#cari's writing

[carinelian]

as it turns out, you can't run away from your wip with another wip because eventually you will run out of gas and go back to the thing you first ran away from

the circle of life

[carinelian]

this is honestly one of the things that freed me from the fear of accidentally copying someone else's idea or having my idea for a story copied down.

in the end, it's not about seeking a 'purely' original concept, but rather having enough faith in yourself, your experience, and exercising diligence in your craft. it's that trust on having developed your own writing style, quirks, weaknesses, and even shitty choices that make a piece of work so wonderfully flawed, but authentically you.

it's about execution. it's about flavor. how you cook it, why you cook it, and how you choose to present it--it all adds up. it's honestly beautiful to witness how different writers can deliver vastly different experiences to the reader even if you gave them the same materials to work with.

I think one of my favorite creative joys is seeing how many different things people can do with the same concept. give ten writers the same starting point, or basic plot, or set of tropes to use and you're still going to get wildly different end results

the details you focus on, the ones you omit, turns of phrase, tone, and framing, the cadence and tempo of the sentences themselves, all the little fingerprints you've left littered across the prose — how you tell the story matters, and your personal voice is what makes it unique

[bonefall]

the. the ukraine windclan thing?

me in my therapist's office as his eyes dart anxiously between me and the clock, if im being honest

[akascow]

theres just smth about lawrence gordon the ONCOLOGIST (cancer doctor) trapped in a room with adam stanheight the SMOKER who literally says gimme that sweet sweet cancer in the movie

im losing my marbles brb

[cari-morningcrest]

(pretend it's still Halloween)

[Cari hears a knock on their door and a voice call out]

Sunshine! You got a costume?

-@loyalty-goddess-pt2

[They open the door, frowning slightly]

What?

[carinelian]

sometimes it also works the other way around

like lately, my characters are being mean to me

they keep doing stuff AGAINST the outline

and eventually they become kind by doing some weird parallel shit as if to say, "oops, can't kill me off I'm still following THEME"

some supposed npc becoming relevant suddenly? "oops, can't kill me off i'm doing WORK around here"

someone other than male lead rizzing up the mc? "oops, can't kill me! if you kill me you ADMIT i have rizz"

it's been so chaotic

Be mean to your characters.

What do they take for granted? Take it away from them.

The one thing they know for certain? Make them doubt it.

Their worst fear? Throw it at their faces.

Make their plans fail. Make them cry. Make them question things and then learn about them and the way they react in the process.

Be mean to your character. Then be kind to them for a while, because after all that they may deserve it.

[leighcest]

"No matter how many times Lawrence reassured Adam he would come back, Adam knew he wouldn’t. Lawrence seemed to know this too, despite the looming denial in his gut. He felt the need to make it up to the man. Maybe that's why Lawrence Gordon is letting this man, who he just shot, kiss him like he’s the air around him."

I just woke up from a dream where I wrote chain shipping fan fiction and this is all I remember

[universe-friday]

EXCERPT #57:

Hel- pshhht… hope som- pshhht… is listeni- pshhht…

Old spo- psshht… signal migh- pssshht… bad. The sinkho- pssht… starti- psshht… eat up- pssshht… -ignal towers… There mig- pssshht… bad conne- psshhht… -ope you can hea- psshht…

-e’re running, righ- psshht… -orry I- psshht… out of bre- psshht… Me and Sol- psshht... We- we work- psshht… -ut, the sinkholes the- pssshht… -e whole time it’s ju- psshht…

-aking our way t- psshht… -ave to confront the- psshhht… -ave no choi-

[???]: Rad- psshht… -urry up, we don- pshhht… -uch time left.

[RADIO]: I kno- psshht… -ou think it’s important t- psshhht… -ocumented in some way? We mi- psshhht… -ake it out ali-

[Sirens begin blaring over their speech]

Je- psssht… What on earth? pshhht… -ince when did the Ci- psshht…

[???]: -adio! Up here! psshhht… -uick, you ne- psshht… -our radio behind.

[RADIO]: I can’t ju- psshht…

[???]: -EAVE IT.

[RADIO]: …I’ll see yo- psshhht… -ther side, old sport?

[Static…]

[upontherisers]

would you guys be okay if i posted OC meta it’s okay if not i understand. writing OCs is one thing but analyzing them is insane behavior

[carinelian]

me with aster and florence, back in 2021 when they didn't have names yet and only a scene to slay:

[carinelian]

saw a tapas forum thread on 'how to stay motivated for a long series' and poured my heart and SOUL into the replies

like no SHIT i feel down to the last fraying nerve in my body it's hard as hell and oftentimes i wanted to just give up

but look at me now

one year of abandoning my WIP i come back crawling to them because their story needed to be told i have to write it or else it'll go down as some of my life's biggest regrets (and i already have many)

[hellofanidea]

7 or 145 for the three word prompts for crankbucky?

7) "Try to eat", CrankBucky, tw for post-Stalag recovery including disordered eating and mental health issues

"Try to eat."

It comes out more like an order than Bucky intends, and Crank gives him the usual dry look he gets in response to that tone now they're not in uniform. Not full time at least; Crank an honorably discharged civilian, and Bucky on medical leave for the foreseeable future, to recover weight and muscle and sanity.

"I'm good," Crank insists, and cradles his cup of coffee like somebody's coming to steal it. He no longer takes it black, at least, gave into Bucky's cajoling to add cream and sugar for some imagined benefit.

He's not good. Last night was the roughest either of them have been for a while, which is saying something. Crank had ended up sleeping on the porch after waking up clawing at Bucky's weight on top of him.

Sleeping. Hah. As if either of them slept any more. Bucky couldn't close his eyes if he didn't know exactly where Crank was, if he wasn't directly in eye-line when he woke. Crank could sleep anywhere but woke at the slightest sound, disoriented and trapped in memories of cramped concrete rooms and barbed wire, gasping for air and the sight of the sky.

"You didn't eat dinner yesterday," Bucky reminds him.

They had gone to the diner in town, an increasingly safe bet to get food into both of them, especially since the waitress always slid them extras and a slice of whatever pie was on offer.

Since you're a friend of Charlie's, the older woman had said the first time and then, when Crank had gone to the restroom, it's nice to know he has people looking out for him after all that nastiness.

Halfway through what Bucky thought was a perfectly good chicken parm Crank had gone pale, put down his cutlery, and pushed his plate over to Bucky's side of the table. At first Bucky had ribbed him for being full from just a few bites, but then Crank was vigorously shaking his head, hands white knuckle on the table, mouth a thin, nauseated line.

Bucky had finished both of their plates to ward off the guilty fear that came from wasting food, then hustled Crank out of the door. He wasn't sick, but looked it the whole way back to the house. Any attempt to draw him into conversation failed, and Bucky filled the empty air with predictions on the next baseball season. They had turned in for bed almost as soon as they got back, Crank still not sharing what had turned his stomach (or, Bucky thought privately, his mind).

Then the disturbed night's rest, and now the kitchen, Bucky sliding a plate of toast across the table.

As if he's been asked to do the impossible, Crank sighs and picks up a slice of bread. He bites off a corner, chews, and swallows, keeping eye contact with Bucky the whole time.

"Happy?" He asks.

The familiar sharpness in his voice makes Bucky grin - there's his Charlie, rising from whatever place he sinks into when it all gets too much. There's the hidden bite that made Bucky look twice and then want those teeth in him.

"Ecstatic."

[fivequartersoftheorange]

___________________

I found the album one sweltering afternoon in mid-summer, a month since we’d laid Gramps to rest. Rummaging through the dusty boxes and stacks of back copies of society magazines, I stubbed my toe on the trunk where it was kept, old and battered, sat in a dark corner of the attic.

I took the album, dusted it off, and sat down on a nearby stool. The cover was made of leather, cracked through with age and neatly labeled 1953-1954 in faded gold lettering. I flipped through the pages so yellowed with age, dust motes swirl in front of me as I make sense of what I’m looking at.

It was pictures of Gramps as a younger man. We knew that he was a film star back in the day, and that he was quite famous too, a real matinée idol. It seemed impossible to me then that he had a whole other life for he was always just Gramps; he seemed to always be humming and dancing, constantly moving or cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

Gramps was like magic and fairy dust, his warmth and gentleness touched anyone he came across. He was the grandfather who was up for anything, never raised his voice and talked to you like a grown-up. He was wise and funny and always pushed you to be a better version of yourself. Many a time I spent in Gramps kitchen, listening to him tell stories of film sets and the soaring lives of Hollywood’s finest.

My greatest regret was not asking him about his life when I had the chance. For no one bothered to, he was always just there, woven into the fabric of our lives. None of us really knew anything about him and the questions that had always lingered in the back of my mind resurfaced.

There were other things in the album, ticket stubs and dried flowers and a million other keepsakes. But what seemed to feature most prominently was a young man who looked to be about the same age as Gramps. He had a shy smile and a tentative look in his eyes. He was very handsome.

It seemed that he was also an actor and that at one point worked on a film with Gramps. There was a photograph of a cluster of smiling people and at the very center was the shy handsome man. His gummy smile was breathtaking but he was looking at someone or something out of frame.

As I looked through the rest of the album, a thick packet of letters fell to the floor. They were tied together by a faded red ribbon and at a glance I could see neat loopy script. I knew instinctively that these were all from the handsome man with the gummy smile.

My mind raced with a thousand questions and I burned with a longing to read them yet a sense of wrongness pervaded me. I would be intruding on my grandfather’s privacy. There was a secret buried here that much was true. For now I tuck the album under my arm and make my way downstairs.

___________________

Inspired by this post by @bigassbowlingballhead

I have absolutely no idea how I went from making a silly little edit to having an entire backstory to the silly little edit.

This also broke an almost 3 year streak of no writing. I don't think this is my best work, I'm rusty like an old bicycle but I'm quite surprised I managed to write something. So thanks for that Jon!

This is also by the way heavily inspired by a Danielle Steel novel I once read that I cannot remember the name of. In that story it featured a box, a locket and a packet of letters.

This is literally titled Hot Gramps on my laptop. You can click on the images to make it bigger.

Also did you know that the SAG was founded in 1933? And AFTRA was founded in 1952 but the two only merged in 2012. And that the first Emmy Awards were held in 1949?

[carinelian]

if i may add to this wonderful thread (i come in peace everyone):

heavy agree on the sadomasochistic part! the first novel i drafted (like, completed draft) was rewritten from scratch two times (so there's like, three drafts now) and the journey was crazy (fucking PAINFUL, fr, but also cathartic)

i mean, it works if you're the kind of writer who forgets what you've written and likes the feeling of 'reading' your work for the first time as a whole (what i do is print out the recent draft and rewrite it from there, chapter-per-chapter). you get to enjoy it as a reader + you get to edit it as a writer. the cons here is that you don't know if you're making it worse or better because sometimes whole chunks go into the bin and it morphs into something completely different

(sitting with that fear and trusting the process is definitely an Experience)

i would also like to reiterate the importance of keeping original copies of the drafts because sometimes you're on your third run and you realize that the first draft was actually onto something like we in fr

rewrites are good if you want like, a bird's eye view on how the stories evolved (also you as a writer) because if you're the kind of writer that has, like, a running commentary on your head while you do a cinematic reel of your scenes, then it's an eye-opener on how you make calls on paper

also, also! i would recommend discernment for stories that need rewrites vs. stories that you simply wish to unleash to the world, point blank. rewrites take up a lot of time (mine took like, four years?) so now i'm just balling, there's a certain joy and freedom with simply getting it out into the world, checking in for some minor edits or two every once in a while, then dipping

It has recently occurred to me that to make a second draft after the first one I have to... rewrite the entire thing?? Not just, take the document and, edit ON IT, OVER it.

And that a first draft is not really supposed to be... readable?

Guys I need help,.how do you do drafts??

[friday-answers]

doing my annual radio silence reread has become incredibly useful in terms of universe friday... i'm getting all the lore in check

and i am already finding things i did not remember!!! example: RADIO'S LUNAR BIKE???????

can't believe i could've forgotten something so cool like that. dw i'm making notes and annotating, tabbing everything i didn't remember to make sure details are up to date in universe friday!!!!!!!

[latibvles]

true north.

and we’re back! a little late but I plan on doing all ten prompts TRUST AND BELIEVE! on that note, this next one is wedding — so here’s inez, post-war, where the invitation to a wedding between friends pushes her to leave the nest for a third time. luckily alex’s door is always open. tagging @upontherisers for listening to me rock back and forth over them. I did an embarrassing amount of googling about trains for this one that's how you KNOW it got serious.

—

Maybe it’s not fair of her to say that the invite is what did her in.

No, the invitation was the most expected part of this — going to June and Benny’s wedding sounds and feels more normal than most things. It was always going to turn out this way, wasn’t it? A big wedding with everyone there, practically acting both as a celebration and a reunion. Most who wanted to keep contact, kept it, Inez herself included — but knowing June and Benny, they probably went the extra mile anyway to hunt down those who had disappeared.

The combination of June’s fierce determination and Benny’s kindness is a force in its own right.

Maybe it’s just the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Maybe it’s that Inez is walking into her family’s living room, and telling her mother she’ll be going to Chicago in next May for the ceremony — and then has to remind her who June Cielinski is.

“What classes didja have? Y’never told me about her!” She’s bouncing Judith on her knee — who’s entranced with her father’s car keys at the moment. Inez’s jaw clenched.

“No ma she’s— she’s from my crew. She was our bombardier.”

There’s a click of her mother’s tongue, a feigned recollection of a June and an unrelated anecdote about how she’d always liked that name, how it was a contender before they decided on Judith for her baby sister, who looks at Inez and smiles, showing off a missing tooth.

So maybe it’s not the invitation itself, but the reminders that stem from it. Everything, from the moment she set her bag down in her family’s doorway, has felt unequivocally wrong. She loves her family — Inez is sure of that — but maybe there was a reason Ben married so quickly and then moved all the way to Texas that Inez is only just now seeing. The only things that feel right are the things she’s done that are separate from this house.

The collection of letters she keeps under her bed, namely. She’d asked for Alex’s address impulsively, not expecting him to so willingly give it over. But he did — tore a page from his sketchbook and scribbled it for her, and she’d kept that piece of paper tucked in her pocket from the camp, to Paris, to London, all the way back here, until it was crumpled beyond recognition and the writing faded with time. That was when he was still living at home. Now they wrote pretty regularly, back and forth, which was… nice.

With a little help from his parents and after figuring out his finances, he’d gotten himself a place a little bit out of the city. I love Detroit, he writes, but I think the quiet’s doing me some good. Sometimes, he sends drawings. He tells her about how he’s thinking of picking up teaching, now that he’s in the Reserve, and she tells him to go for it. He’d be good at it. He has the patience for children.

She tells him about Judith, and how the baby takes after their brother Ben more than herself. She tells him about the job she’s picked up at the schoolhouse, as a teacher’s assistant and how grateful she is that she could find work after all this. She doesn’t tell him about how out of place she feels, how stuck she is. Some things you just don’t say through a letter, and some things you just don’t say at all.

That all sounds great, he writes, I’m happy for you, and she knows he means it. You spend roughly nine months with someone, you can usually deduce whether or not they’re saying things just to be nice or not. Alex doesn’t just say things to placate people. If you ever find yourself coming this way, my door’s always open.

She hopes he means that, too. If this were five years ago, leaving home might’ve been terrifying to her. Now though, it was thoroughly scratched from the list of things that made her sick to her stomach.

My invite to Benny and June’s wedding came in, she writes.

Mine too. Looking forward to seeing everybody, he writes back.

That’ll be May of next year. A nice spring wedding in Chicago — because some people really do have it all figured out. Inez is not one of them. Part of her, pessimistically so, thinks that she never will be. She’s not resentful of her friends for moving on with their lives. She’s just angry that she can’t seem to do it herself.

It’s funny how she can reach her limit and still endure. The AAF taught her that. She packs a bag, but it goes untouched in the back of her closet for two whole weeks. At the very least — it’s enough time to pocket an extra check.

It’s enough time to say that she’s thought it through. To have an epiphany — to come to terms with it. At least she remained time conscious despite the changes she went through. She was molded into a pot but cast so quickly that there’s a crack in her now that feels impossible to ignore.

Leaving feels more natural to her than staying, even if she’ll end up coming back to this place in a few days. That much she knows of. But as of right now, this house feels like a bird cage with the door left open; her parents were probably just waiting for her to leave.

She heads to the train station after helping her mom wash dishes, after Judith’s gone to bed. Inez doesn’t announce her leaving like she might’ve in the past. She just takes one of Alex’s letters and walks the length of the beaten old sidewalks until she makes it to the station. The last time she was here, she was happy to be home. Now leaving brings a strange sort of relief.

It’s three different trains she’ll have to take. She’d probably end up on his doorstep in the afternoon if her math is right. And it usually is.

Inez tries, feebly, to sleep on the first train — from Nashville to Louisville, but some habits she just can’t seem to break. Thorpe Abbotts and the air raids made her a light sleeper, and the Stalag made it worse. She jerks back into consciousness with every bump, every coo of a baby, every high pitched squeal of the rails when they roll into a station. She’s always half expecting to wake up in that block again to Savorre grunting in suppressed pain, or Harrie right next to her, face shoved into the flimsy pillows to muffle whatever onslaught of tears was overtaking her.

It’s never that, though. It’s always the dim lights of the train car, the quiet murmurings of its occupants, her bag clutched tightly to her chest like it was a person because she didn’t want to fumble with shoving it in the space above her. She’d rather have a familiar weight in her lap. Inez would hardly call it sleep, more like sporadic naps, broken up by her snaps into being awake and trying to make some sense of what state she’s in to little avail. She hits Louisville at 2:00am.

There’s still time for her to turn back but, well, that doesn’t exactly make much sense. Doesn’t sit right with her, so she doesn’t.

About halfway through the second train that takes her from Kentucky to Ohio — she’s a livewire really, bouncing her knee, rustling through her bag for a book Jo sent her a couple weeks ago. As 4am ebbs into 5am and the night sky starts shifting into the gray-blue of dawn, she’s becoming more and more restless, and by the time she’s getting on that last train in Ohio that’ll take her to Detroit, she can’t help but wonder if this is a terrible idea.

Her nail beds, already the subject of her merciless picking, are a nightmare to look at and she wonders if she can get away with keeping her hands hidden in the pockets sewn into her skirt once she gets there. If she gets there. She could ask about direct routes back home the moment she hits the station and it’d be like she was never even here. She hugs her bag tighter to herself, like it would provide her some comfort.

And by the time she hits Detroit, it’s almost noon, and the city is busy, and Inez is reminded vaguely of pins in a map — of her old pilot who’d smiled as she put her pin right in the heart of it. Yeah, this makes sense, is really the only conclusion she comes to as she tries to hail down a cab. She half expects her pilot to be the driver.

It isn’t though. His name is Frank. He’s nice. For the thirty minute drive out from Detroit to a more suburban area, something that looks a little more like home, he tells her about how business has really been booming in the past year with all the soldiers coming back from overseas.

He asks if she knew everyone who served. She nods and dismisses it with a “feels like everybody knows somebody,” that makes him smile and laugh in agreement.

But talking to Frank doesn’t much prepare her for pulling up to the house that matched the address in her pocket. It’s a small house with a bright green lawn — white siding and a small porch, a pair of work boots by the front door. A bag of fertilizer. No flowers in the boxes yet though. She can feel her heart in her throat as the cab pulls off and she stares at the path up for a long, silent moment.

It feels right, being here, but he could easily tell her to go away. What was she even supposed to say? Anything she could come up with sounded petulant. My mother forgot who June was so I left. My house feels like a cage. My parents keep pretending I didn’t go to war and it sucks. She eyes one of the spindly cracks working its way through the pavement and her hands ball into fists, her bag feeling impossibly heavy. She should go home. She could walk it, she was paying attention the whole drive over. It’s only noon, there’s gotta be a direct train from here t—

The sound of the screen door rattling as it opens and shuts is familiar. Her gaze snaps up.

Alex is in a white singlet and jeans, wiping his hands with a dirty rag when he catches her. The shock on his face is evident, then the confusion.

“Inez?” She thinks he’s beelining it towards her, but he stops by his mailbox first, opening it. “Did I– Did I miss a letter? I didn’t know you were—”

“No. No I just…” Inez cringes as she lets go of her bag and it lands beside her feet with a gentle thump, but she can’t help picking at her hands. “You said your door’s always open so I…” Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, scrambling for some explanation beyond a simple it feels right, coming here. He’s coming towards her now, with the familiar, friendly smile, and relief washes over her as he looks over her face, then reaches down to take her bag.

“How long are you here for?” he asks then, moving on from her shoddy explanation.

“I… I don’t know,” she admits, rubbing the nape of her neck. “It was a little bit of spontaneous decision making.” She elects to withhold the fact that instead of waiting until the next day for the next direct ride to Detroit, she’d taken three trains. That it was hardly impulsive when she had three train rides to think about it, and going home just didn’t sit right with her.

“Well you let me know when you find out. I’d hug you but…” He gestures to the state of him — dirt stains on the front of his white singlet, sweat from the August heat shining on his skin. Inez laughs, a little breathlessly and nods in agreement.

“Didn’t know you were a gardener.”

“I’m not. My mama says the front of the house looks too plain so she bought me a bunch of flowers to put in the front.” He lets her walk in front of him until they reach the door, and then he’s getting the door for her to let her into the small living room, bleeding into a kitchen. A couple dishes laid out on a towel on the counter, a blanket tossed over a moss-colored couch. The windows are open, letting in a breeze. She assumes the hallway leads to his bedroom.

“I can help with that,” Inez offers as he sets her bag by the door. “The flowers.”

He smiles at that, something wide and warm and familiar in a way that doesn’t hurt — and Inez finds herself smiling back.