that the outcome of rolls is more dynamic and minimizing the odds of bringing the game to a shuddering halt with one bad roll. There's also a note that **the consequence of a Partial Success or Failure should be obvious before a roll is made,** and this is an extremely important thing to stress in my opinion, especially to an inexperienced GM.

I'm adding one last section to discuss modifiers specifically. There are two types of modifiers - Base and Contextual. Base modifiers come from the character sheet (as a result of skills, traits, etc), and **is** limited by Composure (we haven't learned about this system yet). Contextual modifiers come from the situation at hand in the narrative, and are **not** limited by Composure. Also, rolling double 1's will be a Failure regardless of modifier, and rolling double 6's will be a Full Success regardless of modifiers. This is mostly pretty standard stuff, but there's also a note that any modifier higher than a +7 is irrelevant to a roll. This will become a trend going forward, of *Eureka* being pretty transparent with players about its math.

[presidenthades]

I am doing very minor revisions of Daemon’s Handbook (mostly formatting and continuity errors), and I wanted to do some behind-the-scenes commentary before too much time passes and I forget my original thoughts. Here’s Chapter 11!

(Note that these commentaries aren’t canon to the verse until/unless the author writes them into the series. I might change my mind on a few points later, but these are the thoughts I had while writing.)

In my early outline, the big scandal in the last chapter was supposed to be Luce and Aemond getting caught in flagrante by somebody aligned to Otto (the servants’ passages scene in Chapter 9 didn’t happen in this version). I was writing it as a parallel to the Episode 4 brothel scene, so I was going to have it take place in the city somewhere, and there was going to be a lot of drama with Luce and Aemond being forcibly separated while Daemon searches for Luce. But the pacing was off and the necessary sequence of events was too contrived, so we got the version that currently exists in the fic.

I kept wondering if it was plausible Clement Celtigar to be stupid enough to unwittingly act as Otto’s lackey. I decided the answer is yes. I try not to character bash, but the Celtigars make it too easy. 😭 Seriously, read about them on the ASOIAF wiki (and look at Edwell and Bartimos’s pages).

I imagine that Otto pretended to be more familiar with Rhaenyra’s side of the family than he actually is, and he dropped some hints (without outright saying it, because like Daemon thinks in this chapter, young men want to believe they come up with their own ideas) that Luce favors Clement, and that she enjoys visiting the library late at night. Then Otto had the note forged in Aemond’s handwriting and left it for Luce. I’m sure this scheme was a lot smoother and sneakier than my bullet points can convey.

I picked the library as the setting so I could play with the trope in a lot of Aemond/OC fanfics (which I really enjoy! But I also enjoy flipping tropes) where Aemond and his love interest rendezvous in the library.

ASOIAF has names for hours of the day (eg hour of ghosts), but GRRM hasn’t revealed all the names. So I extrapolated names for all 24 hours of the day. “Hour of the cat” in the forged note is 11PM.

I spent a while debating how badly Luce injures Clement. I considered making it a lot more grievous (with a knife involved, as a redux of Driftmark), but that would have drastically darkened the story’s tone and changed the fallout from the event. So Clement gets away with a bit of testicular torsion, which Dr Google tells me *can* be serious if not quickly given medical treatment.

Bartimos comes close to calling Luce a whore. If he said it, Daemon would probably have given him the Episode 8 Vaemond treatment. Again, that would’ve been a very dark tonal shift, so Barty stays quiet.

Clement wants 8 sons and 2 daughters because a crab (his house sigil) has ten legs total, two of them being pincers. But Luce doesn’t care about the symbolism, and she ain’t having that many kids.

Normally Luce would have sneaked off alone to meet Aemond in the library. But she brings Rhaena because the argument with Daemon is still fresh, and she’s smarting from his (reasonably accurate) accusation that she doesn’t think enough with her upper brain. So in a strange way, Daemon’s diatribe benefited Luce because if she’d gone alone, there wouldn’t be any witnesses to defend her.

Daemon’s snooping around the girls’ letters is also proving to be surprisingly helpful several years later! If he hasn’t read Aemond’s letters to Luce, Daemon wouldn’t notice the handwriting discrepancy.

Daemon spends the entire fic paranoid about Hightower schemes, and he’s FINALLY right! He finally gets validation! 😂 But he also has zero evidence, literally just gut feelings and vibes.

Baela has been having a great time with Cregan Stark (who canonically has a thing for bisexual tomboys). The Northerners are staying around longer than most wedding guests because the distance is so far, so Baela has plenty of time to keep seducing him. By the time Cregan leaves, I imagine he’s going to make an offer to Baela, but she’s going to put him off for a while longer; she’ll *probably* accept him eventually, but she’s not sure Moondancer will like the cold.

After Daemon confronts Aemond, Aemond goes to the Tower of the Hand to confront Otto. I’m not sure what exactly they say to each other, but afterwards, Aemond tears his room apart looking for the present he planned to give Luce three years ago. I don’t know where he eventually finds it, but it’s probably a laughably obvious spot he totally overlooks at first.

Jace has already been setting up a gossip/whisper network in the Red Keep, so she’s able to hear first thing the next morning about the library incident.

I like Paddy Considine’s take that Viserys *does* have the “blood of the dragon,” he just forces himself to control his temper because he’s trying to be a good king. Also, when he’s a walking corpse in Episode 8, he has the wherewithal to draw his dagger and threaten to cut out Vaemond’s tongue. Viserys would 100% call for Clement to be gelded and gossipers to be silenced. So, for once, Viserys strongly approves of Daemon’s violent streak. 😇

I spent a while debating Clement’s punishment. He kissed Luce when she didn’t want it, which, for most girls, would unfortunately be swept under the rug since he’s the heir to a notable house. But things are different with the royal family. Luce doesn’t want an unnecessarily cruel punishment; she was friendly with Clement until recently, and in Chapter 7, she’s restraining Aemond from violence against Ulf. Even though she’s quick to defend herself by any means necessary, she’s by no means a sadist. She was also deeply affected when Aemond lost his eye (which she partially blames herself for), which leads to her resisting punishments that involve maiming.

Jace also advocates for less violence, but not because she’s a softie. She prefers the diplomatic route, which is harder if you’re trigger-happy to forcibly amputate your vassals. But she knows a monarch has to make hard decisions sometimes, and she’s willing to do what it takes. For example, if Clement had done worse than kiss Luce, Jace *would* want him to be gelded, and she’d have no qualms about it.

Helaena did not have a vision or prophecy about Aemond and the book. She just saw him panicking in his room and figured out what he was up to, because she’s his sister and she knows him. 😂 And because she knows him (and Luce) so well, she can deduce they’re probably going to patch things up, so she packs his bags for him.

No God’s Eye duel in this verse, but I couldn’t resist slipping in a reference about Luce jumping into Vhagar’s saddle 😭

ASOIAF book readers can probably deduce what Joff’s candle is. And that’s all I’m gonna say about it until we get Joff’s POV. 👀

Joff kisses Daeron’s cheek purely to distract Daemon from asking more questions about the candle. Daeron is now very confused. I like to imagine he runs off to Jace and Aegon’s room screaming “Aegon, Joff kissed me, what do I do????” But Jace and Aegon are newlyweds so Aegon isn’t going to appreciate Daeron’s interruption 😂😂😂

That’s it for the Handbook commentaries! Fingers crossed that I have an update this weekend about my next fic in this AU-verse. 🤞

[calcedon79]

:D :D 20 + 58 + 77 for my beloved Butterfly Universe

That was fun! (and I avoided working on my WIPs, also a plus)

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

Definitely. Sometimes when I'm proofreading I think: Hmm, I've read that somewhere before. (Yes, you published the same words in a chapter last week. Oops.)

Also, many scenes are set in forests. I'm a child of the Westerwald and I feel most at home in wooded areas. So my characters have to go into the woods regularly. (Doesn't matter. It's supposed to be very healthy.)

58. What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? (Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etc)

I wish the answer was "writing". But, alas, it's not. It's definitely outlining. I've written dozens of blocks full of bullet points. Hundreds of pages. And as soon as I decide to formulate an idea properly, I lose interest. Horrible. Annoying. The only exception so far has actually been the butterfly universe.

77.  Do you have a favorite scene you’ve written from [Fanfic Name] story/chapter?

Yep, I have. A wonderful, dramatic h/c scene that I dig out every now and then when I have a writer's block. Do I ever publish it? Maybe in the butterfly effect, but then it would be “fixed” and I can't play with it anymore, pretty it up, change something here and there, add something....

Okay, actually I could, but it's not the same as keeping it on my shelf like a little treasure and looking at it from time to time, polishing it and putting it back very carefully. When it's published, it's like a work of art on display behind thick bulletproof glass in a museum.

[thief-of-eggs]

HI Ok this is probably going to sound completely unhinged but bear with me: I have this issue where I have lots of ideas (usually very vague ones) for stories that I love to imagine writing—but when I actually get around to writing them I just stare at a blank page; or I have no idea for plot beyond some abstract concepts—I’ve been thinking a lot about Snowjanus recently, and—this is the unhinged part—one of my main interests is early American history and there was this guy named William Strachey who was the secretary of Jamestown, and also an attempted poet, and when I read TBOSAS I realized that I recognized the name Sejanus from one of his poems VPON SEIANVS, which was prefaced to Ben Johnson’s Seianus His Fall,—and it all just works so nicely together since they were contemporaries of Shakespeare (AND Seianus His Fall was performed at the Globe, and Strachey’s story of being shipwrecked very likely inspired The Tempest) who of course wrote The Tragedie of Coriolanus—now thematically or narratively I have no idea how these things would all fit together—I have a lot of other random ideas like that, or vibes but nothing concrete—this is basically a long-winded way of asking if you had any advice on how to go from “man this idea sure would be neat” to an actual story? (I’m obsessed with your writing btw <3)

Hi hi!!! I am happy to help!! Also I understand exactly what you mean- I only hope that my advice actually makes sense!!!

Ok so- for me personally, when it comes to getting rough ideas out onto a page, I have a couple different methods I follow:

- The first is, if I already have parts of a whole scene in mind, but I don’t know the beginning/ending, I often just write the part that I know. So if that means writing the climax for a story, even though I have no idea how I’ll get the plot there? Oh well. At least the idea is out, and often times that will inspire me more.

- If I have a hazy idea but no plot yet, I like to write out little bullet points. Sometimes bullet points as simple as: (using my fic Thoughts of you Consume as an example)

- Coryo and Sejanus begin to have hate sex

- Coryo starts to feel something more

- Sejanus pulls away. Coryo chases after

Like! Those bullet points give me NOTHING. But they also give me a baseline to begin working off of, and from there I can begin to envision where I want it to go. I’ll expand on each bullet point and add subcategories, which only helps make the plot outline grow

- Another method that I sometimes use is to just spitball ideas. I’ll set a timer sometimes, or just devote myself to the task, and will just write out any ideas that come to mind with a particular prompt, and then I take it from there. Example for the prompt “snowjanus first kiss”, I may write out stuff like this:

- Coryo kisses Sejanus after the arena scene, his emotions a whirl

- Sejanus kisses Coryo on the train, too damn happy to see him

- Their first kiss is a dare, and Coryo wont back down

- Sejanus kisses Coryo after a party, when they’re both mildy drunk and confused. Sejanus forgets it, but Coryo never does.

Then from there, I’ll examine each little start and see what I like best. In this scenario, I really like the last one (shoot now I’ll have to turn that into a fic lolol) so my next step would be to outline the plot. When does the party take place? How long does Coryo hold the knowledge in? Does he ever tell Sejanus?

And most importantly- how do I want the story to end? With them together? With Sejanus hanging? With the start of the 10th hunger games?

- One final method I do is daydreaming. I’ll put on a playlist inspired by the pairing and see where it takes me (thoughts of you consume was actually inspired by 2 songs- War of Hearts, and Howl by Florence + the machine). I’ll let my mind make whatever connections it wants to make, and I’ll jot down ideas as they come!

Sorry for the overly complex answer- I guess at the end of the day, I really have no tried and true method. It all depends on how inspired I am.

But I hope one of these methods can be useful to you!! The biggest thing I think is to not be afraid of writing stuff that you may end up discarding. If a connection doesn’t work, if a plot point doesn’t fit- it’s ok to scrap it!! It sucks to lose time, but if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit.

I’d definitely recommend that you write out all the ways that Snowjanus connects to the historical elements that you said! Determine if you want to write some sort of crossover set in old times, or if you want to bring historical figure’s personality traits onto the characters of Sejanus and Coriolanus.

So yeah! I hope this helps, and feel free to reach out with any other questions!!! Sorry, my brain is quite a mess lol, but best of luck to you!!

[ashe-delta]

Last quarter I had this displeasure of having one of my classes get bait and switched from an English class to a class about using ChatCPT. That means I've technically taken a college level course on ChatGPT, making me far more qualified than I really wish I was on the subject, meaning I can "flex" my knowledge here.

For the record, ChatGPT is fine. There's no such thing as soulless art or writing, that's literally just Nazi rhetoric. The issue with AI is it's a misinformation machine, it'll take away a ton of important jobs, and it'll create a toxic environment for creators if not used for good. (And given the tech industry is using it, that's very likely!)

If you want to know what ChatGPT is actually useful for, it's creating summaries. They aren't great summaries, and I cannot stress this enough, it's not exactly responsible to say you've "read" an article when all you did was feed it to a machine which gave you the bullet points. But, like, as long as your on both sides of the machine (carefully tuning the input and the output) it's mostly fine.

Probably the most interesting assignment in that class was an essay compiling research. It didn't require a ton of work, mostly just comparing sources; you don't even need to have a super fleshed out point. The catch was that the professor provided all the sources—all of which talk about the downsides of AI, which I can respect. These sources were massive, talking 15-30 pages, and all of them full of the scholarly gatekeepy language that academic writing is known for, and there was 25 total. And you needed to use 18. For 7 pages! That is a lot of fucking reading for a college level course on an assignment we realistically had two weeks to do, especially academic reading.

The idea, then, is to not read it. The workload is too high on purpose, so you have to use a machine somewhere in the process to make it faster. So, make the AI read it. Again, this is not some high stakes academic paper, its just combining a bunch of sources together to make something slightly coherent. So if the AI can summarize the points, you can make the essay much faster than if you didn't.

From here, the prof expects you to just copy and paste the writing from the AI, but I wouldn't do that. That isn't what I said was "mostly fine", after all—carefully tuning both the input and the output. A human on both sides. What I'm proposing is to take what the AI said, and to make sure it's, you know, coherent, and make it into something better by actually analyzing it and doing comparisons yourself. I likened it to a "writing calculator". It gets something that's close enough that you can finish the job. But it's never always quite there. And it doesn't need to be! That is literally your job.

You can see where the main struggle with AI right now is, then. People are just taking the output at face value. The final product, push it out, don't check for misinformation, fire your staff, and let the AI do the job. It knows what its doing, after all. But it doesn't. It's essentially just a toddler babbling, guessing what's probably good enough.

One of the best things I've done to help my writing is to just create a summary of what I'm going to write. Instead of staring at a blank page, I'll write a 3 sentence summary of what I want this scene to be. Then, sentence by sentence, I can deconstruct it and add all the details back in. It's basically (totally) an outline, but the key thing is I already wrote exactly what I want, I just have to spice it up and give it life. The hardest part of writing, after all, is staring at that blank page. Anything is better than nothing.

You probably see where this is going, but AI is pretty decent at putting anything onto the page. It's also pretty good at writing pretty shitty. That's where you edit the summary that it's provided and make it something actually worth using. In academic writing, this would look like not letting a single word of it touch the page (also, because that's plagiarism, as its not your words). Instead you take it's thoughts, compare it to the sources itself (you're going to have to at least skim the sources to make sure its right). Don't do this in a high stakes academic writing environment, but lets be real, your 100-200 level courses aren't it. In creative writing, this is essentially just putting a prompt in and using it as a guideline or outline for the writing. Again, not letting its words hit the page.

This approach to writing with ChatGPT shocked my professor, which is weird, because I figured it's kinda the normal way to write something? You wouldn't let someone write your paper, but you would let someone tell you how a source might be useful, even if you need to double check its right. He's even thinking of changing the class to better fit this human on the input and output angle, which is deeply flattering. But it also goes to show just how volatile the market for AI and ChatGPT is right now. No one is actually sure how to use it right, everyone is just guessing.

All this to say, AI is not the devil. It is being wildly misused and no one can deny that, but the AI itself isn't at fault (although it's databases could be sourced a little better than that). It's the people using it. I have no plans to use ChatGPT in the future for, well, anything, but I can't discredit it completely, given it was actually helpful.

Now stop using it to automate things that DESPERATELY need a human in the production line.

[bbygirl-aemond]

do you have any advice for planning out the story and each chapter? im trying to plan out this fic idea i have but i don’t really know how so i thought i’d ask one of the best ao3 authors i’ve seen

oh bby i'm about to go into SO much detail that i'm sure you didn't ask for but here we go! i've spent countless hours of my life on fic planning, and it usually goes entirely unseen by y'all! i'll try to use parts of my earlier planning for stormbreak as an example so as to avoid spoilers while giving you the ability to see how the plans translate into the finished product. this will also give anyone who's interested a cool behind-the-scenes look at how some of stormbreak's chapters evolved from my earliest notes!

i organize all of my planning in google drive, and i have several distinct stages i go through that increase in detail the further along you go.

at the broadest level, i have two documents that i use for brainstorming. one of them, called "snippets," is miscellaneous little half-thoughts and snippets or late-night ideas. it includes both scenes and characterizations. it's basically little notes and reminders to myself. these snippets can usually be worked into the fic at mostly any point. this document is pretty long; about 50 pages. here are some examples of the types of things i put in this doc, including something that inspired a scene later in chapter 11:

the second brainstorming document is called "scenes." this is basically a list of every single interaction and moment that i want to happen. each line of text will represent one of the povs that will end up in stormbreak, with usually 2-3 povs per chapter. each sentence is super brief, like max 10 words, and i'll usually spit them out without regard to chronology since some scenes can be worked in anywhere.

now beginning to put things together i have the document i call "chronological events." here, the scenes are all put in a specific chronological order. i'll assign chronology to certain scenes that have chronological flexibility. and each scene will be expanded into 3-4 bullet points that get at how this scene will advance the plot (through politics, characters, or relationships). here's an example of what this looked like for the scene that became alicent's pov in chapter 12:

and for the scene that became aemond and daeron's povs later in the same chapter:

the "chronological events" document is what i reference first any time i'm going through the planning process for a new chapter. it reminds me of what i need to accomplish with the chapter.

so now let's say i've looked at this document and want to proceed to the initial outline for the chapter. i write these in documents within a folder called "short chapter outlines," and each document is titled "short chapter X outline," with X just corresponding to the number in the actual fic. this will expand the bullet points from "chronological events" into an a few actual paragraphs, and add in some extra padding that isn't strictly plot-relevant but helps to build out the scenes. this is an example of what this looked like for the scene that became aemond's pov in chapter 2:

you can also see that this doesn't always end up being fully translated into the end product. in this example, i changed the events towards the end when writing the actual chapter because it made more sense to me.

okay now we go onto the last stage of planning before i write the actual chapter: the long outline. just like with the short versions, i keep these documents in a "long chapter outlines" folder and each doc is titled "long chapter X outline." it further expands upon the short outline; i'll put the short outline on the left half of the screen to look at it while i write the long outline on the right half of the screen. this is basically me stream-of-consciousness writing the chapter. the goal is to get the entire scene hammered out, pretty much paragraph by paragraph. if there are any particular descriptions, lines of dialogue, or even brief moments that i get stuck on, i write them in shorthand and don't worry about making them pretty. here's an example of this, from the scene that became aemond's pov at the start of chapter 6:

you can see that i expanded on most of these paragraphs and polished the sentences between this and the final chapter. but also that the level of detail here is really high.

lastly, we have the actual chapter, which i write based off of this long outline. i put the long outline on the left side and the chapter itself on the right side of my screen so i can see both at once. i write all of my chapters in microsoft word because that's the format i've written stories in since i was a child and it's where my creativity works best for whatever weird reason. the chapter always stays very true to the long outline, but as you'll see if you compare the long outline above to the actual chapter 6 i do add in a bunch of extra detail. the long outline is usually between 4,000 and 5,000 words and 10-15 pages, while my chapters are pretty much upwards of 9,000 words and 20+ pages. so it about doubles in length at this step.

i do most of my editing (switching certain lines and paragraphs around) as i write this first full draft of the chapter. so when i'm proofreading, i'm only ever checking for errors and seeing if i want to replace any words or phrases with a better idea. this last step usually doesn't take me more than a hour.

from there on, you guys are familiar with the end result! as a note, the "chronological events" and "short chapter outlines" are all fully completed for this story! i prefer to finish this level of planning before even beginning to seriously write. it helps me to lay the foundation for my plot twists from the very beginning of the fic!

[sweetsweetjellybean]

Wait how much do you have already written? Earlier you said you had an artist appearing in the penultimate chapter for a cameo.

Is it already written or is it mostly bullet points on pages for the corresponding chapters?

I love this story!!!

I outlined and planned each chapter before I started writing it, but I'm writing it as I am releasing it. Right now, I'm editing the 5th chapter. Which needed deeper edits that I originally thought, so it's a little slow going, but I want to get it right.

So yeah, Chris Cornell will be in the second to last chapter. The ending has been very clear to me since the start. It's always the middle that gives me trouble.

I originally thought that I could tell this story in short, almost blurb like chapters, once again proving that I'm a complete idiot. I think it will probably be close to novel length when it's done. Then, I have a few cute scenes that I may write as follow-ups. And we have Sail-Steves story next. That's supposed to be a one-shot. You can come back and laugh at me if it's not.

But I also have my a Season 5 AU titled Seperate Ways that I've started and rewritten a million times. I'd like to get that finished once and for all before the real season 5 drops.

This is probably a much longer answer than you anticipated. Sorry, I'm sorry. Sorry, I suck.

Thank you so much for reading and asking. Love you!!!!

[blackered]

my journey in DST modding: day 5

the "Tale of Tails" continues. i decided to bite the bullet and just redraw Zakaria's tail to look exactly like the template's so the animation wouldnt break. and it looked terrible. i tweaked it a little so it didnt look as bad but it's still fucking weird.

i also remade the braids to look significantly shorter, but it also looks weird.

.

this is how she looks with the "proper" pivot points (not counting the layer thing):

.

and this is how she looks when i reset the .scml file:

as you can see, everything is all over the place, i still havent figured out HOW to change the layer hierarchy OR the pivot placement in a way that matters.

.

im kinda reaching my breaking point tbh.

i did some other stuff i didnt care to screenshot, like reposition the head a little higher (almost unnoticeable) along with the face, redid some facial expressions and made a horn-less version of the head so it didnt clash with the hats. does it make physical sense? not really, nobody takes their horns off so they can wear a hat, but im definitely not gonna bother coding her to "be unable to wear hats" or something like that.

.

i added her name in gold to the character page, it looked really good but suddenly it stopped showing up (i now know it's the autocompiler's fault, at least it's fixable)

.

this is how we're looking in-game now (i resized her but she still looks horrible with a hat):

this fucking tail is getting on my nerves. i didnt wanna resort to this, but i guess im just gonna draw it on the tail-0 file and leave it as a single piece. it was worth the try, i guess.

.

but the "Tale of Tails" is not over!!!! i still have to fix the back view. i spent some more time searching in the Klei forums and while some posts were promising, most of them were just people with the same problem as me and no answer.

also, the braids count as pigtails i guess? theyre on the pigtail layer.

.

now, i found someone who said the only way to change layers is changing the animation itself. i have no idea how to do that but let's keep going i guess.

.

i sent the links i found to my friend in hopes that he can decode what the posters are saying cause my brain's already turned into a pile of goo.

.

probably the last thing i'll do for the day: redraw the tail, then take a textured brush and make the outlines of all the parts significantly thicker so she doesnt get swallowed by the environment.

.

so! end of the post, this is where im gonna stop. most of the art issues are fixed, i probably wont have to think about it two days from now.

[andiwriteordie]

hi andi :) i love your writing sm and i saw someone else ask you for writing tips, but…i’ve always wondered how to make an outline? especially a really detailed one, like the one you described in another post. i always struggle with longer fics bc i don’t know how to make a good outline, and it sucks! i was wondering if you have any tips to help with that? <3

hi hello!!! 😊💖

so, i don't really know if there's a set way to write an outline, but i'll go ahead and share my methods for it if that's okay?

as a warning, i've always been someone who's had to take very thorough, detailed notes in order to fully understand or like retain anything. i was that way all throughout school, so i definitely think my outline reflect that... again, these are just my processes!

ok, so first i kind of use my outline as just a place to dump ideas as they come, if that makes sense? so right now, i've got a couple in progress outlines that i just don't have the time to flesh out yet, but as i get inspiration, i just throw those ideas into there and know i'll come back later... which is part how i end up with massive docs at the end lol.

take the outline piece by piece. so, when i say "wow i wrote a 90 page outline for this fic bc i'm crazy" obviously that took me a while and i didn't like... conceptualize it all at once? if that makes sense? i had the basic skeleton idea of what i wanted, then i just broke it down into smaller pieces from there. for me, on long fics like i know better (but you're still around) or i'll find a new place to be from, what i have done is go chapter by chapter (naturally) and then i do section by section. for these two fics, i found it easiest to allow myself 3 sections per chapter. so now, you kind of have a marker of "okay, i'm on chapter 5, section 2" and can give yourself goals and have a better overall framework for the fic!

okay, now more on the sections themselves (part 1): this one is kind of just funny, but i like to give my little sections names. usually they're just key words for me to remember what the hell i'm supposed to be talking about in this section (the way that my chapter titles also provide that frame of reference for me). so for example (sorry i'm not trying to be like ooh look at my fics! just like. it helps me with explaining to give examples lol), in i'll find a new place to be from, chapter 6 is called "The Vision" and section 3 on my outline was called "Into the Upside Down" because i literally decided/had in my mind that i wanted that last section to lead into chapter 7, which is their adventures in the upside down. even when i hadn't fully written that section out yet, i knew the main point of that scene was to have the party first venture into the UD... which leads into my next point.

for me, breaking things into sections like this (as opposed to winging it - which i often do on oneshots but don't really recommend on long fics) literally helps me break down what scenes need to be written. so, i ask myself things like: what are you trying to accomplish in this chapter? where does this chapter fit into the overall plot? and what scenes need to happen in order to progress the plot or the characters' arcs forward? or do you have a scene in mind that you wanna build around? when i have that, i kinda throw that into the mix, then build the chapter around it! that helps when you have a basic understanding of what you wanna write in the fic but are struggling in the "filler" chapters and things. so for me, doing it this way helps me conceptualize and fully map out how the plot is progressing, what needs to happen in later chapters, or the opposite with what is being set up in earlier chapters.

once i have the chapters/sections figured out, i literally just like bullet point the hell out of it. how do i imagine the scene? is it mostly internal monologue? what is happening in that section? any dialogue i might have, i'll throw in there! i'll literally write down things as simple as "we see mike going into will's room" or something like that, just so i am beginning to visualize what i'm trying to accomplish here. (again... this is also probably taking it a step further than i have to, but for someone who needs to be thorough and likes having a tool to fall back on whenever i'm struggling through a chapter, it's a lifesaver). i also like leaving myself notes for things to foreshadow in the overarching plot, as well as reminders for where the narrator's story arc should be at right now. so for example, when outlining i know better, i really tried to remind myself that i was supposed to be emphasizing mike's guilt because of losing will throughout different chapters, and when i came back to write it, i knew what kind of emotional tone to set for his perspective.

anyways, that was a LOT, so i hope you were able to find any of it helpful! also if it helps, here's an example of a chapter i outlined for i'll find a new place to be from so you can kind of see how i set my chapter outlines up! :)

[tiptapricot]

Spidersona/OC timEE!!

This is my duder (+a Pete)! Their name is a mix of arachnid and cryptid, and I’m so excited to do some multiverse doodles with them! :-D

(Ofc click for details and info. Some possibly squicky skin/body things mentioned. Short IDs in ALT, full image descriptions below cut)

Image descriptions:

Image 1:

An OC reference sheet. It is titled “The Arachtid” in varying shades of blue text. The character stands on their own to the left, their suit’s front and back designs to the right.

The character out of the suit is a partial skeleton, surrounded in places by dotted lines to indicate an invisible body. There are some veins and bits of old skin still stuck to the skeleton, and they are missing their right hand, and most of both their legs. They have clawed fingers, and there is an extra set of pale eyes sitting on the skull further up from the empty sockets.

The body of the suit is grey. There are yellow guards on the wrists, matching the yellow boots/legs, and a yellow star shaped symbol on the chest. All three are overlayed with a greenish-glowing web pattern. The face and shoulders of the suit are blue, leading down to a spider’s face coming out of the neck area just above the star. Legs also reach for the star from the shoulders and upper arms. Matching colored spiders sit on the hips of the suit, facing the center. The eyes on the suit are a light blue outlined in pale yellow, an extra eye above each to match the extra eyes on the skeleton. The hands of the suit have claws as well. Additionally, the back shot shows the open palms of the suit colored in a light yellow that fades out from the center of the palms. On the back of the costume, blue spider legs come down from the back of the neck to pull up yellow webbing that spills down into the pattern of the boots and legs.

Multiple labels point to different parts of the designs. The first batch is around the skeleton. The first one reads “invisible body around all of it” with arrows pointing to different points on the skeleton. The next points to the extra eyes and reads, “Mutated extra set of spider eyes (can see in the dark, regular sockets can’t).” The next points to veins visible wrapping around the bones of the left arm, reading, “Some veins, bones, and skin still around.” Below that is a label pointing to dark puncture wounds on a patch of skin on the skeleton���s ribs that reads, “Bite from spider.” An arrow points between the clawed hands of the skeleton and the clawed hands of the suit, reading, “Mutated claw fangs. Can do scratching damage/cling to things, and can flex down and inject a venomous bite at will.” The next label points to the extra set of eyes on the suit, reading, “Extra eyes for extra eyes.” An arrow below points to the small yellow web shooter on the back of their wrist. The label reads, “Web fluid comes from bones (don’t ask). Shooters help to aim it better!” The last label points to the head and shoulders of the back of the suit and reads, “Head and shoulder coloring forms a spider.”

Image 2:

The same page as before with some changes. The skeleton remains, but the suit design is covered up and replaced with a bio. Above the skeleton is also a small drawing of an alternate Peter Parker (described later). The skeleton is labeled as being 5 feet 5 inches or 165 centimeters. A small note to the side says they died at 20.

The biography is in bullet points and has small doodles next to most of them. It reads:

No current non-hero name (likes to take suggestions)

Was bitten by an escaped early trial of the spider experiment that would go on to bite Peter Parker. And died from it. (Accompanying doodle is a skull with X eyes and the tongue sticking out)

Corpse mutated, reacting to radioactive alterations laced with mystic enhancement, and a few years later, they reanimated (accompanying doodle is a bony arm reaching up out of dirt)

Became friends with the Peter Parker Spider-man of their world who had become a hero in the meantime. Peter helped to get them into hero work (accompanying doodle is of both their heads next to each other with happy eyes)

They’re not exactly a hero duo but they work together a lot to protect NYC and are good friends :-) (accompanying doodle of their fists bumping in-suit)

Keeps their suit on in public/in any spiderverse visits since taking it off can gross people out

They don’t mind their form though, they’re vibing, and make a lot of jokes with friends about being strange and gnarly (accompanying doodle of a cut off zombie wrist giving an invisible thumbs up, the hand outlined in dotted lines)

Hangs out with the supernatural heroes from their world a lot

Doesn’t really remember who they were before they died, and doesn’t feel comfortable looking into it (accompanying doodle of Arachtid sitting on the edge of a building a night, swinging their legs)

Invisible body doesn’t cover some remaining skin bits and they mess with them sometimes

Can’t die? Probably? They don’t need to eat or drink but they do get tired and sleep, which is basically like being dead again. Already dead otherwise though.

From Earth-62819

The third image is a close up shot of the Peter doodle. It has “Peter!” written on the left in dark aqua, red, and dark blue letters. There’s a small shot of his head without the mask on where he’s smiling. He has short curly brown hair, brown eyes, a hooked nose, and stubble.

Next to that is the design of his costume. Its base is a slightly orange-tinted red, the accents and designs either dark blue or dark aqua. His mask’s eyes are white, outlined in blue with blue web lines coming down from the bottom of his eyes to his cheeks. He has aqua fangs coming down from the inner corners of his eyes as well. A large blue spider design takes up his chest, the fangs clamped around his neck and the legs going up over his shoulders, down to his upper arms, and down into the sides of his costume. The sides of his costume are blocks of dark blue.

His gloves start dark blue at the forearm, and then the fists are aqua, spider fangs and legs coming down over the wrists to make the fists look like a spider’s abdomen. At Peter’s waist, dark blue webbing connects the blue blocks on the sides of the suit to the start of the solid blue of the legs. Just above the knee the color changes to aqua, the top edges looking like a mass of crawling spiders.

There is a small design for the back of the suit to the right. It shows the edges of the legs and fangs from the chest design just reaching over the shoulders. There is a dark blue triangular web pattern starting in the center of the back and connecting down to the blue color blocks on the sides of the suit.

/end of ID.

[firstkanaphans]

hi! if you don't mind me asking, i was wondering if i could ask you about how you're able to write at the speed/output that you are able? i'm always so impressed with the rate at which you're able to update and was hoping to ask for advice 😅

because one of the hardest things for me is speed...i write soooo slowly, and so as much as i want to write multichapter fics, i feel like it would take me months between updates because of how slow i write. i think one of the reasons is that i am also constantly live editing as i write maybe? which really does slow me down, but i'm not sure how to bypass that.

i was curious if you had any tips/advice for how to write at a steady pace? do you set aside time every day to write regularly, or only when the mood "hits"? and how do you tackle those scenes where you just have no idea what to write (if that's something if you've experienced?)

of course no need to answer any of these questions - i hope i didn't overwhelm! i'm just always so impressed with your writing output that i'd love to hear any advice if you had any. thank you and can't wait for the next update of BLP 🫶

This probably isn’t the answer you want to hear, but the honest truth is that I just have a very easy day job. There are probably only about three days a month where I have to put in an eight-hour work day. The rest of the time, I use any excess work time I have to write.

It wasn’t always like this for me, though, so I understand the frustration of working a full-time job and then coming home exhausted. The last thing you want to do is write because as much as we try to pretend like it’s fun, it’s still work. It’s not mind-numbing. You can’t do it if your tank is already empty. The main reason I’m able to write quickly is simply that I have the time and the mental energy to do so.

Like you said, one of the biggest tips I can give you when trying to write faster is to turn off your inner editor while writing your first draft. It took me a long time to learn how to do this, but it has been immensely helpful. I will obviously correct typos while I’m writing, but other than that, I really don’t go back and edit anything until the whole first draft is complete. The only exception would be if I get halfway through a chapter and just know something’s not working. At that point I will stop and at least figure out what the problem is so that I don’t waste time writing scenes that may need to be cut depending on what I have to change. But other than that, I largely ignore correct grammar and even good writing in favor of just getting words down on the page.

If you’re a perfectionist like me and the thought of doing that is just completely off-putting, I’ll sometimes trick myself by pretending I’m not writing anything important. In all of my documents, I put the word START where I’m meant to start writing for the day. If I know I’m going to be writing really rough, I just don’t move the START from where it is and that tricks my brain into letting me write bad because I know the next day I’ll start from that same place. So essentially, I’m writing very badly one day and then going back to edit it into something readable the next. I cannot stress enough how much difference even just a day makes in your ability to edit more objectively. I never post chapters on the same day I finish them because I want to give my brain at least 24-hours to mull it over before I start editing.

As for writer’s block, I have pretty much eradicated that from my life simply because I outline everything so thoroughly beforehand. For instance, today I’ve been going through my outline for Chapter 4 of Best Laid Plans so that I can start writing it. One of the bullet points says, “Akk, Aye, Kan, Wat, and Thua eat lunch together.” My job today is to figure out what they’re going to talk about during that lunch so that when I get to that scene, I won’t draw a blank and spend days trying to figure it out instead of actually writing.

Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t days where I just don’t want to write, but for me, those days are few and far between. I don’t, however, believe in forcing yourself to write even when you don’t want to because your output is going to show your frustration with the task. I would never encourage someone to set a goal to write every day because I believe that’s just setting them up for failure. In the end, this really is just a hobby and you should work at your own pace and comfort level. If you’re bored with a multi-chapter fic you’re writing, take a break to write a one-shot. Or add something to your outline to spice up the next scene so that it re-energizes you.

It’s funny because I think output numbers get wildly skewed in fandom because some of us are actually insane. It’s not odd to see 20K-word chapter updates or fics literally longer than the Bible (773K words). If you write 1000 words a week (less than 150 words a day), that’s 52K words in a year, which is very nearly novel-length—and longer than any multi-chapter fic I’ve written. You would never expect a published author to write more than one novel a year, so don’t expect that from yourself either.

[nebulousfishgills]

Returning the favor for the writing asks! (And you're right, there's SO MANY good ones!)

1, 3, 11, 13, 17, 20, 35, 54, 55, and 74 please!

I see ten numbers so we're just gonna assume this should in theory be split into ten asks but it's gonna be one doctorate thesis length post so be warned as usual and here we go!

1) Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chapter fics?

See already I have a cop out answer ready because I like doing both! A good portion of my multi chaptered fics started out as one shots, actually. A Song of Stars and Magic started as an alternative look at how The Avengers could have ended that spun way way way too out of control. 29 chapters and two plus years of nitpicking and adding and writing later...

As we know Diplopia started as a one shot before it, too, spun out of control and got six seasons and a movie. The Weirdo From Saint Valentina's is gonna get an additional three chapters and that started as a one shot (I'm very excited to show people what I have planned for that can of worms).

But, you know, Facade was always a longfic. I never finished it but I at least stopped at a decent enough stopping point. One could believe that's how I chose to end it if a) I didn't outright say I never finished it and b) it's not actually marked as incomplete on AO3. Time Variance Detected was a long fic by design because of the episodic chapters. One episode of the series was one chapter and that trend will continue with it's eventual sequel.

His Tenebris Moenibus was always a longfic. It's gonna have a sequel once season 5 comes out. It's kind of exciting but a little nervewracking that part of the anticipation that comes with Stranger Things' finale is also me being able to find out how Emily's story is going to end. I'm on the same page as my readers as of now. None of us knows how that will go and it's exciting and... oh good god it's also fucking terrifying.

But I love writing my small, stand alone one shots. Little nuggets of story. Ways to explore alternative ideas and plot bunnies that are too big for a simple idea but (in some cases, at least) are too small for a full, dedicated fic.

So... they kind of go hand in hand, really. I love the planning and complexity a longfic requires, but I love the bite sized freedom one-shots give. But one shots with me sometimes turn into longfics. So... one shots, I suppose, if you put a gun to my head and made me choose.

3) Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

It varies from project to project. Nine times out of ten, though, it starts out as one of my elaborate daydreams. I have to mentally plan everything at the very least before I write even if I don't write down those plans or outlines all the time. The ideas come in bursts, sometimes with listening to music, sometimes when watching a piece of media, sometimes with the Holy Grail of idea generation: the shower.

Most of any kind of "creative process" with my fics happens mentally. Sometimes I just get so many ideas for a fic that I have to make a bullet pointed plan or an outline. I have a server on discord that just has me in it where I send things to myself or write notes. It's just an alternative for a notes app, really. I have pages of ideas and outlines there. I remember doing this for Necrosis specifically when that last large piece of the narrative puzzle just came to me and then I got so excited I wrote out an outline I still continue to follow.

I wouldn't really go as far to say I'm a planner, though. Most of my fics are more spur of the moment.

Sometimes I have to research as well. I have wikis bookmarked on my laptop in a folder called "The Sacred Texts." The most notable time this happened was with Diplopia and I wanted to better understand these characters before I wrote about them... and now I know too much, go figure.

Ultimately it's kind of chaotic is what it boils down to. I get an idea, sometimes I plan it, sometimes I research it, and then I just kinda... let my brain do what she do.

11) Link your three favorite fics right now

In no particular order:

Necrosis

His Tenebris Moenibus

Instinct (largely because it's my highest kudo'd fic, an unexpected cult classic)

13) What's a common writing tip you almost always follow?

Okay, so I don't know if this is exactly a common tip, but it is THE end all be all writing advice I've ever gotten. A few years ago I watched a virtual book discussion for one of my favorite authors, Christopher Paolini since he had just released a new book ("To Sleep in A Sea of Stars").

Side note he had actually given us a sneak peek of the book a couple years before that when I went to an in person book signing of his when he released a coloring book for his Eragon series that I still have, actually, it's very cool.

Anyways, one piece of advice he gave was to plan out exactly what you want to write in your head throughout the day. So, you know, come up with dialogue scenes when you're eating lunch or how to start your story/chapter's opening paragraphs in the car etc. And then once it's "writing time" you don't have to waste "writing time" coming up with ideas right then, you just need to transcribe your thoughts from the day and then work from there.

I do it for every single piece of writing I put out, even in micro ways. Sometimes I get impulsive and post one shots I wrote in like, two hours, but the hour or so before that, I was laying in bed with music going, eyes closed just organizing and basically writing in my head. It helps me weed through my thoughts prior and saves me a lot of time in the long run.

Also because I fixate on my fics, I'm constantly thinking about them anyways so this advice is just how my brain operates anyways.

17) What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (Maybe a lack of inspiration or writer's block)

This happens pretty frequently. It's more like I have the motivation to write but I can't physically bring myself to actually type it out. Typically what I do is I just let it happen. If I'm de-motivated I won't be writing at my best and the product won't be at the level I would want it to be at. The dialogue and scene pacing would get clunky and then it just feels stiff. I'll eventually get my motivation back.

But in the meantime I'm doing more planning (daydreaming), I'm looking at pinterest for ideas, I have music going, whatever I need to help me not only get my motivation/will to write back, but with more ideas and inspiration than I had in the first place. More often than not I just need to find that one perfect idea that hypes me up enough to finish the chapter/one shot/what have you.

It was a huge help with Necrosis in particular since some of the filler chapters I trudged to get through, but I was motivated by the chapters that set up that big twist at the end or even those chapters themselves. That's another idea, I sometimes write the scenes I'm excited for ahead of time because I'd rather take advantage of that motivation rather than let it die and then leave more work in the future. I had those three particular chapters of Necrosis all completely done, and that's three whole chapters of work I was done with.

Basically, to sum up: Accept the fact that there will be times you want to write but can't. Find the time in between to come up with more ideas. Then, if you get motivation but for something other than that next chapter you need to write, just write that something else. Means less work in the future and it leaves room to experiment.

20) Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/Expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

Well, corruption arcs, obviously. I'm a sucker for redemption arcs, of course, but there's something so cathartic about having a character arc involve going batshit rather than having a come to Jesus moment. But at the same time, usually my corruption arcs happen because of outside forces.

I like to take an optimistic approach to life, that nobody's born evil, it's their choices and environments that can fuck everything up. My characters never start out as evil, but typically the longer they have negative influences, the more it may seem like it. Like the juxtaposition between Olivia's downfall in SoSaM and Emily's spiral downwards.

We know something went wrong to cause Olivia to do horrible things, and it wasn't her fault. So there's a bit of space to sympathize with her because likely her real self is trapped inside of her mind, screaming to be let out and appalled at what she's done. She's naturally a good person with a tricksy streak, not a genocidal maniac. Emily seems more like a bad egg from birth, but that's because her life was set on a downward slope the minute she was popped out and given up. Then it's just nonstop abuse, tragically. St. Valentina's was a horrid place to live, two years on the streets, twenty years in Hawkins Lab... the Upside Down is arguably her best place of residence and you've seen how hazardous and desolate it is. I guarentee you'd lose your mind, too. And this isn't even mentioning my Mind Flayer theory.

I take the optimistic approach to a very pessimistic trope, but the secret is that I usually find the exterior corruption along the way. At first, the characters usually start by fucking shit up for no reason because I want to throw my action figures together and explore the consequences of poor actions before I feel bad and then decide to find the proverbial "Palpatine" in the Anakin to Vader fall from grace.

Of course, smaller things could be my blue rose motifs, my frequent uses of meta humor/references, and how sometimes you can tell I just remembered a cool word and use it three times each paragraph. Also just the Villain's Favorite Person trope, which with me goes hand in hand with the Corruption Arc. It's demented but there's an inherrent appeal in loving someone so much you'd do anything for them. Someone who's done horrible things being gentle only with the one they love. That sort of shit.

I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting.

35) What's one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?

Motivations and how they're not always one-dimensional. All the best villains are ones we can understand, sympathize with because we understand their motives. Sometimes yeah, it's fun to just watch a bad guy fuck shit up for the sake of fucking shit up, but Malekith-type villains are rarely all that memorable (in fact I bet I'm one of maybe six people who remembered his name was Malekith).

I like it when my villains are a little bit sad, wet, and pathetic, or I can mold them to be like that. Look at the characters I ship my OCs with, look at all their drama, their family angst, their abusive pasts, among other things. Even the villains I don't ship my characters with who I use as actual villains, I make sure to analyze their motivations and reasonings.

You have your Thanos types who are trying to do a good thing for the way wrong reasons. Like, my guy, just double the resources. I know some Thanos truthers exist, but I just can't quite see it.

See it hurts knowing Henry would probably agree with Thanos to some degree. I'm a hypocrite for disagreeing with Thanos and being like "yes king go off, fuck humanity" when Henry monologues.

Or, how about delving into something I've only recently been able to discuss because of spoiler reasons, arguably the most complex thing Stephenie Meyer ever came up with that's rarely mentioned and she didn't do anything with: the situation with Didyme. This is what Stephenie Meyer's website mentions about the event, our most thorough analysis on it:

"Once upon a time, a fairly young vampire (he had only been a vampire for a decade and a half) named Aro changed his young sister Didyme, who had just reached adulthood, in order to add her to his growing coven. Aro always wanted power, and because he himself had a potent mind-reading gift, he hoped his biological sister would also be gifted in a way that would help him rise in the vampire world. It turned out that Didyme did have a gift; she carried with her an aura of happiness that affected everyone who came near her. Though it wasn't exactly what he had hoped for, Aro pondered the best ways he could use this gift. Meanwhile, Aro's most trusted partner, Marcus, fell in love with Didyme. This was not unusual; given the way she made people feel, lots of people fell in love with Didyme. The difference was that this time, Didyme fell in love herself. The two of them were tremendously happy. So happy, in fact that, after a while, they no longer cared that much about Aro's plans for domination. After a few centuries, Didyme and Marcus discussed going their own way. Of course, Aro was well aware of their intentions. He was not happy about it, but he pretended to give his blessing. Then he waited for an opportunity to act, and when he knew he would never be found out, he murdered his sister. After all, Marcus's gift was much more useful to him than hers had been. This is not to say that Aro did not truly love his sister; it's just that a key part of his personality is the ability to destroy even what he loves in order to further his ambitions. Marcus never found out that Aro was responsible for Didyme's death. He became an empty man. Aro used Chelsea's gift to keep Marcus loyal to the Volturi, though not even Chelsea's gift could make Marcus show any enthusiasm for it."

That's surprisingly a lot of information and it really shows how much thought she has the capacity to put into these characters, yet refuses to, but I digress. All I did was take the Machivellian motivation mixed with the genuine love Aro had for his sister and just expanded upon that. Alas, actions do have consequences, and Emily's a little shit so go figure.

The point is, villains need to have good motives to make them stick.

54) What's your favorite part of the fanfiction writing process?

That moment when everything, every disparate piece and idea just clicks together and the plot finally comes forward. Usually I start with an idea and find the plot along the way. I think my most classic case would have to be Necrosis. I started with just "Diplopia Sequel" and then ended with:

And it was cathartic as hell

55) Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite?

Oh, god, that's hard, cause I don't typically write for characters I *dislike* writing for. And then that question changes depending on if you mean OCs or canon characters.

I suppose my favorite OC has been Emily since it's been a blast seeing what wacky shit I can do with her. Olivia's gonna be making a comeback soon, though, since Loki s2 is DAYS AWAY AAAAAA- But I missed working with her, it's been a HOT minute.

Favorite Canon is a broader arguement since there's so many fandoms and characters I've written for. Obviously the characters I ship with my OCs I enjoy because I have to be able to see them in a certain way to write them that makes me like them. It has be a joy expanding upon the Volturi though, I'm very proud of what I've come up with. Loki, Sylvie, and Mobius have also been fun and I'm very excited to mess with them again. Eddie was fun to pit against Emily and in particular I remember really enjoying writing the parent/child dynamics between Harry and Keira.

Take your pick I suppose.

74) You've posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you'd written it?

Well, obviously look for my trademarks, playing with morals, blue roses, meta asides. And nine times out of ten if it's a Canon x OC fic, there's a high chance it's a brain child of mine.

But let's very hypothetically say I was to post the one shots I hope to write about Caius and Athenodora's backstories anonymously. Since these characters are so open to interpretation you could probably pick out unique things specific to me about them. Thena has a penchant for swearing and will Cut A Bitch, Caius is a massive wife guy and is extremely horny...

You know come to think of it, these are pretty universally agreed upon ideas... except perhaps Thena's swearing habit, I will stand by the fact that she drops f-bombs like nobody's business.

But aside from all that, I think there's a certain diction and voice my writing has that one could probably pick up on overtime. I'd say assume if you think I wrote it, I probably did.

***

Oh my god I got this ask even before fucking July 5th/Doomsday and I'm just now finishing it I'm so sorry.

[landinrris]

Hey!! If you're still sharing notebook pages, could I please ask to see 64 and 102?

Thanks!! Hope you're having an awesome weekend <3

Looking forward to checking out your new fic!

Hey! Yeah, of course, always happy to share more. (Also, I hope you enjoy the new fic whenever you get the chance!)

In order from left to right are pages 64 and 102 (this page goes a bit vaguely nsfw)

Ask me about my writing notes!

Page 64: This is from Gold Light Falling Backward Through the Glass. Aka Glass Closet fic

(This is a couple bullet points from the first draft of the Glass Closet fic that was outlined back after The Picture in Mexico last year. It filled out in the time since this. Let's just say in the days following that pic drop and Carlos being at the Brazil house again with Lando... I felt a little insane)

[...] for awhile now, in all actuality. It makes Lando feel equal parts an ass and grateful. They agree not to tell anyone for the time being.

Coming back home from summer break is reenergizing in more ways than one. Carlos is the only one he tells about the breakup for a week before he drops the news on Instagram only to delete it shortly after. And then Carlos tells the world he's only gotten closer to Lando once they stopped being teammates, and Lando's in it deep.

They go out to dinner for Carlos' birthday and Lando tries not to overthink everything.

Lando makes the decision to invest in a nice camera going into Singapore. He's always liked photography anyway. He uses the camera as motivation to get better by taking pictures every day and showing them to the world. Plus, it'll he cool to see how he's gotten better over time. He uses the camera to set a precedent- taking pictures of everyone he seens. That way, when he starts posting about Carlos, it isn't necessarily out of the ordinary.

----

Page 102: This is from Double Exposure. Aka paddock photographer Lando fic

(These aren't so much parts of the outline as they were moments I thought of while/after it was created. More like specific moments I wanted to be sure to include because parts of the outline, especially at the beginning which included Monaco, were written more vaguely. Basically more in-depth bits extra from the outline. Also included are my own word count tracker for before and after edits 😂)

In Monaco, Lando eventually loses Carlos in the crows. He's really keyed up from the drinks and Carlos being so close. Ends up going home with some guy and having sex. Wakes up the next morning to a message from Carlos saying he hopes he got home safe.

In Zandvoort it's the first time they see each other after Spa sex. Someone tells Lando Carlos asks for him in his driver's room. Lando shows up, being like "hey what's up?" Carlos pulls him in, closes the door, and fucks Lando against the door before a session. One of Lando's legs hiked up around Carlos' hip to hold on. It feels more intense than the car.

Before edits: 35341; 36390