#but I used it regularly in prose!

[mikkeneko]

just remembering a while back (can no longer recall the context) when someone was complaining about translating yinhufu as the Stygian Tiger Seal because 'stygian' is an archaic Greek word not used in english. and I was like wdym. I use stygian all the time

[fictionstudent]

How to pull off descriptions

New authors always describe the scene and place every object on the stage before they press the play button of their novels. And I feel that it happens because we live in a world filled with visual media like comics and films, which heavily influence our prose.

In visual media, it’s really easy to set the scene—you just show where every object is, doesn’t matter if they’re a part of the action about to come or not. But prose is quite different from comics and films. You can’t just set the scene and expect the reader to wait for you to start action of the novel. You just begin the scene with action, making sure your reader is glued to the page.

And now that begs the question—if not at the beginning, where do you describe the scene? Am I saying you should not use descriptions and details at all? Hell naw! I’m just saying the way you’re doing it is wrong—there’s a smarter way to pull off descriptions. And I’m here to teach that to you.

***

#01 - What are descriptions?

Let’s start with the basics—what are descriptions? How do you define descriptions? Or details, for that matter? And what do the words include?

Descriptions refer to… descriptions. It’s that part of your prose where you’re not describing something—the appearance of an object, perhaps. Mostly, we mean scene-descriptions when we use the term, but descriptions are more than just scene-descriptions.

Descriptions include appearances of characters too. Let’s call that character-descriptions.

Both scene-descriptions and character-descriptions are forms of descriptions that we regularly use in our prose. We mostly use them at the beginning of the scene—just out of habit.

Authors, especially the newer ones, feel that they need to describe each and every nook and cranny of the place or character so they can be visualized clearly by their readers, right as the authors themselves visualized them. And they do that at the start of the scene because how can you visualize a scene when you don’t know how the scene looks first.

And that’s why your prose is filled with how the clouds look or what lights are on the room before you even start with the dialogues and action. But the first paragraph doesn’t need to be a simple scene-description—it makes your prose formulaic and predictable. And boring. Let me help you with this.

***

#02 - Get in your narrator’s head

The prose may have many MCs, but a piece of prose only has a single narrator. And these days, that’s mostly one of the characters of your story. Who uses third-person omniscient narrator these days anyway? If that’s you, change your habits.

Anyway, know your narrator. Flesh out their character. And then internalize them—their speech and stuff like that. Internalize your narrator to such an extent that you can write prose from their point-of-view.

Now, I don’t mean to say that only your narrator should be at the center of the scene—far from it. What I mean is you should get into your narrator’s head.

You do not describe a scene from the eyes of the author—you—but from the eyes of the narrator. You see from their eyes, and understand what they’re noticing. And then you write that.

Start your scene with what the narrator is looking at.

For example,

The dark clouds had covered the sky that day. The whole classroom was in shades of gray—quite unusual for someone like Sara who was used to the sun. She felt the gloom the day had brought with it—the gloom that no one else in her class knew of.

She never had happy times under the clouds like that. Rain made her sad. Rain made her yearn for something she couldn’t put into words. What was it that she was living for? Money? Happiness?

As she stared at the sky through the window, she was lost in her own quiet little corner. Both money and happiness—and even everything else—were temporary. All of it would leave her one day, then come back, then leave, then come back, like the waves of an ocean far away from any human civilization in sight.

All of it would come and go—like rain, it’d fall on her, like rain, it’d evaporate without proof.

And suddenly, drops of water began hitting the window.

You know it was a cloudy day, where it could rain anytime soon. You know that for other students, it didn’t really matter, but Sara felt really depressed because of the weather that day. You know Sara was at the corner, dealing with her emotions alone.

It’s far better than this,

The dark clouds covered the sky that day. It could rain anytime soon.

From her seat at the corner of the room, Sara stared at the sky that made everything gray that day. She…

The main reason it doesn’t work is that you describe the scene in the first paragraph, but it’s devoid of any emotions. Of any flavor. It’s like a factual weather report of the day. That’s what you don’t want to do—write descriptions in a factual tone.

If you want to pull off the prior one, get to your narrator’s head. See from their eyes, think from their brain. Understand what they’re experiencing, and then write that experience from their POV.

Sara didn’t care what everyone was wearing—they were all probably in their school uniforms, obviously, so I didn’t describe that. Sara didn’t focus on how big the classroom was, or how filled, or what everybody was doing. Sara was just looking at the clouds and the clouds alone, hearing everybody just living their normal days, so I mentioned just those things.

As the author, you need to understand that only you, the author are the know-it-all about the scene, not your narrator. And that you’re different from your narrator.

Write as a narrator, not as an author.

***

#03 - Filler Words

This brings me to filler words. Now, hearing my advice, you might start writing something like this,

Sarah noticed the dark clouds through the window. She saw that they’d saturated the place gray.

Fillers words like “see”, “notice”, “stare”, “hear” should be ignored. But many authors who begin writing from the POV of the characters start using these verbs to describe what the character is experiencing.

But remember, the character is not cognizant of the fact that they’re seeing a dark cloud, just that it’s a dark cloud. You don’t need these filler words—straight up describe what the character is seeing, instead of describing that the character is seeing.

Just write,

There were dark clouds on the other end of the window, which saturated the place gray.

Sarah is still seeing the clouds, yeah. But we’re looking from her eyes, and her eyes ain’t noticing that she’s noticing the clouds.

It’s kinda confusing, but it’s an important mistake to avoid. Filler words can really make your writing sound more amateurish than before and take away the experience of the reader, because the reader wants to see through the narrator’s eyes, not that the narrator is seeing.

***

#04 - Characters

Character-descriptions are a lot harder to pull off than scene-descriptions. Because it’s really confusing to know when to describe them, their clothing, their appearances, and what to tell and what not to.

For characters, you can give a full description of their looks. Keep it concise and clear, so that your readers can get a pretty good idea of the character with so few words that they don’t notice you’ve stopped action for a while.

Or can show your narrator scanning the character, and what they noticed about them.

Both these two tricks only work when a character is shown first time to the readers. After that, you don’t really talk about their clothing or face anymore.

Until there’s something out of the ordinary about your character.

What do I mean by that? See, you’ve described the face and clothes of the character, and the next time they appear, the reader is gonna imagine the character in a similar set of clothes, with the same face and appearance that they had the first time. Therefore, any time other than the first, you don’t go into detail about the character again. But, if something about your character is out of ordinary—there are bruises on their face, scars, or a change in the way they dress—describe it to the reader. That’s because your narrator may notice these little changes.

***

#05 - Clothing

Clothing is a special case. Some new authors describe the clothes of the characters when they’re describing the character every time the reader sees them. So, I wanna help you with this.

Clothing can be a way to show something about your character—a character with a well-ironed business suit is gonna be different from a character with tight jeans and baggy t-shirt. Therefore, only use clothing to tell something unique about the character.

Refrain from describing the clothing of characters that dress like most others. Like, in a school, it’s obvious that all characters are wearing school uniforms. Also, a normal teenage boy may wear t-shirts and denim jeans. If your character is this, no need to describe their clothing—anything the reader would be imagining is fine.

Refrain from describing the clothing of one-dimensional side-characters—there’s a high chance you’ve not really created them well enough that they have clothing that differs from the expectations of the readers. We all know what waiters wear, or what a college guy who was just passing by in the scene would be wearing.

You may describe the clothing of the important character in the story, but only in the first appearance. After that, describe their clothes only if the clothes seem really, really different from the first time. And stop describing their clothes if you’ve set your character well enough in the story that your readers know what to expect from them in normal circumstances—then, describe clothes only when they’re really, really different from their usual forms of clothing.

***

#06 - Conclusion

I think there was so much I had to say in this article, but I didn’t do a good job. However, I said all that I wanted to say. I hope you guys liked the article and it helps you in one way or the other.

And please subscribe if you want more articles like this straight in your inbox!

[snaggemon]

KING TAKES THE STAGE IN THE 'SNAGGEMON' LIGHT NOVEL!

Hey, all! Long time, no see!

To everyone who's been patient for new 'SnaggeMon' content, I thank you for your patience. To everyone who's joined us recently, I welcome you! Obviously the last two years since we released the first demo have been slow and quiet, and I want everyone to know we've been working very hard to keep things going and earn the time we have to spend making the 'SnaggeMon' game better and adding new content. But the time we have to spend doing so is pretty hard to come by as we work through several major commitments and responsibilities that dominate our time and our lives, on top of our day-to-day work and studies.

But, I have better news about the light novel version!

As I mentioned in my last Itch.io update in February, I have a strong background in fiction writing, including in prose. And to that end, in order to keep the wheels turning I've been writing an updated, more in-depth and linear version of 'SnaggeMon' as a light novel. It's still had some downtime during the busier work periods, of course, but it's easier to write than the game is to make. And I've been keeping the members of the Official 'SnaggeMon' Discord Server up to date and well-fed with snippets, sneak peeks, and even a poll now and then! (Seriously, if you haven't joined the server yet then by all means do so!)

And I have news: in that Discord server, I've now released a new, updated PDF of the 'SnaggeMon' light novel first draft — including the arrival and appearance of the one, the only, KING! 👑

You read that right! For the first time in almost two years, there is now brand spanking new 'SnaggeMon' content available to the public! It's not in the game and probably won't be for some time, which I understand may disappoint some people. But in the meantime, I hope this gives you some new joy to share with each other and keep the fires burning.

And, just because I like you… Here is a link to the PDF, free and publicly viewable and downloadable!

Thank you for your continued patience, and I hope you enjoy the new content. I'll be updating things in the Discord server and dropping snippets, sneak peeks and further updates there more regularly than here for now. But I wanted to let you all know what was going on and give you a chance to share in the joy!

'SnaggeMon! - Giving Up My Champion Rank To Date The Bad Guys!'

[joesalw]

Some good comment on this 1830s line from reddit thread about swifties harassing Maitreyi Ramakrishnan:

As someone with a masters in poetry, who has analyzed, graded, and critiqued poems, lyrics, and lyrical prose, it 💯 seems like the work of a younger white student just starting out, romanticizing a random decade bc it would make them seem deep. During workshop someone will mention that time period wasn’t so great for POC, and then the writer will stick on “but without all the racists” and think that solves the whole problem, when that’s only part of the issue to begin with.

ETA I’m getting a lot of messages from people who are supplying me with the lyrics in context, which admittedly I had not seen before. I took a look and I remain unconvinced at the assurances that the lyrics are doing the opposite of what I had first interpreted.

If this song were in front of me during workshop, I would absolutely inform the writer that because of a lack of clarity, this could be interpreted in a variety of ways. I would then ask:

“Nostalgia’s a mind trick” for whom, and why?

Because nostalgia isn’t a mind trick for marginalized communities.

It’s whiteness and privilege that allows for nostalgia in the first place. It’s whiteness and privilege that would write about “the highest bid” as referring to marriage and not chattel slavery during a time of literal chattel slavery while referencing the time period’s racists in the same stanza/verse. (If marriage as the highest bid is a metaphor for sexism and transactional marriages, the metaphor fails in context).

It’s whiteness and privilege to tell a story about a speaker being supposedly so aware of their whiteness and privilege that they educate their friends on it during a game (which also implies they never played this game with someone who was a member of a marginalized community, a game that with the lyric “used to play” implies it was played fairly regularly for a time), but concludes that “nostalgia is a mind trick” without adding that it’s only a mind trick for those immersed in privilege.

This is emphasized by “Seems like it was never even fun back then.” This line implies that at one point, it seemed fun to the speaker.

“If I’d been there, I’d hate it.” I would let the writer know that I as a reader am not convinced of this conclusion due to a seemingly lack of comprehension on the speaker’s part. I would let them know many readers would interpret this lack of comprehension as willful ignorance. If that is the writer’s intention, then proceed, if not, a revision is in order.

!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A List of Poetic Terms

anaphora the repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line.

alliteration the repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.

allegory narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated.

apostrophe direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity (someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate).

assonance the repetition of vowel-sounds.

beat a stressed (or accented) syllable.

binary dual, twofold, characterized by two parts.

blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter.

caesura an audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle. (An audible pause at the end of a line is called an end-stop.) The French alexandrine, Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter, and Latin dactylic hexameter are all verse forms that call for a caesura.

chiasmus from the Greek letter Chi ( Χ ), a "crossed" rhetorical parallel. That is, the parallel form a:b::a:b changes to a:b::b:a to become a chiasmus.

climax the high point; the moment of greatest tension or intensity. The climax can occur at any point in a poem, and can register on different levels, e.g. narrative, rhetorical, or formal.

consonance the repetition of consonant-sounds.

couplet two lines of verse, usually rhymed. Heroic couplet: a rhymed iambic pentameter couplet.

diction word choice, specifically the "class" or "kind" of words chosen.

elegy since the 17th century, usually denotes a reflective poem that laments the loss of something or someone.

end-stopped line a line that ends with a punctuation mark and whose meaning is complete.

enjambed line a "run-on" line that carries over into the next to complete its meaning.

foot the basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stress with one or more unstressed syllables.

free verse poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

imagery the visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate.

meter a regularly repeating rhythm, divided for convenience into feet.

metonomy a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it, e.g. "White House" for "the President."

ode a genre of lyric, an ode tends to be a long, serious meditation on an elevated subject.

prosody the study of versification, i.e. the form—meter, rhyme, rhythm, stanzaic form, sound patterns—into which poets put language to make it verse rather than something else.

refrain a phrase or line recurring at intervals. The definition does not require that a refrain include the entire line, nor that it recur at regular intervals, though refrains often are and do.

rhythm the patterns of stresses, unstressed syllables, and pauses in language. Regularly repeating rhythm is called meter.

scansion the identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter. To "scan" a line of poetry is to mark its stressed and unstressed syllables.

simile a figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as "like" or "as."

speaker the "I" of a poem, equivalent to the "narrator" of a prose text. In lyric poetry, the speaker is often an authorial persona.

speech act the manner of expression (as opposed to the content). Examples of speech acts include: question, promise, plea, declaration, and command.

stanza a “paragraph” of a poem: a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines.

symbol an image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes.

symbolism the serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas. (Distinct from allegory in that symbolism does not depend on narrative.)

synecdoche a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, e.g. “wheels” for “car.”

tone the speaker’s or author’s attitude toward the reader, addressee, or subject matter. The tone of a poem immediately impresses itself upon the reader, yet it can be quite difficult to describe and analyze.

topos a traditional theme or motif (e.g. the topos of modesty).

trope a figure of speech, such as a metaphor (trope is often used, incorrectly, to mean topos)

valediction an act or utterance of farewell.

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

More: Word Lists

[loftec]

Familiar by @mimilaroo

Shameless (US) | Mickey Milkovich/Ian Gallagher | 4 899 words 107 pages | 7 signatures | 4,5 pt Bodoni 72 Book

Mickey gets out of prison, narrowly escapes getting caught in a thunderstorm, perhaps experiences something magical, gets some ink, makes a friend, gets the upper hand back.

Truly a fandom classic in my books, Familiar is a staple of fix-it fics, the best kind of magical realism, and has one specific line of prose in it that I still regularly think about, 8 years later. Guess which it is, comment your favourite Familiar line!

[jcollinswrites]

FAQ

Is this a one-book story? Yes. I'm currently not planning any sequels. 

How many chapters will there be?  At the moment, I'm planning 10. 

What is the rating of the game? The finished version of the game will be rated adult only. This is not a Young Adult novel by any means, even if the prose seems fun and goofy in some places. The story will contain heavy and dark themes, mental health problems, violence, death, gore, strong language, and optional sexual content, to only mention a few. The whole list of triggering content can be found in the beginning of the game. READ THE CONTENT WARNINGS BEFORE PLAYING, and make sure to check it regularly because the list is constantly updated as I add more content.

Is the story historically correct? No.

Are you a historian? No, I'm not. This is only a passion of mine. 

When does the story take place exactly? In an alternate setting that resembles the end of the Second Intermediate Period / the beginning of the New Kingdom era, so approximately 1550 BC. 

Were the characters inspired by real historical figures? Some of them, yes. 

I noticed that X detail is not historically correct... Yes, I'm aware. Magic isn't real either. 

Why do you use modern words when the story takes place in Ancient Egypt? Because I'm writing it in a way as if I was translating the character's words from Ancient Egyptian into modern English. That's also the reason why I use slang, sometimes incorrect grammar, abbreviations, and such. Additionally, English is NOT my first language. Please keep that in mind. 

Do you use AI? No.

Can I play without romancing anyone? Yes. There is an option that completely disables romance for the entire game. There will also be extra content that you only get if you disabled romance, plus you'll get more screen time with non-romanceable characters, so you won't miss out on the story. 

Will I be able to romance several characters at the same time? There will be one poly route, but other than that, you will get a choice sometime in Chapter 4 that will lock you into a romance route for the rest of the game. The pre-requirement will be only that you have to have at least 2 romance points with your chosen character. 

Who will be in the poly route? Zaia and Ahmose. 

What are the age restrictions for the romance routes? Narmer and Qenna will gently reject a character who is 18-20 years old and is trying to romance them.

Ahmose on default cannot be romanced by a character who is older than 30, therefore, the poly route is also unavailable.

Why can't I romance XY with an 18 year old character? Because this is not a Young Adult novel. Some of the ROs are older and they simply aren't romantically interested in such a young main character. 

Why can I even choose "late teen" for my character if I can't romance all of the ROs with it? Because one of the ROs is 18, so I wanted to give you a chance to play a main character of the same age. 

Why didn't you answer the message I sent you? Probably because I didn't get to it yet. I apologize if it sometimes takes too long. I'm answering the asks in a chronological order, but some of them need more detailed answers than others, and that takes time to write. However, if weeks have passed and I still haven't answered your message, then it could be for one of the following reasons:  A) Your question contained massive spoilers that I couldn't answer without giving away the spoiler. If you suspect this might be the case, turn off Anon and I might be able to answer you privately. HOWEVER, please don't send me messages about things that you found while code-diving, unless it's about a bug or error.  B) I didn't understand the message and I didn't want to give a misleading answer. C) I didn't know how to answer the message at all. D) The answer to your question can be found in this very FAQ.  E) The message was disrespectful/ racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ transphobic so it went straight to the trash, where it belongs. 

Will there be a goose DLC? Maybe.

[atiyasnake]

I've been keeping up with you accidental crimelord Danny and God dude I just want to chew on it. Grundy and Danny friendship is so silly and fun. Waylon being treated like Just Some Guy has gotta be so healing for him. and I really like some of the prose you use. especially the way you introduce new characters with some interesting trait and have it tie into the moment.

I love that you want to chew on the fic XD . I am an absolute suckere for friendships and character interactions that are fun and genuine, especially with characters that you don't see that a lot in other stories. And it's just fun using Danny as the person to do that in his own way.

And YES, I think it would be healing for Waylon to just be treated like a regular dude!! Like imagine him just having gotten out if Arkham and having a long list of encounters that just went wrong and then suddenly this weird kid just being 'chill', and somehow this leads to more people being chill with him and now he's regularly getting sandwiches from an old lady.

I'm so happy you like the way I have introduced the characters!!! Especially in this one that had more OCs than in my other fics. It was kind of a challenge and I wanted them to be their own person but fit into this world of Gotham, that along with writing and introducing the characters that already exist in the DC universe.

[bonesandthebees]

Hi Bee!!! I really admire your writing style a lot lol, it's inspired me a bunch, but I was wondering if you had any tips for how you do it? I'm just curious, and I'm not like, trying to copy it comepletely or anything, I still want it to have my own thing obv, but I also want it to bear it's inspiration from yours if that makes sense?

aww thank you this is so sweet!! it makes me so happy to hear people say I've inspired them :)))

when it comes to my writing style I've never really been the type of person to have super flowery/poetic prose. it never came naturally to me but for a long time when I was younger I thought I had to have more flowery prose in order to be considered a 'good' writer so I would try really hard to write like that but it just stressed me out. eventually I realized that I don't even like reading stuff that's in super flowery poetic prose (nothing against it, that kind of language just makes it more difficult for me to focus on what's going on in the scene personally) so why would I try to write like that?

basically I try to write in the style that I like to read most. I do use a lot of imagery and metaphors sometimes because I love creating visual images with language, but I try not to bury what's happening in the scene with it. I try to write enough character thought process so that my readers have a good sense for what's going on in their head, but I don't dive into long sweeping thoughts and memories for pages at a time.

the most important aspect of how I write however is that I try to write in a way that makes everything easy to visualize. I want my readers to feel like they're watching a movie in their heads. while sometimes I might leave details up to a readers imagination, usually I try to describe the setting and immerse the reader in it. but more importantly, I make a habit of regularly mentioning exactly what each character is doing physically in a scene. for me as a reader, I struggle to come up with my own 'additions' to scenes that aren't explicitly said on the page. if two characters are having a conversation, unless the reader describes their faces and body positions, I'm usually going to end up picturing them standing straight up talking to each other in monotone voices with blank expressions on their faces. maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but it's not far off from where my head goes. so in my writing I always want to mention that stuff. I specify how a character says something, what they're doing with their body (are they sitting? standing? are their arms folded across their chest? how does their body language convey their mood?) what their face is doing (smiling, frowning, etc.). I try to regularly 'zoom out with the camera' if you will and give the readers a full picture of the scene going on.

ok that was a ramble but you guys know how I am. I hope that helps!!

[weaselandfriends]

Have you thought about opening a Patreon? I would pay a lot of money if it meant getting your stories more regularly...

My prose sucks, yours is spectacular. How do I get better at it? I try reading a lot, but I'm starting to conclude there's only so much you can pick up via absorption without some kind of formal instruction.

1. I'm not especially interested in opening a Patreon, and here's why. First, I work a reliable full time job that isn't too demanding on me, so I'm already financially stable. My following right now likely isn't large enough to sustain me full time, so I wouldn't be able to use Patreon as a primary income source anyway. Even if my following was larger, though, it would be a gamble to quit my job and sustain myself solely on fan donations. Ultimately, it would probably be more stressful for me than my current situation, and I could see my writing quality suffer under the pressure of needing to constantly output material on a monthly basis. On top of that, I'm not sure if sustaining myself on Patreon would actually increase the regularity of my stories. Unlike seemingly most authors (go look at Alexander Wales' Tumblr for an example), I'm not an "ideas guy." I don't get a lot of story ideas. The ideas I do get I nurture for years, slowly adding details to them until they're ready to write. Cockatiel x Chameleon was an idea I got in 2015 (published 2022). Modern Cannibals was an idea I got in 2012 (published 2017). When I am actually writing a story, I'm usually able to consistently output content, even with my job. The limiting factor for me isn't my available time in the day, but my brain. I appreciate the sentiment, though! One of my favorite comments, which I received on Cockatiel x Chameleon, went something like "You should be on humanity's payroll."

2. My prose sucked too. When I was a teen, I would write stories and my classmates would laugh at how badly written they were. In college, I couldn't even get my friends or family to read my stories. (I once described one of my stories to my grandmother and she said, "Well that doesn't sound any good at all.") At age 18, I decided to start reading classic literature. Only classic literature, at a rate of 50 pages a day, every day. I read all kinds, from all sorts of time periods and countries. I read everything from Homer to David Foster Wallace. And while I read, I wrote. I wrote badly. In college I wrote novels that pretty shamelessly imitated the prose styles of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. By the time I started writing Fargo (which is a story where I think my prose was still improving), I had written nine complete novels and had read somewhere between 200 and 300 works of classic literature. I didn't have any formal training, at least in terms of writing fiction. I was an English/Geography dual major, and from my English classes I learned how to close read a text, and in general I learned how to write an academic essay. In my final year of college I took an MFA-styled creative writing workshop, but by then I was pretty much beyond what it could teach me and I don't feel like I learned much of anything from it.

Other than reading and writing, I started editing. One of my later pre-Bavitz novels I finished, then went back and edited assiduously. I took a 100,000 word rough draft and over 14 editing passes pared it down to 70,000 words. That was massive for improving my prose, as it forced me to engage with my story on a word-by-word level. Every single word fell under my scrutiny and thus I had to grapple with how valuable, how good that word was. What I learned from that experience was massive for improving my prose going forward.

I think it's entirely possible for someone to improve their prose just through the basics of reading, writing, and editing. Julirites, the author of Fargo fanfic London, has massively improved her prose over the course of the story. It didn't even take her nine failed novels to do it, either. Be willing to experiment. Be willing to fail. Don't be afraid of someone laughing at you for writing purple prose. Imitate authors you like, that's the first step toward developing your own unique style.

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

500-Year Diary Headcanons: Updated

I’m reposting this rather than just reblogging the other one because I changed the timeline

One: writes pretty regularly. Doesn’t record his adventures so much as grumble about people and the universe, interspersed with the occasional joke or amusing anecdote, but does include enough detail to read between the lines and guess at what he did and that he had fun doing it.

Two: writes almost not at all, instead doing watercolor landscape and urban sketches, labeled with the place and date but no other information.

Three: usually starts off intending to rant about humans or time lords or the universe at large but gets distracted and ends up either indodumping (about cars or other tech) or happily relating an anecdote about one of his companions.

Four: very, very bad about remembering to write ever. Does directly relate adventures, and a fairly good writer, but heavily editorializes them into being the way he wants to remember. Just as often as writing about what happened, he instead discusses his feelings or the sudden realization of what someone was trying to tell him several days ago.

Four addendum: Romana. Keeps her own diary for 80 years or so, but after regenerating discovers his and begins annotating and correcting the entries, and eventually just writing down their adventures for him. She is more consistent and accurate than he is, but not perfectly either, and includes quite a lot of side commentary.

Five: much less emotional about it all. Also (a little tiny bit) more consistent. Tends to write short, summary-like entries about adventures without much detail.

Six: oh Rassilon, the purple prose. Almost entirely poetry and legend-style tales starring him and based only vaguely on what actually happened. Any companions are barely an afterthought.

Seven: tbd, still not quite there yet.

Eight: the most normal diary of all of them. Records and processes thoughts and feelings, as well as fairly emotional and fairly accurate recounting of his adventures (though still not fairly consistent) in case he loses his memory again. Does stop writing the moment he gets involved in the Time War, though. Initially meant only to take a break because it felt too big to think about, but begins to dread having to record it until he just stops writing entirely.

War: nope. Actually tries to destroy his diaries but the tardis saves them and spits them back out into the library.

Nine: doesn’t start writing again until after the whole empty child thing, and when he does it’s only listed itinerary-style recordings of what happened with no detail or feeling at all.

Ten: wildly emotional without actually processing any of those feelings. Writes in glitter pen. Goes on for pages and pages about his feelings and forgets to include the actual events that happened. Can only really read between the lines to get the gist of it because he does gush about his companions and others he meets.

Eleven: the most adhd anyone has ever been. Will start recounting a story only to get distracted by any number of things: rants about pasta shapes, listing favorite planets, telling a completely unrelated story. The margins are filled with doodles of people and objects. The books themselves are heavily dented from all the times he throws them across the room after failing to understand what his past self meant when he wanted to look something up. Writes less often towards the end of his life but has too many thoughts in his head to ever stop entirely.

Eleven addendum: River. At some point she discovered his diary and read it. Maybe she thought at first it was like hers and meant to compare where they were. At any rate, it’s how she learned so much about his life and past and old companions. She starts using it to leave him notes, though he frequently doesn’t find them for years.

Twelve: approximately half infodumps about his newest hobby while trying to sound too cool to be that into it. The other half is ranting and raving at the universe right after a traumatic adventure or speaking fondly of a happy adventure years after the fact. Is written in plain pen and incredibly messy, full of crossed out and corrected rememberings.

Twelve addendum: Missy. Steals it at some point while she’s locked up and role plays as him for years, but eventually tells him when he completely fails to notice. He leaves angry annotations in the margins but doesn’t tear out her entries.

Thirteen: the second most adhd anyone has ever been. Writes in brightly colored marker, always very excited, with a ton of exclamation points. Almost no emotional depth. Often recounts adventures with a coherent beginning and end but no middle at all because she got distracted by her thoughts on a detail, a different story, or gushing about someone (75% of the time it’s Yaz). There is the occasional rage-filled sentence in a spiky bubble with 50 explanation points, but never any context.

Fourteen: actually uses it to process his feelings as well as get excited about all the little everyday things he is discovering, and within a few decades gets in the habit of writing most evenings before bed. Also does those complex scrapbook-style journal pages and sometimes detailed drawings.

Fifteen: keeps up the nearly-everyday routine of it for a bit, but as more things happen he gets out of the habit and goes back to just whenever he remembers. Writes excitedly, coherently, and in plenty of detail about his adventures, but does have a habit of focusing on little things that made him happy and glossing over or entirely skipping big things like nearly dying. Still, does occasionally process negative feelings with it. Often illustrates his stories with lovely pencil sketches.

[mrghostrat]

i know i just posted a long ass rec list but i remembered some more fics that are crucial for u to read

still not my last rec post. but here's ur new homework until i wake my kindle back up and sort through my reread list.

We're Both Of Us Above by obstinatrix

E • 3k • angel/demon (pwp) "I saw you once," Crowley says, in a tone which might be interpreted, by anyone other than Aziraphale, as casual, "with a Fusilier." my favourite genre of aziraphale. the best characterisation. incredible dialogue, flirty snarky bitchy "how could you sleep with humans but not with me" resulting in amazing "youre the only one i've ever loved" sex.

New Approaches by FeralTuxedo

E • 19k • human AU (professor/author) Professor Aziraphale Fell welcomes the attendees of the First Conference on New Approaches to Genre Fiction. Among them is keynote speaker and best-selling thriller author Anthony J. Crowley. Aziraphale has not seen him for twenty-five years. Sometimes, he can still feel the ghost of their parting kiss on his lips.

The Lines Between by Ginger_Cat

M • 21k • angel/demon (post armageddon) fucking exquisite out of this world prose i want to drink with my eyeballs. aziraphale notices something is wrong with crowley (love) but can't figure out why the current state of their relationship isn't enough for him. celestial, spirital banging. so, so many feelings. fucking delectable literary motifs.

Celestial Bodies by Justkeeptrekkin

M • 48k • angel/demon (1920s) pg wodehouse inspired fic where aziraphale has a human friend group that invite him and crowley for a weekend away in the country. it's so funny and delightful and the pining is agonisingly sweet, and i love seeing how crowley interacts with all these batshit humans aziraphale calls friends. i know i'm a jeeves & wooster feral but i can't recommend this fic enough

Man to Man by leukozyna

E • 62k • human AU (office) crowley is the token twink in a corporate office with a mad crush on his colleague. aziraphale seems very much to be straight, but after striking up conversation over drinks at an office party, the two start hooking up regularly so crowley can help him uncover his sexuality.

A Classical Education by Melibe

M • 1k • human AU (professors) what the fuck this fic only has 1k hits i assumed it was like a fanon classic thpfhtkjdhs. aziraphale recites latin poetry at an office party. “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,” Aziraphale enunciated clearly, knowing that only one person in the room understood the meaning of the archaic syllables: I will sodomize and face-fuck you.

The Rose Thief and the Priest by ImprobableDreams900

T • 15k • human AU (priest/gardener) When horticulturist A. J. Crowley sees a rare breed of rose in a churchyard, he decides he won't stop until he can get a cutting—even if he has to go through the church's stuffy priest to do so.

New Messages by TawnyOwl95

E • 38k (WIP) • human AU (fandom/online) Aziraphale writes fanfiction for the show Nice and Accurate Prophecies. Crowley draws fanart. THIS THING IS WRITTEN SO GOOD AND FUN AHHHHH so many laugh out loud points and feet kicking.

To reveal my heart in ink by chaoticlivi

E • 29k • angel/demon (post armageddon) aziraphale misses letter writing, so he and crowley start to write each other letters. it's easier to confess things on paper, even if they never mention the contents of their letters when they meet in person. it gets so dirty so fast (and aziraphale signing off every one with Your Dear Friend after detailing how he wants to tear crowley to pieces makes me wheeze laugh every time)

Demon and Angel Professors by Ghostinthehouse

T • series of 200 works, 133k total • human AU (professors) an incredible collection of drabbles (this bitch somehow makes every one 666 words) following a universe where aziraphale and crowley are both professors at the same uni. a mix of them and outsider povs, starting from the "two professors are married but no one realises it's to each other" trope, turning into some wonderful soft stories that reveal more of their relationship history, and loads of moments of queer and disabled solidarity.

[indelen]

Alright, I'm hideously behind and the world is awful so I’m just going to blitz through to the end because the next readthrough is starting soon and I'm not even done with this one, like what is this, high school English? So ....

This is my reread of the Lockwood and Co. Books, organized by @blue-boxes-magic-and-tea, I'll make a general summary of several chapters and then post bits and pieces that jumped out at me.

I go into a longer analysis of Fairfax and Annie’s relationship and how it relates to Lucy but I do want to say kudos to Stroud for portraying such a realistic unhealthy relationship. This is a young adult book and he could have easily made Annabel Ward a saintly abuse victim, but she wasn’t. She was in a complicated toxic relationship with a powerful man, she feared him but wanted his love and approval, she acted in ways that provoked him, which obviously was not smart but abused people do not act in relatable, logical ways. Abuse victims fight back, act in toxic ways, return to their abusers and do any number of seemingly illogical things and I think that it says a lot about Lucy that despite all her baggage, her young age, her “not like other girls” tendencies, her inability to relate to the life Annie had, she still felt an enormous amount of empathy for her and it was that empathy that saved them in the end.

Part IV, Chapters 23-24:

Lucy’s family and her past in Cheviot Hills is fascinating because she never speaks about them except for the very succinct and detached way at the very start and these small moments throughout the books that indicate they mean a lot more to her than she would ever admit to anyone. The fact that she keeps some kind of memory box far under her bed, the fact that she sees her sisters as concussed visions alongside Annie Ward and Lockwood who, for very different reasons, currently occupy her mind quite a bit, shows the family she left behind still has a huge hold over her.

I love George so much because he sasses and analyzes everything in front of him from literally the moment he regains consciousness.

Never going to be normal about Lucy using this sort of imagery about Lockwood. She’s reaching near Victorian levels of Beautiful Death prose. Lockwood is always ethereal, otherworldly and doomed. Too good and beautiful for this sinful earth. What’s interesting is that in literature this sort of imagery is usually reserved for the hero describing the heroine. It’s one of many times the “hero” and “heroine” tropes between these two that are pretty regularly subverted.

Fairfax is like Combe Carey Hall itself in that at night he transforms and the posh and valuable facade recedes to reveal a grotesque and horrible true nature underneath.

Fairfax is an abuser who cannot understand that his toxic relationship with Annie is entirely of his own making. From the beginning their relationship was not that of equals. He was of a higher social class than her and never did anything to bridge that gap because it would threaten his precious inheritance and he never viewed acting or this part of his life as permanent or worth preserving. He was just partying and having fun before he settled into living a rich man’s life. He hid his relationship with Annabel and Annabel, naturally, resented the shit out of being treated as someone’s dirty secret. She sensed how disposable she was to him and got jealous, manufactured conflict and fights, flirted with other men, all to get attention and to provoke a reaction from Fairfax. And he rewarded her for this behavior. He was obviously controlling and his lavish gifts were meant to pacify her. They also normalized their unhealthy dynamic, the locket explicitly referred to the toxicity of their relationship as romantic. You can’t write “my torment, my bliss” on a jeweled locket and give it to a girl and then be surprised when she kinda thinks you’re ok with the torment bit. And so round and round it went until … frankly I’m not even sure that one fight was any worse than all the others. Fairfax never saw Annie as a person, he saw her as beneath him, and disposed of her, out of possessiveness and anger sure, but also out of pragmatic convenience. As long as Annie lived she was a liability and posed a risk to his reputation and name. He can try and pitch their relationship as mutually toxic and harmful all he wants but the truth is only Annie was ever in danger in it.

And here is where I put my tinfoil hat on.

Because my theory is that Annabel Ward was drawn to Lucy and formed such an empathetic bond with her specifically because she saw Lucy as being in the same situation as her. Ghosts seem to have limited capacities and see things on a loop and devoid of context. To Annabel’s spirit the story of meeting a dashing young man through work, work both are passionate about and work that brings them intimately closer together, but he is of higher social class and is financially better off and also he holds a significant amount of power over her is, on paper, very similar. Lucy might not think Annabel is much like her, but Annabel’s ghost sees things in Lucy’s mind she recognizes. Her hidden emotions, the desperate besotted love she feels for a magnetic, powerful person in her life and the feeling of inadequacy and desire to be seen as good, as valuable to him are all familiar ones Annie latches onto. And while Lucy is too young and repressed and traumatized to recognize any of this, I think she still learns a lot from Annie. It’s not a coincidence that the biggest conflict between Lockwood and Lucy is that of inequality and disbalance of power. Lucy, from this point onward, will grow to dislike that Lockwood does not share anything with her emotionally and that he overrules or does not consult her opinions professionally. And to some extent I think it’s her learning from poor Annie Ward.

Yea OK this is where I have trouble buying the “killed instantly” story Fairfax tells to everyone including himself. The human neck is not made of LEGO bricks and it’s hard to kill a fully grown adult with a single blow. So unfortunately, and this is NOT A NICE MENTAL IMAGE so like, skip to the next point if you don’t want to read something that describes grievous bodily harm, abuse and murder, but unfortunately it’s very possible Fairfax very badly injured Annie but she did not die instantly. Like, he may have broken her spine, but while that would inacapitate her, it would not necessarily kill her. If this is true then she died a much slower and more terrible death. And a few things in the above section support this. Annie repeating she’s “cold” but not understanding why. The manifestation of sounds and how they overlap - the hammering that entombed her, tapping of a finger on plaster, the slowing beating of a heart. Did Annie die on some level aware that her lover was disposing of her even before her last breath? Ghostlock was not enough. She should have eaten him.

Very early on we get these hints of just how much of a capitalist nightmare Fittes is and how it slowly swallows up smaller agencies and clearly aims to become a monopoly and discards kids they have no use for. And also how many of those kids clearly fall through the cracks and end up in criminal organizations or doing the dirty work of wealthy unscrupulous magnates.

Book Lockwood is pretty violent in these low key, concentrated and brutally efficient bursts and it’s one of those things that remains enigmatically unexplained. It’s not just fencing too, it’s all sorts of stuff. In the next book he folds Ned Shaw like a tablecloth. Did Gravedigger Sykes teach him? Flo? Unexplained! Very hot though. You 100% can see where Lucy is coming from.

Smile counter is still at 9 since there was nothing much to grin at in these chapters, but I want to give a shout-out to George for chasing after Percy, a grown man armed with a gun remember, alongside Lockwood. Like that's good guts, George doesn't like action, he doesn't live for it like Lockwood does, but he doesn't shrink away from it either.

[catnippackets]

Hello!! Do you have any tips on fully scripting ur comic before drawing it out? (Anything u kept in mind during the process or that stuck out to you!) Im thinking of doing it this way and i think u mentioned somewhere that u scripted the backmaker before starting to draw it?

I think I might! this might be more just general storytelling advice in general rather than specifically scripting, but I find it's a thousand times easier to do it this way, I do this for when I'm writing prose as well. to be perfectly honest I don't know how to plot stories any other way lol

so first of all: everything needs a thesis statement. or rather every scene needs to have a specific reason for existing.

When I wrote TBM I divided it into three acts, and then decided where I needed to be at the beginning and end of each one. So for example, act 1 had to begin with the girls at the creek making a discovery, and it had to end with one of their classmates dying and all of them being left with a feeling of dread and are unsure if they’re responsible for it or not.

Once that was decided, I had to figure out what other things needed to happen in order to carry us there. There’s nine sections in act 1, twelve in act 2, and fifteen in act 3, and each of them have their own little thesis statement as I like to call it. Sometimes they’re specific like “they go to the creek so they can find the body of the first victim and kick off the mystery”, but sometimes they’re simply “establish this dynamic between these characters”, or “set up that this character feels a certain way about this issue” or even “drop foreshadowing here for this other thing so it can pay off later”.

So for act one, the things that needed to happen were: establish that Alice has a reoccurring nightmare, set up all the girls' personalities and relationships with each other, establish that they hang out at the creek regularly, they go to a different part of the creek this time and find something kind of creepy, one of their classmates dies, all of them feel various degrees of fear and guilt over it, and life goes on and they all graduate highschool and aren't sure if they should move on or keep thinking about it.

Some of those things can be done in one single sequence, and others can be drawn out in between a few of them, but as long as those things happen, you’re golden. With certain sections, if the point is simply “these characters talk about this thing”, you aren’t even really locked in to a specific setting, you can put them wherever you want and have them doing whatever you want as long as it works.

And then there’s also the characters!! They each have their own beginning and end as well. I needed to make sure I knew exactly where each of them were, like, mindset-wise, at the beginning and end of each act, and then dedicate scenes within the story to track their progress on it. So characters and scenes and acts are basically all treated the same! Each start in one place and end in another, and I have to figure out how to merge all of them nicely.

I've locked in the full script at this point, it was locked in before I started drawing it really, but I'll occasionally reach a scene and have to rework dialogue a bit cuz ppl are talking too much or whatever and I hadn't realized in the writing stage that drawing it out that way would be tedious or tricky. but it's usually pretty minor, the general ideas are all still there

I hope that's somewhat helpful to you, I never know how to explain what my process is lol but that's basically what I do!

[yakool-foolio]

♦️I’ll say it for these specific characters: Phoenix, Edgeworth, Apollo, Klavier, Athena, Shuichi, Ryunosuke, Yuma, Makoto and Hajime. I wouldn’t mind a bonus Yakou or Mia too.

(For this ask game)

Time to dish out a lotta quirks n hobbies! And I'd love to include Yakou n Mia in the mix!

Phoenix Wright - He's tried his hand at simple magic card tricks thanks to Trucy's influence and assistance. He also strikes me as a guy who plays with dominos and sets up really cool tricks with them around his apartment.

Miles Edgeworth - He helps moderate a Steel Samurai forum in his spare time. Maya is also one of those mods.

Apollo Justice - I know this is already partly canon, but I love to think he regularly uses astrology as an ice-breaker to get to know people. It helps with his social anxiety!

Klavier Gavin - He has his very own DDR machine (don't ask him how much of the Gavinners' earnings was spent on it) that he often plays with to impress nobody but himself. Everyone needs their own self-confidence boost sometimes.

Athena Cykes - She has a tendency to turn up the volume with everything she does since she grew up wearing headphones every day as a kid. She speaks louder, listens to loud music, and grabs people's attention by clapping her hands or making other loud noises. Loud is her best friend (sorry Apollo).

Mia Fey - Since she took good care of Charley, I like to think she's a great gardener! Her home is practically a greenhouse, and Maya n Pearl make sure to look after all her plants.

Ryunosuke Naruhodo - He engaged in creative writing from time to time. Though he never published anything he wrote, compliments were always given to his carefully constructed prose and excellent utilization of alliteration.

Shuichi Saihara - Taking after Kaede, he slowly learns how to read sheet music and play piano.

Makoto Naegi - He's good at being an influential public speaker. He's the type to create and present slideshows in order to get people to hear him out on his unpopular opinions.

Hajime Hinata - Keeps mementos of every special occasion to help quell his fears of forgetting himself.

Yuma Kokohead - Claims that studying is his hobby. He's most productive when he's stuck inside on a rainy day.

Yakou Furio - Has a habit of cracking inside jokes even if nobody he's around understands what he's laughing about.

[justforbooks]

Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse

The Nobel prize winner pushes at the veil between this world and the next in the immersive tale of a solitary fisherman

How should one write about death – not as experienced by those who merely witness it, but by the people doing the actual dying? Many attempts have been made, but some favourites barge to the front. In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy terrifies both us and his eponymous magistrate with the “black sack” into which Ivan is being pushed by “an invisible, invincible force”. In Tobias Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain, a book critic is shot by a bank robber, triggering “a crackling chain of ion transports and neurotransmission” that throws up a random memory of a childhood game of baseball.

Will Self, in The North London Book of the Dead, looks beyond the moment of oblivion, suggesting that when we die we move to Crouch End or Grays Thurrock. In Immortality by Milan Kundera, the “other world” is a place where Goethe, out for a stroll, can bump into Hemingway. After the two men spend a bit of time discussing the rather judicial-sounding affairs of the afterlife, Goethe remembers he is in a postmodern novel and remarks, “You know perfectly well that at this moment we are but the frivolous fantasy of a novelist who lets us say things we would probably never say on our own.”

Jon Fosse, who last year was awarded the Nobel prize in literature, has done both the Ivan Ilyich moment of death – “a ball of blue light shoots into my forehead and bursts” (I won’t say which book, and character, this line brings to an end) – and what follows. His novella Morning and Evening, which was published in Norway in 2000 and is now appearing in the UK for the first time, translated by Damion Searls, pushes and probes at the veil that hangs between this world and the next, and takes us a tantalising distance beyond it.

Its subject is Johannes, whose birth we witness in the book’s opening section. In the much longer second part we meet him again as an old man, a fisher living in near solitude in an island community. His wife, Erna, is dead, and so is his best friend and neighbour, Peter. Johannes had a difficult relationship with his father, Olai, and it seems as if Johannes’s children have had their struggles with him, too. The only person he sees regularly is Signe, the second youngest of his seven children.

The day on which most of the book takes place is both like and unlike any other. Johannes has a smoke, some bread and cheese, a cup of coffee; as is often the case in Fosse’s work, his simple, heavily repetitious prose synchs us, to hypnotic effect, into the time-worn groove of a daily ritual. But the coffee is flavourless, and the cigarette doesn’t satisfy as it should. As the day goes on, it continues to seesaw between normality and strangeness. Johannes’s familiar aches and pains seem to have disappeared, and certain objects in his home have begun to glow, “but the road down to the wharf is still the same old overgrown path it’s always been, and the rocky peaks around him are the same as ever, and the heather is the same, and at home this morning everything was just like before too, he rolled himself a cigarette as usual and made coffee and a slice of bread with some brown cheese, everything this morning was like every morning before”.

It is possible, at a stretch, to read Morning and Evening as the portrait of a failing mind. Johannes doubts his faculties when he sees his friend Peter, who is meant to be dead. Fosse wrings some humour from his unwillingness to clarify matters: “to ask someone something like that, it’s indecent, Johannes thinks”.

Fosse converted to Catholicism in 2012 and his masterpiece, Septology, the seven-novel sequence he published between 2019 and 2021, contains frequent references to the 14th-century Catholic priest and mystic Meister Eckhart. But even in books where the references are less explicit, his writing can be seen to possess a numinous aspect – “mystical realism” is a term he has used to describe it. I found Morning and Evening, which sits at the more supernatural end of his work, less powerful than books such as Melancholy I and II, Aliss at the Fire and Septology; still compelling and rewarding, but not as overpoweringly immersive in the way it moves between the present and the accreted layers of the past.

This is a spiritual book, but Johannes’s journey is one into mystery. The novella is never pious or proselytising; the word heaven does not appear. The closest Fosse comes to cliche is an occasional golden halo. When Johannes presses Peter on what it’s like where they are headed, his friend replies, “It is not good or bad, but it is big and calm and it vibrates a little, and it’s bright, if I had to put it into words, but the words don’t say very much”. Definitely not Crouch End, then, but not clouds and cherubim, either. A place beyond words, and so beyond the reach of this book.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?