#especially because i am going into them with DETAILED OUTLINES and a PLAN

[allylikethecat]

Happy Thursday!!! Hope everything is okay and that you enjoy working on ATKH as much as I enjoy reading it. In the meantime... 🖍♻️🌎❤

Happy Thursday except now it's Friday because I'm the worst and heaven forbid I answer wonderful asks like this in a timely manner! Things are going okay! Nothing really specially and nothing really awful (I'm convinced we're going to get a monsoon soon though and everyone thinks I'm crazy but my fucked up ankle has been super sore and so I've been limping around and that only happens right before a big storm so even if no one believes me it's COMING. It's monsoon season anyway so it shouldn't be *that* ridiculous of a prediction!)

I just posted the new ATKH chapter and I hope you like it!! I look forward to hearing your thoughts!! I apologize for the delay! I ended up finishing the book I was reading last night instead of putting the finishing touches on the chapter... which meant I had to finalize it after work BUT it's up now and I hope you like it!!

AHH Thank you SO MUCH for sending me asks from the An ask game for writers to procrastinate working on you WIP(s) list!! This is such a fun one and I am so grateful that y'all are indulging me in them!! If anyone else wants to send some or reblog the list it can be found HERE.

🖍 Post Any sentence from your wip

It was bullshit, George didn’t even join him in the shower. He said they had places to be and he didn’t want to be a distraction.

♻️ A scrapped idea for your current WIP

LOL in the OG outline for Make Way for Ducklings Fictional!George didn't find out about the baby until the very end. Obviously we scrapped that idea lol

🌎 What tags or warnings will your / one of your wip(s) need if you intend to share it?

Implied / Referenced Alcoholism, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, [redacted/redacted] Past Relationship, Implied / Reference Drug abuse, Eating Disorders, Unhealthy relationships, Starting over

❤️ Not a question, just a second kudos to send.

❤️❤️❤️

Thank you so much for this lovely ask and for sending me questions from the ask game!!! I hope you are having a wonderful Friday and that you enjoy the new ATKH chapter!! Thank you so much for the continued support and I hope you have the VERY BEST weekend!

❤️Ally

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Perverse intrusive thoughts manifesting themselves in dreams is the actual worst.

[py-dreamer]

@dynamicsimp hope ya like it!

EYESHOT AU DITY

I literally did this in one day- help.

So yeah, I tried out the gosh-dang challenge and honestly?

Quite happy with how it came out! It was very interesting and actually very fun working on a piece with a monochrome pink palette!

Gosh, I haven't gotten to use my REAL lineless style (I use it for stickers but I haven't done any stickers in forever) where all the cel shading is real harsh and as it says in the title: no outline.

Lately, I've been more focused on lighting and texture in my digital works and just making everything 'softer' and more 'realistic' but dang, I forgot how much I missed just using my harsh and more cartoony style.

But because it looked good, here's the one with some light:

I am very happy especially since I do believe there is some improvement in the style.

(In that it doesn't look as amateur as when I first started out. But I think that's mostly cause I used monochrome here)

Does anyone else get that struggle? Feeling like you're not advancing then keep pushing yourself to change and improve but also really missing the original style?

Anyways some of y'all might be wondering where I've been for pride month....

I PROMISE IT'S NOT CAUSE I HATE PRIDE MONTH OR LGBTQ+ PLEASE PUT YOUR PITCHFORKS DOWN!!!!!

Mainly it has mostly been art block and just demotivation especially since I'm STILL WORKING ON THAT BIG PROJECT UGHHGHHHGGGHHGG.

(I'm not blaming y'all I'm just feral)

And just general procrastination.

BUT.

I do have another project in the works. So to any of my lovely marshiemallows who have seen my previous posts,

you'd know that I'm very...opinionated about Macaque. More specifically his attitude in canon and how the fandom treats him.

(Keep in mind the thing was planned before s5)

DISCLAIMER: Again, I do enjoy Mac's character. I just think he's a bit of a d!ck and kinda hates how a lot of the fandom (not all) brushes that over and throws the bucket of Wukong's sins down on the king's head.

(I also would not hesitate to wack him with a stop sign on the chopping block if given the chance /hj)

But without further ado I decided to do something other than complain and present you guys this:

Yay! So if you're into Macaca bullying, join the Mac bullying train! CHOO CHOO!

(also big thanks to @furornocturna for beta reading and helping with characterizations and stuff. There will be another post just detailing bout the fic later but yea go check them out, their work's great)

AND HAPPY ANIVERSARY TO DYNAMICSIMP FOR THE AU!

[blakbonnet]

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK: @clairegregoryau 💕

Everytime the topic of fandom kindness and community comes up, of helping each other out and fostering a quiet corner where people can be themselves, most people in our little fandom think of Claire. She's written over a million words of OFMD fic and read even more, and you can always see so so many recs over on her twitter. Incredible good vibes, and an author who truly lives to lift other authors up. She also does SO SO much for fic authors over on the OFMD Fic Club server <3 And she was incredibly kind and shared her entire writing process with me:

What's your writing process like? Do you start with the beginning or the end? Do you write in order or as the scenes come to you?

I’m a huge advance planner, which is a process that has developed for me over more than 25 years of writing original fiction. I’ll get whacked with a story idea, then I’ll sit down and set out the central kernel of that idea, and where it needs to start, where it needs to end, and what the turning points need to be to get there.

A lot of the time I use a three-act structure, largely because Jenkins has talked about OFMD using that structure (one example here). So that makes it easy for me to hold to the canon beats when I’m writing AU stories, or to mirror them in canon-era stories, which is also something I try to do most of the time. With long experience (and now 1.7 million words of OFMD fic written (!)), I find this part of the process really easy. I’ll usually do that plotting by hand-writing out my notes, because it really fires up a different part of your brain.

Because I am such an advance planner, I do tend to write in a completely linear way from start to finish (I also pretty commonly post my long-fics as I write- each chapter goes up as soon as it’s finished and has a final editing pass). Punching through it in a linear way, knowing the ending that I’m working towards and being enthusiastic to get there, really keeps me motivated.

I do all of my writing in 30-minute sprints at the OFMD Fic Club Discord, where we’ve built a lovely and LOUDLY enthusiastic writing community that anyone is welcome to hop into 24/7. For those who find the constant chat a bit overwhelming, we also have a Quiet Focus Sprints channel. Again via long practice, I’m a very fast writer, but that’s accelerated a lot more over the last couple of years, paradoxically because I couldn’t write the way I used to anymore.

I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that includes some fun brain impacts at times, and it’s really hit my working memory especially. I used to be able to hold all the strands of a complicated story together in my head as I wrote, but now I can’t do that as easily. So that’s why the outline is important for me, so I never lose track of the idea- I’ll also do a quick outline at the start of each chapter I’m writing that notes what needs to happen, and then I’ll write in what I call layers, getting down whatever I can first, and then doing sweeps back through it to add internals, narrative detail, sensory details and so on. I make a LOT of notes and square brackets as I go to remind myself of things to look at later.

I also use a plot matrix [Twitter thread, Example Matrix] that you may have seen floating around- I mostly use it to keep track of plot details that have already happened within a story, so that I can check it out at a glance, but I will sometimes plan certain elements in advance (as in the case of Tree Change, which covered 87 of the 93 Kinktober prompts last year across 12 carefully planned chapters). There’s always space when I’m writing for the characters to surprise me within that plot framework- as a final plotting thing, once I’m at the halfway mark I’ll often plot backwards from the planned end to make sure that I’m on course, and to see what I need to adjust.

Favourite trope or headcanon you like to explore while writing?

I really like to dig into the friends-to-lovers trope that sits at the heart of the show. The Ed and Stede relationship reminds me immensely of my own- like Rhys and Taika as friends, we’ve been yes-anding each other for over 25 years (all of my least hinged fic ideas come from bouncing thoughts back and forth with my husband), and it’s been a steady mix of constant silliness, curiosity, and care. We’re best friends first and that’s one of my favourite things about Ed and Stede, that they are, too.

What I really love about it is the vulnerability of these two people who’ve been hurt so much by others in the past, who’ve never been fully appreciated for all the things that they are, and in each other they find the one absolutely perfect person who just gets them, and it makes all the difference. It’s always fun to play with that and variations on it in fics, and it’s usually the beating heart of my stories.

Whose voice is easier to write - Ed or Stede? Why?

I want to say that I find them both equally easy depending on the story. Ed as a character speaks very much the way I think- he has that ADHD buzz, the high swear level, and a very AoNZ turn of phrase that’s also very familiar to Australians (like me). Writing Ed is like turning the inside of my head out and it always flows easily.

But I have always said that I see myself in both characters in equal parts, so I find Stede pretty easy to write as well. I feel like I pretty solidly understand him as a person, with his history of rejection and his commitment to trying anyway, and trying to be kind, and letting himself be fascinated by things, from piracy to books to moths to Ed (that one’s not hard).

Your personal favourite thing you've written that you'd like more people to read

This is a near-impossible question with 69 OFMD fics up on AO3 😅 I really do love them all, and I have a lot of smaller one-shots that haven’t been read as much, but overall I’m incredibly lucky with readership and so so grateful for everyone who enjoys my work.

But my recent Reverse Bang fic The Broken Lines is hugely important to me and I think it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written anywhere. It’s set in the aftermath of the First World War (my professional zone of expertise), and features a Stede who’s lost his voice, his memory, and as far as he knows, his Ed. He gradually remembers what happened with the help of the crew and another Ed, who appears in his mirror from 1719, searching for his own Stede. It was a beautiful collaboration with artist Gerlinde to begin with, but I also got to work with one of my longest-term writing friends Jill @followedmystar as my beta, and then with Boy, who made a truly transcendent podfic that I can’t yell about enough.

What is the one word that you think you use a lot?

I think the word I have to zap more than any other is “actually”, and there are still a million of them in there when I’m done. The main reason is that to stick close to canon voice, I try to incorporate a lot of the less iconic/ more ordinary turns of phrase that the characters use a lot in their speech (I’ve watched every episode of the show… way too many times), and both Ed and Stede actually use “actually” a surprising amount. I just use it an even more surprising amount 😂

(This just sent me on a QUEST to find a specific number because I am that kind of nerd- Stede says it 15 times in S1 and 12 in S2, and Ed says it 8 times in each, for totals of 27 and 16, many of them in distinctive moments; it just gives that little buzz of recognition for me. I started out screenwriting before I moved to prose, so my writing tends to lean pretty strongly on having a recognisable, almost audible voice to the dialogue, as well as a cinematic visual style for the big adventures especially).

Do you have a beta reader? Have they made you a better writer?

I quite deliberately don’t use a beta reader for most of my OFMD fics, because being in this space is an exercise in recovering from lifelong paralysing perfectionism around writing especially. I’ve spent so many years not finishing original work because it never feels like it passes the invisible bar for perfection that exists in my own head. So when I started writing OFMD fic, I set out to accept good enough as good enough, and to get back to enjoying writing as fully as I can.

Obviously this means that my work could be better, but I’m actively working on letting that thought go and loving everything I’ve made just as it is. When I have worked with beta readers on projects that require them, like the Reverse Bang, it’s been with friends who I trust and adore, who I know will listen to what I need (cheerleading, mostly), and will do their best to work with me on improving the story without letting me spiral into hating it all because it wakes the perfectionist beast back up.

That doesn’t mean I’m without regular support, or that I’m not trying to improve my writing! I read an absolutely insane amount of fic, and I’m always in awe of the talent we have on this ship, and always learning from what other people do well. In lieu of beta readers, we share snippets of work all the time in our sprints team, so I get feedback there; I also get it from readers in progress, who often give me a sense of what’s hitting the way I hoped and what needs a bit of tweaking. I also have lovely group chats and individual friends like Kerry @communionnimrod and Lis @ghostalservice and Jill who I can run to if I need an opinion on whether an idea feels right or not, which I will often ask.

I’m very very careful with my writing, but in a couple of rare instances readers have also DMd me to note spots where I’ve inadvertently included something that doesn’t reach the sensitivity standard I’m aiming for. I’m always grateful for that gentleness and bravery in reaching out and I’m always happy to change something or to add tags or notes as needed.

Why OFMD 🥹

I watched the whole show in one hit a week after the final episode aired, and I loved it immediately, but I thought I was going to be normal about it. The unravelling into complete, unrelenting obsession happened gradually as I rewatched it with my husband and teen, then again, and again, then started to read fics and hunt up art, then started joining fan spaces, and then dived into writing my first fic in two and a half decades (all original writing between The X-Files and here), thinking it would also be my last.

I’m still here, still writing constantly, and a major portion of it is the show and how distinctly it reflected all the many parts of me, some of which I’d never seen so clearly before. I had a tough childhood in a few different family respects. I didn’t understand that I was neurodivergent until I turned 40 and my own kids were heading for diagnosis, and I’d been rejected constantly throughout my life for being too much. I was a high achiever who was in the process of crumpling under pressure right when I watched it, and while I’d been figuring out my sense of my own queerness for a few years, I’d never had a community that helped me feel at home with that.

And in the end it’s the community that’s been the reason I’ve been fully sucked into fandom for the first time since my teens- the writing in this space is top-tier wonderful, and the community is such a found family, just like the Revenge. Being able to write and have people actually want to read that writing, being able to cheer others on and hype their work, being able to help set up the OFMD Fic Club Discord and make it a safe spaceship for so many people, has been incredibly fulfilling and lovely. 

Please head over to @ofmdlovelyletters (who also made the header) and send your love to all your favourite authors (and authors of the week 😈 watch that blog for some special letters coming your way)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

12/4/2024- Transfer of Power :: Clay Bennett

* * * *

Governing is hard . . . as Trump is about to find out

December 10, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

I am circling back to events that occurred late last week and over the weekend. Others have discussed these developments fully, especially Donald Trump's first “sit down” interview as president-elect. See, for example, Jay Kuo on Substack, Status Kuo, The Interview. I recommend Jay Kuo’s article for a detailed analysis of Trump's lies during his first formal interview as president-elect.

As Kuo describes in his essay, Trump touched on five major topics:

He vowed to end birthright citizenship under the US Constitution.

He is still exploring “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act;

He acknowledged that his threatened tariffs might contribute to inflation;

He threatened the January 6 Committee members with imprisonment while pledging to pardon January 6 insurrectionists;

He threatened to “send them all back,” referring to ten million immigrants whom he believes are subject to immediate detention and deportation.

Trump's threats outlined above will cause tens of millions of Americans to experience fear and anxiety and will inflict financial and emotional hardship on innocent family members. While that damage must never be minimized, we must also recognize that Trump's threats--collectively and individually—portend a disastrous start to his second term.

If he is stupid enough to follow through on his threats (and he is), they will provide Democrats, Independents, and shell-shocked Republicans with a common platform to resist and obstruct Trump's agenda, and punish his party.

Although NBC published a post-interview fact check and Kristen Welker pushed back against many of Trump’s falsehoods, Welker and NBC gave Trump plenty of airtime to repeat his outrageous lies.

Giving Trump that platform is journalistic malpractice—one that the major networks and cable outlets commit again and again. Readers sent me several dozen copies of David Pepper’s criticisms of the NBC interview: See Pepperspectives (on Substack), Platforming Disinformation - by David Pepper.

David Pepper prescribes the only rational approach to interviewing Trump (an approach not followed by Kristen Welker):

I’ll re-make the simple suggestion I made [when NBC interviewed Trump over a year ago]: Never move on from the FIRST lie until Trump acknowledges it’s a lie. NEVER. Literally….end the interview rather than moving onto the next topic. Why does this matter? Because Trump and other dishonest subjects go into these interviews KNOWING they can get away with endless lying, for two reasons. First, in many cases, most of the lies are not even fact-checked. Second, even if they are fact checked, the liar KNOWS that the interviewer’s goal is to get through a long list of questions. That list of questions, more than truth itself, becomes the goal of the interview.

David Pepper is absolutely correct! Unless journalists are willing to do the real work of holding Trump accountable for his lies, they are providing a platform for those lies.

Back to my thesis: Each of Trump's threats mentioned during the NBC interview will sow the seeds of MAGA’s defeat. For example, Trump wrongly claims that he can “end” birthright citizenship—a right explicitly guaranteed in the 14th Amendment. His proposal has been met with derision and scorn by legal scholars, who have described Trump's theory as a “lunatic fringe argument” and akin to believing in “unicorns.”

But that won’t stop Trump from issuing an unconstitutional executive order that will immediately cloud the status of legal residency, employment, Social Security benefits, healthcare, and unemployment insurance for tens of millions of Americans. Many millions of those American citizens likely voted for Trump in the mistaken belief that his lunacy would be directed at other people.

Trump intentionally ratcheted up the fear factor by saying that his termination of birthright citizenship should not “break up families.” Instead, Trump proposes to deport everyone in the family in which only some members have birthright citizenship.

Deportation based on “guilt by association” is extraordinarily unlikely to happen, but it did not stop Trump from making the threat during the interview and frightening millions of American families in which some, but not all, of the family members are US citizens by birth.

The same cruelty is embedded in Trump's massive deportation plan, which he has previously acknowledged will sweep in US citizens or legal residents entitled to remain in the US.

Even Trump knows he went too far in his interview bombast. He was forced to acknowledge during the interview that his tariffs “might” contribute to inflation—a statement that is as close as Trump ever comes to an admission that he is wrong.

Moreover, on Monday, a Trump spokesperson went further in attempting to “walk back” one of Trump's statements about jailing members of the January 6 Committee. The unusual move by Trump came after some of Trump's stalwart allies in the legal world blasted Trump for claiming that members of the January 6 Committee should be imprisoned.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington School of Law and a frequent defender of Trump during impeachment hearings, said the following on Fox “news”:

The fact, however, is that there is no viable criminal case to be made against the J6 Committee members for their investigation or report. We need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead.

Trump spokesperson Jason Miller tried to dispute the clear implication of Trump's threat against the J6 Committee members by saying that Trump only wants “the law to be applied equally to everyone” and that the decision would be left up to law enforcement officials, including Kash Patel.

Of course, Jason Miller did not acknowledge that Kash Patel (nominee for FBI) has a political enemies list that includes every prominent member of the January 6 Committee.

If Trump follows through with his threat to pursue that January 6 Committee, his effort will crash and burn—even if it makes its way to the compromised and corrupt Roberts’ reactionary majority. The work of the January 6 Committee is absolutely protected by the Speech and Debate Clause of the US Constitution.

Finally, Trump's pledge to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists is a lose-lose proposition for Trump. If he pardons all of them (unlikely) he will pardon dozens of insurrectionists who attacked and inflicted serious injuries on dozens of law enforcement officers. If Trump pardons fewer than all of the insurrectionists, he will be viewed as having broken his promise and betrayed his most violent supporters among the January 6 mob. As I said, lose, lose.

Here's my point: Trump is in the “talking tough, consequence free” portion of his post-election fantasy tour. As soon as he attempts to act on any of his anti-democratic, “lunatic fringe,” family-busting threats, the consequences of his cruelty will dominate the airwaves non-stop. And that will horrify Americans and weaken Trump politically.

I expect that many readers will disagree with my analysis. But the Trump team has already seen this train coming down the tracks, which is why Jason Miller has started to walk-back some of Trump's comments and Trump has himself acknowledged that tariffs will raise prices in the US.

I believe that Trump has overplayed his hand. Yes, he will carry through with some of his threats and will inflict pain on millions of Americans. That tragic state of affairs will be our opening to convince the majority of Americans that Trump and his party of enablers are toxic to democracy.

[Robert B. Hubbell]

[finnlongman]

I am so curious about your drafting process, would you be wiling to share a little more about it? I've never come across the idea of completely rewriting from scratch every time, how did you arrive at this as a method that works for you?

I've been writing novels since I was thirteen, so the origin of a lot of my writing processes is somewhat lost to time/memory -- I don't know why I started doing them, only that they either worked or didn't work and the ones that worked stuck around and the ones that didn't... didn't.

I find it difficult to edit within an existing document because it feels like I don't have space to think when all the words are already there. If I open a new document next to the old one and type it out again, I'm more free to move things around, reword them slightly, layer in new details, shift the emphasis etc, without feeling like I have to fit that into the existing framework of sentences that are on the page. If the sentences that are on the page are still working, cool, I'll write them out again. Anything I can't be bothered to type out was probably boring, so that can go, making this a useful strategy for cutting extraneous words and redundant descriptions, too.

The old document is always present when I do this. I don't rewrite from memory or without reference to it. It's just an easier way of refining what I'd put on the page before. And the advantage of this is that the old version always still exists, too. I have never "deleted" a scene, I've simply written a new version of the book that no longer contains that scene. If I want to put it back, I can go and find it, and write it in again.

It's also a lot easier to make major plot changes this way. Sometimes I'll duplicate the old draft and then use tracked changes to move scenes into their new position to see how they'd look -- then I rewrite it and actually make them work in that position. It creates a consistency of voice and style, and makes it easier to avoid continuity issues created by moving things around. And I do tend to make big plot changes and shift things around a lot, partly because I don't tend to plan or outline much in advance and often haven't worked out what I'm trying to do, thematically, until I'm halfway through doing it. A scene that moves from two-thirds of the way through the book to one-third of the way through is going to need to express different characterisation and different aspects of the book's themes, or it'll seem out of place, so it'll need rewriting anyway to make it work, and so will the scenes around it. I can't really imagine a way to edit without large-scale rewrites unless I somehow avoided moving or adding any scenes, which I have never yet avoided!

Consistency of voice and style is especially important when some of my novels have been written over a very long period -- e.g. The Butterfly Assassin was first drafted in 2014 and was published in 2022, and I wrote at least one draft every year for seven years. Any sentence that survived from 2014 to 2022 had been retyped and rewritten half a dozen times to get there -- and there were not many such sentences -- with minor shifts in style and rhythm so that it matched everything around it. If I had edited that book in-document, it would have been much harder to avoid the sense that it was a patchwork of pieces written years apart from each other.

But this need for consistency, and the desire to avoid continuity errors, is also why I tend to write very fast when I do this: I am holding all of the pieces in my head, everything from plot to sentence structure, and it's hard to sustain that for long. For me, writing looks like long periods of thinking and making notes and puzzling over things, and then a frenzied burst of activity where I act on all of the conclusions I've come to, which is why I like to write very quickly and then take several months away to work on other things before I come back to a project.

Academically, I also find this rewriting helpful: I would always prefer to write a new paragraph that makes the point the old one was trying to make but better, than to try to "fix" the old paragraph. It's just a lot more tedious with academic work because of references and quotes and stuff, so I end up copy+pasting more over.

I will say that the first time an editor said, "Can you do this with tracked changes turned on?" and I said, "Ah. Small problem," and explained that I would in fact be writing the whole book again, they were ... somewhat horrified. But they've accepted that the thoroughness with which I rework everything on the page makes it necessary, and I've figured out how to use "compare documents" to create a version that looks like I used tracked changes while not being an absolute headache for me in the process. So then everyone's happy.

[karlachismylife]

2, 12, 46, and 57 for the fic writer asks!

Hello comrade!! Hehe thank you for the asks. (The game itself is here)

2. Where do you get your fic ideas?

I do write a lot of requests, so it's my precious comrades and readers! But also it's often just things happening in my life, maybe I am yearning for sea again or I had an unpleasant encounter or politics happened. I must say though, it's often some visual imagery sticking to me or just randomly generating in my head.

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

Usually I don't, I just have a one sentence idea and immediately start writing. However, with longer fics, especially if I have active readers that ask questions about them, I do have to map out the plot and also mark down things I come up with on the spot as I answer the questions. When a fic is already turning out to be that long, I usually plan the whole plot and write out shor summaries of each chapter, but I always end up straying away, mostly because I find some episodes more interesting to write so they become bigger. It's not usually about plot changes though, I'm not good with plots, so I put my money into the mood/just spending time with characters and that's where I might change stuff.

46. If you could only write one type of AU for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I would say pirate AU because I love pirates more than anything, but I'm afraid it will require a lot of plot writing and action, which I struggle with. So I'll go with mythical creatures AU since it allows me to play around with metaphors and just descriptive stuff. And it's a cheating one since there are tons of mythical creatures and I'll never run out of them.

57. How conscious are you about including symbolism or foreshadowing in your fics?

This question consists of two, but they are answered with one thing: I am not smart. At all. I struggle with it a lot, I wish I could do beautiful works with deep meaning and exciting plot, but I just am too dumb for that. So I ways have he most primitive symbols and metaphors, which makes then very obvious and on the nose and thus very intentional/consciously included AND the most primitive plots which basically means there isn't anything to foreshadow. Yup.

Thanks for asking!!!

[grimmywrites]

Hey Grimmy, I've got a question about your writing process (if you're not comfortable to share, that's also perfectly fine)! Anyways my question is, how do you write? What's your whole process of planning the scenes, writing it, etc? I'm having some trouble with my fic and I'm craving for some advice that might ease my process. So like I don't tend to plan my fics because it reduces my motivation to write, so instead I just write whatever comes to mind when working on the specific scene. Like is there any methods you use when writing that you would be able to share? Thank you! <3

I'm good with sharing, I just hope my answer can help! When it comes to writing for me I normally come up with an idea, a theme, or am inspired by an emotion to write (whether that's an emotion I see in someone else or feel from something I'm experiencing). Even when I do want to write one scene, or maybe I have a premise in mind like I did with Retread (which is JUST getting to my original idea!), I do very loose outlines. There's that analogy of writers being architects or gardeners. I am very much the latter. The former, for me, is saved for scholarly papers. When it comes to fiction I am a gardener and one of the wildest kinds. I know the seeds and I'm ready to prune or tie it down to make it bloom in the vague direction I want, but I'm so happy to be along for the ride when I'm writing and not know 100% how it's going to get there. That's part of the fun for me.

The only part of heavy planning for stories is when I need to tie factual elements into it. Retread, for example, has so much military jargon that I need it all written down (or bookmarked)! Pollice Verso I have a whole sheet of the festival dates just to keep the timeline straight. Note that sometimes I get things wrong - but I don't let that hold me back. These stories are fanfiction and they don't need to be perfect. It's about the characters. The facts are just there to help me move the pieces. My story outlines are just bullet points. I handwrite them and literally draw little boxes next to each point that I need to cover in a chapter to make sure I check them off! Otherwise, those characters are going to say what they will and I find that makes it more organic. Or, say, you come up with a great conversation in the shower or in bed at night, you can grab your notebook and jot it down and slip that in because you aren't fully structured and adherent to some strict outline. It's more like a list of reminders than it is something dictating what I have to do and thus sapping the joy from it. I also switch up the medium in which I write all the time. I love writing with pen and paper, especially when I travel. Sometimes, however, I've found I'm pretty good in my phone's writing app! Other times I feel like typing, but truthfully I like the other two more (I'm old, remember).

Lastly, I am usually someone who writes chronologically because I feel the flow of the story better if I do that. However, sometimes certain scenes beg to be written (lest they fall out of our heads!) and I have plenty future scenes for Retread and PV ready to go for later chapters. That's an organic part of the process, too.

I suppose if you feel like certain parts of the story are draining you to write, find a way to trim them or rethink their importance. Sometimes, as writers we think we have to be superfluous and explain or detail every last thing. Often times, and to the benefit of our story's pacing, you can just call a spade a spade, so to speak. Not everything needs to be high prose to be the best writing. Sometimes the best writing, and certainly the most enjoyable for you and your readers, is fun writing.

I rambled, but hopefully something I said helps <3

[demonscantgothere]

I just saw the post for the new Litost chapter and it reminded me just how amazed I am at your outlining skills. The post says Litost has 61 chapters total. How do you get so specific? How do you know how many chapters it will be? Especially 61? When I plot out a story, I get a good idea of how the story will unfold. But I can never tell how long it will end up being. Teach me your ancient magic please!

Awwww, thank you so much!!! It's complicated, but I will say I'm no expert! My brain is just hardwired a certain way with writing. Litost was originally meant to be a 4 part piece at novella length, but then I imagined a longer story that would expand it, so I asked everyone if they wanted more of it, and they did, so my outline predicted about 24/25 chapters to tell it, but the problem with my outlines is they are very detailed to help me to know where I am going and exactly what I'm writing, which led to the following:

Litost extended on me because the outline for one chapter was so detailed that it would sometimes take multiple chapters to complete what I had jotted down for that single chapter. Other times, I had surprise chapters to fill out things that were meant to happen off-screen, but they added so much more to the story that I decided to write it out instead of just "reveal" it later. So, a single chapter outline would turn into 3 to 4 chapters to tell everything I had in that outline. Before I knew it, 24/25 became 40, which became 45, which became 61. Originally, I had plans to end it with the events of Chapter 50 and write a sequel. Only I wasn't sure if I could keep up steam for a sequel because Litost is already so, so long, so I incorporated the beginning of what would have been the sequel into the ending for Litost, which gives the story a more defined ending overall, and I preferred that. Chapter 50 would have been like a massive cliffhanger ending place, and I had mixed feelings about doing that for a long time.

So, I have the whole story outlined in full, but sometimes the chapter count itself is tricky depending on how much actual writing is needed for what I have written in the outline. But at this point, it's rock solid, and it isn't going past 61 chapters. Chapter 60 is the true ending, and the final chapter is actually a telling of how it would have ended if I had stuck to the original 4 piece novella length because I thought it would be a lot of fun to tell that story, too. But I am incorporating it into the main story as a vision from the palantíri of what would have happened, anyway, had the path gone a different route, and in a way, it all ties together — and shows the inevitable intertwined fates that Halbrand and Galadriel share. It's hard to explain in advance, so I'll let the epilogue speak for itself when it comes. ;-)

It just helps me to finish something if I know the plot and journey all the way to the end before I get there. Without outlines, I lose interest and drive if I don't know exactly where it's going, so then it becomes hard for me to write. I know some people are the opposite of that, but that's just how my brain works. All of my stories are outlined to the ending because it just helps me to write them that way and complete them, and the closer I get to the ending, the more true the chapter count becomes. But I also have some artwork made for Litost that I want share, and I'm thinking of how to incorporate that into AO3 as well!

Thank you for such an interesting question! I love talking about the writing process, so this was a lot of fun to answer!!! ❤️❤️❤️

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

These have been sitting in my inbox for a while, and I want to apologize, because I am a world champion at procrastination. I actually have quite a few asks that I’ve never responded to, and I feel like such an asshole. If you sent an ask and I never responded, PLEASE don’t think I’m ignoring you or I don’t care; I just have this thing where I get distracted very easily and it turns into procrastination. I really cherish all the love jam packed into those tiny little asks.

But these are the most recent ones, and they’re kind of in the same vein. I really should make a narrated process video of some sort one day. I do have something like that on patreon right now, but it’s over a year old, and my process has changed since then. But for now, I’ll try to answer these as best I can!

First of all, thank you!! This ain’t a question but I’ll go on a spiel anyway. I use a dark pencil for outlining, and I try to emphasize deeper/darker areas with both pressure (pressing down harder on the pencil), and overall size of the line/mark/whatever. These spots are typically the upper eyelid, nostrils, corners of mouth, inner ear, bottom/roots of pieces of hair, spots where clothing wrinkles originate, that sort of thing. Oftentimes I’ll emphasize the “underside” of objects or shapes too.

As for time for a drawing, it varies a lot. The lengthiest thing I work on is commissions. The initial light sketch for a comm can actually take a while, depending on the drawing. 2 full characters together requires a lot of planning for the poses and stuff. So I might spend an hour, 2 hours if I’m really struggling, just making the sketch for a 2 full body character drawing. Then I’ll take maybe 5 or 7 hours to do the rest? That’s a guess, I don’t really keep track. Usually I’ll do the sketch one day, and the next day I’ll spend all or most of the work day just finishing the drawing. I consider one of those “a days work”. Hopefully that made sense! 

The images of my drawings are clean because I scan them! After I scan them, I do a levels adjustment in photoshop. (I struggle taking pics with my phone, even though it has a nice camera 🥲I don’t think I could ever get close to the way they look now without a scanner) 

As for how I make them look clean on paper, I think it’s a combination of two things: the pencil I do the initial sketch with is substantially lighter than the one I outline with. So when I’m outlining/rendering out the drawing, the sketch lines sort of fall back and aren't as noticeable. Secondly, I use a click eraser to erase the sketch lines as I go. And I take my time and use a lot of patience and prioritize neatness/details. This is especially the case with comms. With those I give 110%. For my own personal doodles, I don’t focus on making them as neat, and instead scribble around with my pencil to get the values I want, without fretting over each individual shape to make sure it makes sense. 

I hope this answers your questions okay! I really should make some sort of video but I don’t have a lot of time right now. Thank you for your asks and kind words!!

[phoenixtakaramono]

Hi wow okay I just needed to pause my reading and come over here and tell you that your recent additions to the multiverse thread????? Insane. Love it. It’s amazing. I really had to pause at some points and just sit there like wow. Wow this is art. I am reading and enjoying art right now. Thank you for sharing your writing with us!!

This Ask is regarding this 🔞 butchlander multiverse threadfic on Twitter (the first of many perhaps?)

Thank you so much for reading, luv! I’m thrilled to hear you’re enjoying it. 💞✨

I am extremely fond of the Quick Transmigration genre as a whole in general, and it’s funny to me how complimentary it is to the superhero multiverse trope. It pops up and I’m flooded by so many brainworms at all the inconvenient times, haha, like while I’m at work or grocery shopping. So when I get hit by these The Name of the Game stray thoughts, especially about certain details and 🔞 butchlander scenarios of the arcs I have written down in my plot outline, I feel a lil dismayed because I am only one writer and we are only ch1 into the—so far—planned 135 chapters. 😂😭 So rather than waiting till it’s appropriate to write these lil extras and possibly forgetting or losing the creative drive I have now, while the fire still burns bright, I might as well take advantage of it while it’s going strong and feed y’all tiny diegetic bites here and there.

I like to think of these as fun sort-of-“canon”/ sort-of-“non-canon” What-If outtake scenarios that take place after or during the main story (135ch), kinda like the main story’s unofficial extras or unofficial side stories y’all can read as threadfics so it’s probably not an extra just dumped in randomly or willy-nilly in the main story itself on AO3 whilst this writer tries to shoot for the moon and catch up to our ambitious goalpost of 135chs.

So whilst this one is a weeeeee on the not-so-much-plot-but-smuttier side, because it’s Homelander’s birthday soon, I thought it’d be amusing to write a 🔞 spicy threadfic where TNotG’s Homelander ends up topped by almost all the Butchers I’ve ever written in my AUs thus far. Because why not? YOLO, and it’s convenient that this writer happens to have several long threadfics, Truce, and one AO3 fic that precisely allows for them to all crossover like some kinda butchlander superhero electric boogaloo multiverse on steroids.

So far I’ve only provided snapshot glimpses into the QT arcs that TNotG Billy had to endure, threaded into the threadfic itself, but I want you to know the entire time when I’m slipping in subtle story arc references to scenarios like this:

My mind is like:

Because these so far only exist in my plot outline, none of these are considered TNotG main story official unless I publish it on the AO3 platform. I’d just rather write these now than let them gather dust and potentially never see the light of day, haha. It’s only a snapshot but :) what fun surprises I have awaiting y’all. So far in these two threadfic updates we got sneak peeks into the The Boys TV S1-S5 canon-compliant final arc pre-return home, the Showbiz/ Entertainment 3rd arc, and the Medieval Fantasy 1st arc. There’s one more arc I have yet to input, which is the 2nd arc and it just so happens to be my second favorite genre after the QT genre: the Unlimited/ Infinite Flow genre survival game horror. I also may or may not reference the other two arcs remaining (with one of them being A/B/O), but these diegetic bites are supposed to compliment the spotlight that’s gonna be on each Butcher (Butchers 1-5 & TNotG Butcher). 😌 Because what’s better than 1 Butcher? A spicy 6 Butchers “bullying” (affectionate) Homelander sandwich.

[omeletcat]

ALRIGHT SO, lets talk about text boxes, in almost every game, at least any that have a good story, have a text box where you can talk to the npc's. usually its a box below the screen with at least a name and then text in the middle, but i've been thinking about them a a lot, since the type of textbox for my game would impact the overall vibe A LOT, i want every chapter of my game to have a different vibe, my plans all have different themes for each town and place they go to. meaning that i want my text box to be simplistic and not to attracting. So i went to toby fox! , i love toby fox and his overal vibe, his text boxes are very simple, it has a white outlining and just a general black and white vibe with a single image of the character you are talking too.

Deltarune does smth similair except more detailed portraits and those little thingy's at the corners. i do have to say, as much as i admire Toby fox, and love his music... i have never played any of his games because i am broke as fuck i have played a bit of a demo before but that was AGGES ago, but AS SOON as i have enough money i will try it out!

BUT i don't want to copy toby fox, so i will try and take inspo from other games i like (and also havent played because i am broke...)

That and i find the black and white vibe to be to simplistic for my maximalist mind. So then another game i LOVE the art is great i have also been listening to its music before i knew it was from a game (and i also havent played it caus i'm broke..) OMORI!!

Omori also has a very simple vibe to it but it has multiple boxes 1 portrait that changes a lot! and a thingy where you can see the name of the person you are talking to! i also remember from a random jaiden animation stream i watched where she played Omori, that omori has a lot of cutesy text animations where it moves at certain words to give of better vibes, tone and emotions to what the npc's are saying.

Then one of the games i haven't played BUT i have seen almost every ending is the class of 09, the game that inspired me to make a game, then learn how to code, and decide to work on a completely different game lol

class of 09 is way different then omori and toby fox games. it has a very clear vibe to it, the paper and all is great, but it wouldn't work for me. something i LOVE is something that isn't rly a part of the text box, but the thing behind it. the fact that you can see 2 full body drawings of the characters (the player and the npc for example, just 2 characters in this specific one tho) and basic actions, and movements gives them SOO. MUCH PERSONALITY. i love pixel art, but its hard to animate emotions into them, and especially in my artstyle. so i always thought i'd learn to make more detailed images of my characters with a bunch of different poses and smash them together like pngtuber. that way you can see the person you are talking to and it would give them so much more personality and i would be able to draw all the little things i want to add to the sprites, but can't because its to small.

i also have Stardew in mind (A GAME I ACTUALLY PLAY) as just as omori it has a portrait and a name, then a text part, it has a wood theming just like all the ui in the game, and that fits stardew Perfectly! butt i don't know what that would be for my game.

So to make a conclusion, i need to design a simple, but interesting ui, with a place for a name, text and an at least torso and up image of the person you are talking to! then i either need to choose for a single colour and outline, or i can go the class of 09 and stardew vibe, and pick a texture and a vibe that fits the game, but since every chapter will be somewhere completely different (stardew is always in the valley and class of 09 is in a school most of the time so their textures fit)

so what would be a good texture that fits the vibe of the game, has a simple texture that won't class with completelly different themes of each chapter, has a perfect way to show the npc in the frame, and just... looks good.

the theming around my game is fairly simple, a kid's soul shatters into pieces and they try and find the pieces to find out who they were and how to ended up in the spirit world, meeting different people who all have differen story's on how they ended up in the spirit world, and spiritis themselves.

i have thought about maybe theming it around stars, since it is a MASSIVE part of the lore and aesthetic of the game, in the spirit world, there is no sun or moon, and stars float around that give off heat and light to the world. so i could do a galaxy textured textbox? but i feel thats to themed.\

anyway what do y'all think!! this is a rlyyyy long post that i've been thinking about making for ages now! pls tell me what you think i should do!!

[avidbeader]

Fic Writer Q&A

Tagged by @eghfeithrean!

How many wips do you have currently?

At least 20, between works begun and posted on AO3 and works with their own file/outline. There's also the doc of "idea nuggets" that is 11 pages long.

Which one are you finding the hardest to finish?

There are two. The first is "The Perils of Innocence", my giant HP story. It's a problem because I lost a lot of genuine motivation when I dropped the series after the trash fire of the sixth book (spite can be powerful, but it only gets you so far). That was the point where I dropped the idea of making it a four-part series covering all seven years and decided I'd wrap up the story in first year. And then JKR started showing what a shit person she is, and that's ground what motivation I did have into specks. I do intend to finish it, but it's been VERY slow going, especially when newer and shinier fandoms took over. The second is "Skydancer", the sequel to my first Voltron longfic "Scattered". Part of the problem with it was me realizing I was repeating the same basic plot I had for "The Quintissential Bond" (another stalled WIP) and taking a lot of time to make sure that they were different enough that someone reading both would enjoy them. But the main sticking point here is that when I wrote most of "Scattered" and planned for "Skydancer", I was still lightly multishipping a few ships and sprinkling them into what was a gen story. Then I became a devoted Sheith shipper. So now, it's hard to go back into that universe, where I created a past with Shiro's family fostering Keith to explain their closeness in S1-2, and try to write them being very close and protective of each other without tripping over the line into the romance I see in them.

What does it usually look like when inspiration strikes for you?

A phrase that is either a title or a suggestion for a scene. A what-if that diverges from canon. Something I see in another fic that doesn't get explored and I want to explore it. A meet-cute I witness in real life. A discussion with other fans. It can be anything. And I concentrate on it, mentally outlining or adding detail until I'm where I can jot down notes. The best ones are the ones that have my guts twisting and quivering with excitement as I think and write.

Do you curate playlists for each fic or is your process different?

Music isn't really part of my process at all. I can write in silence, ask Pandora to play one of my stations, or whatever. I do have a little playlist of Sheith that I put together several years ago when I realized I had several songs that meant Sheith to me. https://8tracks.com/avidbeader/my-sheith-songs

Do you go balls to the wall and write as you go or are you more organized?

I am haphazardly organized. When I have the ideas developed, I outline and sometimes have scenes summarized as paragraphs, ready to be extended into the final product. But I can also find rabbits to chase down holes and write in spurts of inspiration, suddenly finding a chapter or story where I hadn't planned on one.

Tagging (if you haven’t done it yet): @lionescence @naarna @starboykeith @tragedy-machine and whoever else would like to join!

[msbutterfly5294]

Writing Advice For Those Who Struggle With Getting The Story Down 🦋🔏

📚 Know Your Writing / Creative Process .

This may seem so simple but it’s taken me YEARS to find or even acknowledge mine . I am more of a short burst writer , I write a lot better when writing for a minute to less then half and hour , unless I have another person / group to collaborate with . I am also a plotter , I write better when I have information about who my characters are , what the story is about , the conflicts , etc etc ; because I am a very forgetful person and tend to get off of track . There are about four to six types of writing processes that I know of : Plotters and Pantsers ( or both ) , and Short Burst Writers and Long Burst Writers ( or both , in some cases ) . As you write , I encourage you to notice if you work in short bursts or long bursts of time and if you create better when planning what you’re going to do or just winging it . None of them are bad , if anything , they reveal how you function and the path to creating that story you love .

📒 Keep A Journal / Document Of Every Idea You Have , Even If You Don’t Use The Majority Them

You know those times where you’ve been tired all day , can’t think properly throughout , and finally when you have time to nap or sleep , your brain suddenly decides it’s time to show you a detailed outline of your story in its entirety ? . . . Just me ? Anyways , by the time it comes it your mind , for some of us , it almost slips away as soon as it arrives . I recommend keeping a small journal on your person at all / most times and - or have an app on your phone ( ex. Google Docs , Notes , etc ) where when that idea decides to show itself to you , put it down . If you have neither , find a way to keep it in your mind until you can write it down or find a pen and paper of any kind and write it down . And , VERY IMPORTANT REMINDER. . . Not every idea you have may not work for a single story or the project you are currently working on , you don’t need to use every idea that comes to mind .

💜 Remember To Take Breaks

I know for myself that life of a creative is fulfilling and fun . Even if I start to feel burnt out and apathetic towards my own creations , I push myself to continue its work because. . . My stories are my life . They give me purpose . They make me happy and fulfilled . And when those feelings of burn out and apathy start to peek through , I genuinely panic because I don’t ever want to feel that way towards my own stories so I work harder . Turns out those feelings arise and end up creating writers block BECAUSE I’m overwhelmed and pushing myself . I admit , when I do take breaks , even for a day or two , I become sorrowful and depressed because I’m not working on my stories ; but during those moments of a much - needed break , I end up coming to an epiphany with something I didn’t know about the stories , finding new ways to drive the story in the direction I need , discovering fun or disturbing facts about the characters , and-or more things . It also helps in taking breaks so you have fresher eyes and processing when you return to your creative projects . You can see typos more , the clarity of how something is written , what needs improvement or what you like about it . So. . . In conclusion , go touch grass or something , especially drinking that clear splashy thing we call water .

[desceros]

How do you personally plan out your fics, especially with one as long as Symphony? Like what's the process behind creating the chapter outlines before you start writing?

so in the very beginning, all of my fic ideas start out the same regardless of length. it always starts with a little kernel of an idea. for example, with symphony, i wanted to write a fic exploring donnie having touch starvation after developing ptsd post-krang. hence why the google doc title is "touch-starved donnie."

then what happens is i start thinking about scenes that i want to have happen in the fic. i'm not really paying attention to anything chronological just yet, just Cool Shit That I Want To Write. this is when i start getting a vague idea of length; the more scenes that pop into my head, the less connected they are (thus requiring more things written between them To connect them) the more i'm like haha! uh oh! this is gonna be a big one huh! and eventually i'll get to a point where i realize that yep, this is gonna be a chaptered fic.

at that point, i start to kind of... pin things into place in my head in a chronological timeline. (this is all still very early in the planning process, mind you.) i'll think of when i want certain things to happen, what key points i'd like to have occur, when they'd make sense together. so this would look kind of like... i knew i wanted to have a scene in symphony where you went on an aquarium date with donnie. and i knew i wanted there to be a scene where you touched him and he was overwhelmed bc it's been so, so long. and i knew i wanted there to be a scene where he kisses you to 4'33. and i knew i wanted to have a scene where leo smelled donnie on you. so you can figure out it goes learning to touch donnie -> leo smelling him on you -> 4'33 kiss -> date with donnie. you do that over and over with all the scenes in your head until you have a general timeline of things.

this is when i start writing things down properly. before this, i'll write down, like. lines of dialogue that i want to have happen or key things to have happen. (e.g. "do you wanna try it?" -> you asking donnie out was planned before i had a single chapter written. i had a list of the escalation of touch that you do with him. a list of the subplots i wanted to incorporate. etc.) but i'll kind of write a... summary of the fic. truncated, but with enough detail that i know exactly what i want to have happen, as seen here in my plan for chapter 9/the beginning of 10:

you'll notice it isn't completely faithful to what happens in the fic... and that's because sometimes while i'm writing, i'll have a better idea of how i want something to happen, or i'll tie in something from a future/past chapter that fits better, or i just straight up change my mind. you're allowed to deviate from your plan!

sometimes, if i'm Really getting into the weeds or if scheduling is important (like. say. if you're writing a character who is a bit of a workaholic and has a tight schedule with things, cough, violist-chan) i'll make a calendar. this lets me keep things straight with when they happen without creating any time paradoxes. (this particular one is color coded later on as i realized i had to track certain things, but don't worry about that. not relevant for this question!)

so at this point, i have an outline of the fic on very broad strokes, most of the chapters summarized out specifically (usually a few chapters ahead, and the last. hm. three or four or so, with the last chapter very specifically planned out) (...yes i do know exactly how the fic is going to end and you're all going to die. but not as hard as i am!), and a calendar with when things happen.

then what i do is i open the google doc, put the summary for what's supposed to happen on the left, and get writing.

and voila. that's my planning process! simultaneously very nebulous but also...... extremely concrete. hehe

[forever--darling]

Hiiii! Your writing is just *chef's kiss*. Like seriously, I, for some time couldn't read anything, just like, I couldn't focus on the story, yk? Anyways, your Neteyam story got me glued to my screen!! It was so amazing, you deserve an award!

Do you have any tips to a fellow writer, to improve her writing? Thank you!

this ask has my heart! I was waiting for this one.

tips

1. practice practice practice. seriously the only way to perfect your craft. I have been writing for years and over that time I have grown so much into my own style. that being said, when you start out present yourself with some grace. you may write something and not like it one bit and that's okay. it is a first draft for a reason.

2. read as much as you can. this was how I found what I liked and didn't like with writing styles. take note of what your favorite authors do or what writing pieces really stuck for you. note why it did. ---- for me, descriptions and lots of detail became what I preferred.

3. ^^^ with this though that doesn't mean copying word for word what authors say. identify what techniques they use that you like or certain themes and use them for inspiration.

4. outlines. I find these to be my savior. I use my notes app because it's always close by. when I have an idea I write it down. this way you can brainstorm and plan out the story. however, this also means you aren't obligated to follow it. outlines are not meant to be static. if you have thoughts while you're writing or a new idea, go with it. adjust your outline as you go.

5. dictionary, google, etc. research, and research if you are unsure of a phrase, the right word being used, or a topic. take breaks if it feels like it's too much. also, use google as a tool to spice up your writing and exchange words here and there. just don't overuse it. you want your voice to still shine through the writing.

6. take breaks, writing is energy-consuming, and sometimes you may feel pressure to finish with deadlines but your brain and hands need a break once in a while. eat or sleep or read something else, to rest your mind from writing. it will make your writing better in the future.

7. most of all writing has no bounds, especially fiction, rules are bendable and follow what your heart is saying. write about what inspires you and what you're passionate about. also let me reiterate, be kind to yourself and don't compare. you are your own person with your own style.

8. lastly, honorable mention: I like to make picture boards and playlists. anything to help me better visualize the plot and setting I am trying to convey, as well as my characters. it's a fun little activity and it adds so much to the aesthetic!