#and i hope there won't be any typos; i triple checked

[stygeanbluebasilsprout]

Queued

This is a fictional story, I apologize because I didn't realize how the first paragraphs sounded without context. I am perfectly fine. Please reblog this version and enjoy!

Let me preface this by clarifying a thing. If you're reading this, I'm already dead. I'll queue this for tomorrow morning, and if nothing happens I'll take this down. If you're seeing this on your dash, it means I'm gone. If I can return... Idk, maybe I'll write a more detailed post with the answers to all of this, maybe y'all could just carry on like nothing happened. Maybe this post will not exist anymore and there is no need to tell you what I would do.

That being said, if I will have to say goodbye, the least I could do is doing it with style. 

My name is Norman. All of you will already know me by my url, or maybe the pfp. "Look, it's trans Charizard again. What will he have to say this time". Mostly shitpost, alright? I didn't log in expecting to become a great artist. Sometimes, however, I liked to cut out a little scrap from my life and show it to you.

I started when my new life started. When I finally managed to get away from the horrible claws of my family and I settled in this little apartment. It was a small place, tucked away between the trees, where birds were more loud than traffic. 

All things considered, it has been nice to get it without having to pluck out my eye to pay rent. It was crammed, yes, but at the time I didn't even have a bed. It was enough.

So, as my loyal followers may already know, life here was... peculiar. 

It wasn't anything outright weird, more like little unsettling details, details on which the eye glided until they got caught, and once the eye caught them it couldn't let them go.

Typing them on here, in hindsight, makes me feel dumb, like if I was some horror movie dipshit that wouldn't move out of a clearly haunted house, trapped in his certainty that "GhOsTs ArEn'T rEaL" despite the furniture floating past him.

In my defense, my furniture didn't float. At least, I never saw it doing so. 

There have been misplaced objects, though. A glass that got knocked over, a book I was sure I had put a bookmark in, my Waddles (yes, the Gravity Falls pig. Sue me) plushie popping up from the strangest places, like when I found it in the pantry, behind the pasta. 

It was the least tbh.

Misplaced objects... they could be attributed to my ADHD. I came to terms with the fact that my things never seemed to stay where I put them when I was, like, six. After a while it sort of became a bit, in our family. So it wasn't exactly news. Even if Waddles in the pantry was a bit too much even for me. But hey, everyone lost track of their stuff sometimes, if they weren’t paying attention.

And, as I said before, it was the least. I mean, you saw my posts. At first I joked a bit about these teleportations, along the lines of "haha, look, my plushie loves pasta sooo much!". But, like, everyone who owns a cat knows that teleport is not impossible. "Yeah yeah, things that change places when they shouldn't, we've all seen it". Issues started coming after a few weeks.

At first, it was the golden leaves. I already said that my house was in the middle of the woods, right?

Well, it was around last April when they started making their appearance. I challenge everybody, everybody, to see a threat in a shiny, little golden leaf placed on the window sill.

They were really cool, by the way. Not even a little bit scary. Annoying, for sure. But not scary.

They made me curse every ancient god that watched over this Earth, though. I wouldn't get surprised if Cthulhu came knocking at my door asking why I was calling for them. For it was enough to leave the door a tiny tiny bit ajar for a freaking MOUNTAIN of leaves to make their entrance.

They defied physics. How the hell a metric fuck you of leaves could have come inside through an opening of an inch (measured) in less than half a minute is beyond me. But at least, broom and patience, and I swatted them away.

Now, I admit that maybe it was my fault, because if a normal person gets ATTACKED by leaves their first reaction is to find the tree those leaves come from.

It never crossed my mind, I swear. Not even when they started exploding.

Okay, maybe exploding is a bit of an overstatement. It's not like they went KABOOM and set things on fire.

It was just that as soon as I grazed them, even by blowing on them, puf! They turned into a little cloud of golden dust. And that mother-effing dust stuck! It didn't go away! Soon all my belongings were golden-leaf-dust-coated. I had a glittering house.

And if your first reaction is "Norman, normal leaves don't act that way" well, whoever you are, you may be an amateur botanist, but I know jack shit about trees. I wasn't gonna bother my landlord for a couple of leaves. It was my very first place of my own, I wasn't gonna act like a whiny baby. I think it would have solved a lot of problems, though.

Because then, around the middle of this January, it was the stains' turn. The streaks, the markings.

They started appearing in little spots, like little droplets of something. I didn't thought much of them, it was an old house in the middle of the woods, of course there would have been dirt here and there.

I found the first concerning one on the couch. It was a big, rough brown stain vaguely resembling a heart. Not a "❤" sort of heart, an anatomically correct heart with atriums and all. It had even the veins on it. It was a bit disturbing, I admit it. Maybe, a flying chair would have been a less noticeable warning.

However, it probably was just a Rorschach-like effect. Y'know, the test with the stains. It was just a puddle, but I thought it looked a bit like a heart and therefore was an anatomically-correct-heart-shaped puddle.

It was not the only rough brown stain I found. They didn't really bothered me, because, unlike that goddamned dust, they went away on their own. I had to clean off only the most visible ones. They just. Appeared. On the windows, the ceiling, at the bottom of the walls and on the floor, in the kitchen, on the mirrors, on my blankets, my clothes, even on the back of my binder. I felt a bit sorry when those disappeared, because they resembled two little bat wings.

If you followed me at the time, I'm sure you remember those pictures. How could you not? Some of them went viral, my notifications never recovered. I think that the rose on my bedsheets got reblogged by a heritage posts blog, like the "is this dress blue and black or white and gold?" meme.

By this point you are probably thinking "But Norman, at this point you must have noticed that something was wrong. Dirt doesn't appear and disappear, and it doesn't come in elaborate shapes." And you're right. I noticed that it was not right. I may be a skeptic, but until a certain point. But I'm not a moron. Except I was. Because it was just dirt. Dirt that came in beautiful patterns and went away on its own and it didn't bother me. So I pretended that everything was fine, it was normal, nothing was going on.

I am really, really a moron.

Because what happened next made me realize it was not dirt.

It was blood.

I... don't think I've ever posted the handprints on here. The heart, the rose, those little spots that looked like a constellation were all meant to get a laugh out of who saw them. Somebody even accused me of creating them myself, which, dear rando, thank you. It wasn't me. I can’t draw shit.

Handprints smeared on my kitchen were NOT, I repeat, NOT my doing. Why the fuck should I do such a thing? They were creepy as fuck, and I immediately got a hold of soap and sponge. The point is, they reappeared every time. I cleaned the glass panel, and the next morning I found two, if not more, different handprints.

Once there was one that had nothing better to do than flipping me off.

Very funny.

At a certain point I just gave up. The patterns always went away by themselves, I could suck it up and endure a "fuck you" by a stain on my window for a while.

Wrong. The second evening after my last attempt, at the start of September, they chose to up their game. Under my eyes, the substance they were made of slowly became dark crimson and wet and started dripping. I yelled and fell backwards, crashing over the table.

Quivering, I slowly crawled away from the window. I felt something wet on my fingertips, I must have hit my elbow in the fall. Instead of any kind of pain, it was disgust that clawed at my stomach. As I watched the trickle of blood on my forearm the memory of all the shapes came to mind and realization hit.

I've slept between those blankets, dammit!

I reached the sink and said goodbye to my breakfast. When my head stopped spinning, I grabbed soap and a rag and, in record time, cleaned off that nightmare from my glass.

Too bad that the nightmare just started.

This was the only place I had. I couldn't pack and just go. I should've done it, but I couldn't.

However, it was now time to bother my landlord. The sweet old lady that I talked to over the phone assured me she would come as soon as she could.

As soon as she could was a week later. That week was a nightmare. I tried to stay away from the house as long as I could. But I always had to sleep somewhere. And those nights... I don't want to talk about those nights. I was curled under my blankets, trembling and sobbing. Apparently, the 'dirt' stains now always came in liquid form. And I always woke up covered in golden glitter and red trickles, despite having a sheet all over me. Use your imagination.

When I finally greeted the sweet granny, I was in tatters. And glittering. As I said, the dried blood went away, the dust stuck.

For her, a single glance around was enough. She pursed her lips, and nodded solemnly. And told me that to solve this I had to leave something sweet as an offering, in the woods. Something like a cake, bread, cream, sugar, milk and honey.

Milk. And honey.

Are you FUCKING kidding me.

Apparently not, she was not kidding me. She looked extremely serious. And so I though, why not give it a shot? And after she left me I took a bowl, I filled it with milk and honey, and walked until I could find a good spot between the trees, where I left it.

The next morning I woke up unscathered. And when I went checking, the bowl was just shiny clean. Not even a drop.

So, a bowl of milk and honey in exchange for a night of peaceful sleep. And a clean house.

Poor fool that I was, I thought it could work.

This was three weeks ago. And, of those three weeks, just the first few days the milk worked. Because then, They wanted more.

Milk and honey, but with a spoonful of sugar. Slices of white, soft bread with butter and sugar. Mugs of coffee creamer and honey. Little cakes, like tarties and plumcakes. Sweets. Peppermints and toffee. And so forth.

Always more, always more.

And if the quota wasn't met, the blood returned. And the dust. And the misplaced stuff. And, between the trunks and branches, I could see lights dancing and hear soft laughter and singing, asking for more. More, more. More.

They just don't want to leave me alone. I can’t keep on living like this. I made my decision. I typed on here all of this story. So, now you all know. I have a kitchen knife shining next to me. Must sound more gutsy that it really is, but tonight I'm gonna march in the woods and make Them leave me alone.

It sounds so brave. But I'm not. I'm crying and shaking. My fingers can't stay still. There are tears on my laptop. I'm gonna die.

But anger is stronger. I-I will try to make Them stop. To make Them let me live my life. If it won't work, at the top of this story I left all you need to know. If things work out... I dunno. An update, maybe? A whole different story, maybe.

But now the story queued is this.

So, thank you, to all of my mutuals, for the time spent on this blue hell. I love all of you.

Goodbye

Norman

[porcupine-girl]

Writing advice for new fic writers

Check Please! is a fairly young fandom, with a lot of young and/or new fic writers. Which is great! It's awesome that more people are giving fic writing a try, and it's fun to watch someone brand new develop and stretch their wings.

But there are some mistakes that are especially common with new writers. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer! Most of these are things you probably don't even think about when you read (especially stuff that doesn't make these mistakes, so you don't have a comparison), so there's no reason for it to occur to you to look out for them when you're writing.

I've been writing fic for over a decade. Honestly, though, I've only been writing fic that doesn't suck too badly for... maybe three years? (Though I didn't write much fic the first five years or so - I'm not saying it takes seven years of writing at my current rate to not suck!) Some of these are definitely mistakes I used to make.

I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do or how to write. You're welcome to ignore any or all of this, obviously. And not everyone even cares about improving their writing; they’re happy to just do what they want. But if you want to develop as a writer, these are some of the most basic things you can start with.

I'm also not saying that these will bother everyone - some people won't even notice any of them, some people will notice but not mind, and some people will be annoyed but willing to overlook it if the fic is good otherwise. I can promise you, though, that there are people - maybe a lot of people - for whom these are dealbreakers. Who will not finish reading a fic for these reasons. Of course, you should be writing for yourself above all else, but let's be honest - we wouldn't post our writing publicly if we weren't hoping people will read it and enjoy it. So these are good starting points.

SPaG: Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar 

The most basic of basics. If you already pay attention to these, you're good, move along. But if you've been thinking that nobody really cares about this stuff, think again. No, your readers aren't English teachers (well, some of them are, actually), but the entire reason we're taught these details is that when you don't pay attention to them it actually can make your story really hard to read. 

We all have stray typos or an extra comma here and there, even after a fic has been beta read. But if you've got a steady stream of mistakes, a lot of people will give up partway through the fic. If you know you're weak on this, if English isn't your first language, etc etc, always find someone else to proofread/beta your fic before you post it. Grab a fandom friend, post on Tumblr, or even message one of your favorite fic writers to see if they're willing to beta. Not everyone is, but most fic writers won't be annoyed that you asked. Betas can do a lot more than this, but this is generally the baseline.

And triple-check your summary. A single mistake in the summary can cost you a lot of readers, because people assume that if you didn't care enough to proofread your summary then the whole fic must look like that.

On a grammar-related note, watch for tense-switching! Pick past or present tense and stick with it; everyone messes up and switches now and then, just be sure you're looking for it when you edit. Yes, it's annoying when you have to go through a few hundred words' worth of text and change all the tenses, but it's worth it.

Head-hopping

Point of view (POV) goes further than 1st/2nd/3rd person. The vast majority of fic is written in 3rd person, but then it gets tricky. You can write in 3rd person omniscient, which means that the narrator has access to everything going on in everyone's head all the time. And it can be done well. But it's a whole, whole lot harder to do well than 3rd person limited. And when done poorly, it results in "head-hopping" - your reader feels like they're being jerked back and forth between POVs, and sometimes it can even be hard to tell whose head you're in! Which can be super confusing. If you really, really want to use omniscient POV, I would recommend writing a few things in 3rd person limited first just so that you know what it feels like to really be in a particular POV, so that when you write the omniscient you're less likely to confuse the reader.

My main advice, though, is to just not bother, not until you’re a much more experienced writer (and maybe not even then). Decide whose head the narrator has access to and stick with it. That doesn't mean you can't ever change POVs, but there should be a clear indication to the reader that the POV has changed. The best time to change POVs is at a new chapter, but if you need to change mid-chapter, put in some kind of actual divider in the text. Try not to change POVs mid-scene unless you absolutely need to. 

While you're writing, think about your POV character: What do they know? What do they NOT know? What can they see/hear/etc? What can they not? What are the other characters thinking (which, remember, the POV character doesn’t know)? 

At first, it can sometimes seem like limiting yourself to one POV makes writing unnecessarily harder, or you might be worried it will stifle your creativity. First, yes, it does make writing harder. But not unnecessarily so! All that stuff I said you should be thinking about in the previous paragraph? Is stuff you should be thinking about no matter what. If you weren't before, and you are now, well, yeah, that's more work, but your writing will be better for it. Improving your writing is always harder than writing without caring about improvement.

Second, putting limits on your creativity isn't the same as stifling it - in fact, being creative within set limits usually has better results than total freedom. Setting a limit like POV means you sometimes have to get more creative when it comes to things like communicating things to your audience without telling your POV character, or deciding what POV works best for what scene. Sometimes it's best to use the character who knows the most about what's going on - but sometimes it's better to use the character who knows the least. A more advanced writing tip (one that I am far from mastering) is to not give your reader any piece of information before they absolutely need it. An ignorant POV character can make that a lot easier.

If you reach a point where you think the reader absolutely must know what another character is thinking, and the POV character must not, think about how much the reader needs to know about what they’re thinking.  If they're hiding a secret, does the reader need to know the secret, or could they just act secretive so the reader knows there IS a secret? Does the reader need to know exactly how they feel, or can their body language say enough? You can even have the POV character obviously misinterpret or dismiss things like body language, so that the reader learns more than the POV character. Switching POVs mid-scene should usually be a last resort, and again, if you do it put in some kind of divider so the reader knows that something is changing.

Unnecessary information

Remember, this is fanfiction. Which means that you can assume that your readers are 100% familiar with canon - they know the characters and their backgrounds. Even if it's an AU, they know whatever you are using from canon (eg, Bitty is still from Georgia in most AUs), and will generally assume that everything is as in canon until told otherwise. All of this means that you don't need to introduce us to the characters and settings like you would in original fic! 

Trust me, none of your readers are dying to read a paragraph about how Bitty just moved to Samwell from Georgia, where he was a figure skater until about three years ago when he switched to hockey. We know. Too much of this, and people will be bored enough to go find another fic to read. Now, you might need to write a bit of this just to get yourself into the story, or to figure out a scene, but once you're done try to cut as much of it as you can. 

Yes, you might need to mention these facts now and then - but there's a big difference between "Eric's eyes widened as two boys walked past him hand-in-hand - that sure wasn't something you'd ever see back in Madison!" and "Eric Bittle was excited for his first day at liberal Samwell University. Just yesterday, he'd been at home in Madison, Georgia, always getting bullied for being gay."

If you're retelling part or all of canon, be especially careful about this. Most people don't want to read a line-for-line retelling of the comic we already know by heart. What we want to know is what's different about your version. What new insights are we gaining into, say, the characters' feelings, or what happened between the panels, or what someone other than Bitty was doing during a scene? If you realize you're not telling us anything new, cut the scene! We know it happened. Give it a one-line mention if you need to.��

Even if you have a different POV than the comic, why do we need to see this scene from, say, Jack's POV? It better be chock full of the things he notices, thinks, feels, and does, preferably things we need to know. Hearing Jack's train of thought about different NHL teams while he and Bitty are baking together in 2x6 is important if, say, we're learning that early on he was actually leaning toward Seattle and him deciding he wants to stay close (to Bitty) is a plot point in your fic. But if it's just some rambling thoughts about the order of the priorities list we see in 2x16, which will never come up again in your fic, skip it.

Epithets

Some people don't notice them at all, but the people who hate them, really loathe them. I know of many fic readers who will backbutton out at the first sign of an epithet. 

What is an epithet? In this context, it’s when you get tired of writing the characters' names, and they're both "he" so pronouns are confusing, so you start calling them "the taller man" or "the blonde" or whatever. Anything that describes the character rather than naming them or using a pronoun. 

Here's the secret: it might feel awkward to write their names over and over, but readers won't notice. A common piece of advice is, if you're not sure what balance of names vs pronouns is right, use pronouns as much as feels natural to you, then have a beta look at it and note if they're ever unsure who a pronoun is referring to. Replace those with the characters’ names. If you can use he and him a dozen times and it's always clear who is who, that's fine! Just be sure to get a second opinion, since you're unlikely to find your own writing confusing.

If you feel like you simply must use an epithet, remember the POV you're writing from. Your narration is, in essence, that character's thoughts. Would your character think of the other character in that way? Most of the time, nobody in SMH is going to think of Jack as "the NHL player." He's their friend; you don't think of your friends in terms of their occupation unless you're thinking about something directly related to that. Someone might think of Bitty as "the baker" if he is currently baking, or maybe just handed them a treat. Not in the middle of sex. This is the main reason epithets are a problem; they pull the reader out of the POV character's head, and thus out of the story. In general, the only time epithets are actually necessary is when the POV character doesn't know the other person's name yet.

Dialogue tips

Every time a new person speaks, start a new paragraph. Every. Single. Time. I don't care if the last person only said one word and this person is only saying two. New Paragraph. Much less confusing that way. Another way to avoid confusion: don't go more than about four lines in a row with totally unmarked dialogue (no tags, no actions, etc). If there are more than two people in the scene, make it clear who is saying what line every time. You might be able to keep track of ten lines of back-and-forth, but I guarantee you that halfway through your readers have forgotten who's who.

Now, dialogue tags. A dialogue tag is whenever you use the word said/says or a synonym for it to mark who is speaking. There are lots of lists of words to use instead of said. Only use them if you have a solid reason to, not because you feel like you're saying said too much. Just like with pronouns and first names, it's easy to feel like you're saying said an awkward amount when actually, your readers won't even notice. Another option is to replace a dialogue tag with an action, like this:

"Damn it, Nurse!" Dex slammed his beer down on the table.

However, one thing to keep in mind: If you pair an action with untagged dialogue, it damn well better be the person talking who's doing the action.

Jack sat down on the edge of the bed. "Honey, are you okay?"

Now your readers are frowning at your story, trying to figure out if Bitty's talking or if Jack has suddenly taken to calling Bitty "honey". Just remember that if there's no tag, whatever is in the same paragraph as the dialogue becomes the tag in the readers' brains. And on a punctuation note: if there's a tag, there's a comma between it and the dialogue. If there's not, it's always a period.

Also, read your dialogue out loud. We don't write how we speak, and it's common for new writers' dialogue to sound like something somebody wrote rather than something someone might actually say. Reading it out loud can help you catch unnatural dialogue. One thing to remember is that people use contractions a lot. If a contraction would make sense grammatically, most of the time the only reason a person wouldn't use it is for emphasis. Not using them often enough makes dialogue sound stilted and overly-formal.

Other advice

Find a community. Find fandom friends through Tumblr, Twitter, IRC channels, etc who will cheer you on, read your fics, beta for you, etc. As soon as I started hanging out in a fic writer chat room the amount I wrote skyrocketed. (Insert obligatory plug for @antidiogenes here.)

Always edit. There's nothing wrong with banging out a fic in an evening and tossing it straight onto AO3, but it's not going to do much to improve your writing. I hardly ever post anything the same day I write/finish it. Even if you're not using a beta (personally, whether I get a beta for a fic depends on a lot of factors), let it sit for a few hours or overnight, then read back over it - not just for typos, but for all the stuff above and more. Then when you go to post it, use the Preview button on AO3 and read it over again. If you're sick to death of this story/chapter by then you might need to let it sit again first (save it as a draft on AO3 in this case), but trust me, you will ALWAYS find things to fix that you didn't notice before. Apparently the change of formatting from your word processor to the AO3 page calls your attention to stuff.

Learn about writing. This post is literally just the very most basic stuff that new writers often do wrong. There is soooooo much more to learn. Read blogs and books about writing, learn about scene structure and story structure, learn about characterization, learn about building suspense. I can give recommendations, and I’m sure many other fic authors can, as well.

Then put those things into practice. Just reading about techniques doesn’t make them magically happen in your writing; you’ll have to consciously pay attention to every new technique as you write in order to see results. You don’t have to make every aspect of your writing better all at once, though - one thing I do sometimes is pick a particular writing skill that I want to focus on while I'm writing a fic/chapter. Things I've worked on this way include: making sure every scene "turns", writing about physical sensations rather than naming emotions, scene/sequel structure, creating original characters, subplots. Of course, while explicitly focusing on one of these things once makes me more likely to do it automatically in the future, I still have to think about them constantly and often fix them when I edit. But this technique has definitely improved my writing.

Write, write, write! I know everyone says it, but writing a lot really is the best way to improve. I've posted over 500K words to AO3 in the past five years and, since I started tracking my daily word count 2.5 years ago, have written over 670K words. I guarantee you my last 100K are way, way better than my first 100K. Some of that is novel-length, some of that is tiny ficlets. A lot of it, as you can tell from the numbers, never sees the light of day. 

Even stuff like headcanon posts or bullet-point tumblr fic count - no, they don't help you with dialogue or scene structure, but they still help you get a feel for language, give you a chance to brainstorm new ideas (that might make it into an actual story), and can be a chance to think about things like characterization or high-level story structure (a bullet point fic is, after all, basically a story outline). Set a daily, weekly, or monthly word count goal - keep it easy to achieve at first and ramp up. Have word wars with your friends, competing to see who can write the most words in a half hour or hour (everyone wins, because everyone got something written!). Close Tumblr and WRITE.

That got suuuuper long, sorry. But trust me, these are things you should definitely be paying attention to if you want to improve your writing. And they really are the most basic basics - stuff that I do automatically 90% of the time. Though I’m sure if you asked another experienced fic writer, they’d point out a different set of things. I could write a whole other post on the intermediate stuff that I’m still actively working on improving in my own writing.