#im just like. damn that doesnt seem like a pleasant experience

[nat-20s]

Look I like. Get that a lot of disturbing/extreme horror/splatter punk novels are very specifically trying to be as gross as possible. But my reaction to hearing what happens in them really is just. "Hmm. Gross"

[deniigi]

Hello! Just about to sit down and read your newest fic, so excited about it! I had a question for you (you very well may have answered this already, so sorry in advance!), but do you have advice for writing? Advice in terms of getting start, plotting out stories, helping get the creative juices flowing? I have all these ideas but seem to lack the drive to get things written out. I know the best advice is to just write, but I'm having a horrible time starting. What do you do in those moments?

Hello my dear!

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. The lord has blessed me with a head cold and ruined all my plans of productivity for the day, so I can finally answer this ask! I’ll talk a little bit about both how to get started with a story and then some little things that help me motivate myself.

I have started a tag for writing advice here: http://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-advice

This is going to be a long post, sorry mobile users.

I am going to preface all of this with the understanding that I am technically a professional writer in terms of like, a handful of ways, but I have absolutely zero training in creative writing, so take everything I say with a grain of salt!

So, I personally find that, on the whole, that psychological hurdle of getting started comes a lot from the anticipation of the kind of response a story will get (how many hits, how many comments, how many kudos) in addition to a bit of anxiety or fear over  theloss of sustained interest in that story (by yourself and/or by your audience). I find that this can be alleviated by really, truly internalizing the understanding that you are allowed to write your work however you damn please, for whoever you damn please.

There will be work you write for others, and there will be work you write for yourself. Not all work needs to be published; sometimes, it is really nice to just write shit for yourself; it is a plus for humanity if you decide to share it with others, but you do not have to do that.

Furthermore, I would like to present you with this:

This is what my current folder for under fire looks like. And you might notice that there are almost always multiple drafts per chapter. Yes, I did in fact rewrite chapter four 5 fucking times, you bet your ass I did. And I’m not ashamed of it. I think the story is better for it. And that’s the important thing here: you do not need to produce a perfect draft the first time around. You will not produce that perfect draft. Accept this. Embrace this. Embrace it and your cat at the same time to really ingrain it as a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Liberate yourself from the pressure of needing to produce the perfect, most right draft and you may find starting the piece overall to be a much easier, more pleasant experience.

And along with this beautiful, uplifting spiritual advice, I also bring a practical thought: when it comes to getting started, a lot of times, people feel like they need to set the stage, yadda yadda yadda. Ha. No. Fuck that.

That’s a surefire way to bore the shit out of yourself. Start right in the middle of a scene that captivates you if that’s what you want to write. It’s a free platform. No one’s gonna arrest you if you stick Spiderman upside down in trash first thing. They might even applaud you actually, because you didn’t make them slog through some of that ‘It was the evening of the 25th and it was cold out in the streets” bullshit we all learned from Dickens.

Alright. Now let’s talk about actually getting started making words appear on paper.

So, from my knowledge there are generally two ways that folks write creatively. You have what I’m going to call the planners and then you what I’m going to call the monsters (I call them this entirely affectionately, I’m sure there’s a better word for these folks, but I don’t have it atm, all I have is a headcold). Planners are folks who sit down and work out their major plot points, who write outlines, and who create the scaffolding of their work before they set out on their magical journey. I think of these folks as architects.

And then you have the monsters and these are those fuckers who just sit down and write stream of consciously like the heathens all our high school teachers tried to teach us not to be.

I am both a planner and a monster. And a lot of that depends on the length of work I’m going for. I have never in my life planned a one-shot, for example. I just attack that as it is. I follow my heart, if you will. But when it comes to longer chaptered fics, I really do think that some outlining is super helpful.

You might find it useful for one-shots, though, I dunno. Maybe give it a try and see what happens?

The two main fics I’ve done proper outlines for are Inimitable and under fire and I actually find outlining to be immensely helpful in psyching me up to write the story (I go through and re-read my outlines when I start to lose interest or diverge too much from the plot outlined there in the actual writing. 9 times out of 10, re-reading gets me stupid excited to write all over again) and it also helps me keep momentum going throughout the plot.

Here’s a pic of some pages of under fire’s outline.

Physically writing the work is really important for me because it forces me to only put down key points/feelings/ideas I want to include, whereas typing gives me far too much room to get lost/distracted by extraneous detail. And since my handwriting is a teacher’s worst nightmare and I cross out shit and write huge with emotion, I’ll give you a little bit of what the middle page here says:

Miles-

there’s something thrumming

vibrating in his ears wherever he goes

-closes his eyes and somehow enters blackness- emptyness (Stranger Things style)

beat

beat

beat

“help.”

–BACK - everything is gone

closing his eyes doesn’t bring the space back

–it makes him panic. He doesn’t know why. His heart is pounding. He’s sweating He has a horrible feeling of doom.

beat

beat

beat

its gone.

he goes home anxiously. Pretends everything is normal.

his neck crawls

So basically it’s less of a formal outline and more of a collection of stream of consciousness feelings and screenplay directions which I’ll flesh out in the actual story.

Personally, I love writing these kinds of things because they get me pumped for the story I’m about to tell. I get to write out the key scenes and work through all the hard parts first, and then, while I’m writing, I work through the little fun details and banter and I have to write to figure out how we get from one scene to the next and I love the challenge of having to fit those pieces together. I very rarely stick strictly to my outline, (as anyone who is currently reading under fire can tell you right now), but I do try to stick to the main plot points in it and my writing is certainly better for it.

So yes. Outlining is very good, but it is even better when you do it to some kind of music. I listened to What’s Up Danger from the Into the Spiderverse soundtrack on repeat while I wrote this outline to kind of transfer some of the relentless pace conveyed in that song to the piece’s plot.

I highly recommend using music to set the mood of your piece while/before you write a piece of any length. It helps get you in the right headspace (excited or somber or angry) to write. You need emotion to write creatively. You can’t just make that happen sometimes; you need a little help.

A couple other things which might help:

1. Leave your house or the space you’re normally in. Go to a cafe and find a nice corner and have a think and a try in there. Sometimes moving to a different space helps you escape cyclical thinking patterns.

2. Write what you want to read. Don’t bother writing for other peoples’ interests; that’ll just bore the shit out of you all over again.

3. Find an atmospheric mood sound to listen to on Youtube or smth (I personally like Rain on a Car Windshield for slightly somber fics, but you might be into ocean storms or dripping caves or whatever).

4. Heat your feet. I don’t know why but I am entirely unproductive when my feet are cold. Maybe this one is me-specific, but whatevs. Heat the feets!

5. If you’re still having trouble just sitting down and pounding the story out, that’s okay! Maybe it’s not ready to be written yet. Maybe you’re not in the right headspace yet. Sometimes that’s just how it is. One story makes its way out in like, a hour, and the next one takes like, months to finally be written. We all work at different paces. We all write for different reasons.

It might help to figure out why you want to write a story before you write it. Like, if its for attention, it’s gonna be hard as hell. But if there’s an idea that you feel like is important or if there’s a mood you’re trying to work yourself into or out of, then that might be a little easier. For example, I wrote a piece called make it work which is about Fogs finding his motivation to be a lawyer and fight for justice when Kavanaugh was confirmed and I felt super helpless in the face of our present justice system. That story kind of wrote itself and it needed to be written, I feel, not just for me, but for others who were feeling just as helpless.

Writing is catharsis in that way. Maybe you just need to find out what you need to wring out of your soul.

Sorry that got very metaphysical. But I do want to stress that getting started and ending a story are the hardest parts of writing them, so you are definitely not alone if you feel like you’re ramming your head into a wall here.

I hope something here helps you, my dear!

[tajimeme]

my dumb take on a sp highschool au because its what i think about all the time

- confirmed relationships that went from childhood crushes to actual relationships: craig and tweek, stan and wendy, red and kevin, kenny and butters, token and nichole

- heidi and cartman have been on-again/ off-again. its healthier that it was in elementary school because heidi can stand up for herself and no longer feels bad for her choices and as cartman matures he’s nicer to her and actually begins enjoying the relationship. but hes still shitty so heidi often breaks up with him but always ends up going back after a few days, not because hes begging but just because she wants to try again. - clyde and bebe are mutually exclusive minus drunk or high kisses or expressly agreed upon shenanigans. this usually involves bebe experimenting sexually with wendy or clyde getting involved in a usually gay threesome. clyde wants to officially date bebe and she thinks it would be nice but he’s too nervous to actually ask. so they’re dubbed as just “sort-of-dating” - craig and tweek went through the dating bullshit in fourth grade and at the time developed mutually innocent crushes. once they left south park elementary they talked about dropping the “dating act” but agreed neither wanted to. Once they entered highschool the “innocent crushes” evolved due to hormonal influences and after a fight it finally came to light that neither was really joking with their feelings and began dating for real.  - stan and wendy have always dated. they both always liked each other. but once they entered highschool wendy began wanting to experiment with women. stan was definitely jealous but he said it was okay because it was always with bebe and he knew bebe was always with clyde and didn’t feel their relationship threatened. in his downtime however stan began to notice he would also want to experiment and began to realize he always fantasized about kyle and he began questioning his feelings for him. he was really confused but he came out and told kyle who reciprocated. they began fooling around behind wendy’s back as fwb but emotions soon settled in and they began seeing each other, stan cheating on wendy. wendy later came out to say she doesn’t care if stan and kyle fool around because she does with bebe but she isnt aware of the emotion behind it. stan still wants to be with wendy because he loves her and always has but being with kyle is extremely exciting. its unknown how poly would work because wendy has proven to be extremely jealous. - stan and kyle act just like bros when together and their romantic relationship has not affected their friendship. any time they could potentially be caught like caught holding hands, they simply play it off by saying something like “what i just wanted to hold my best friends hand whats wrong with that?” and its usually dismissed. wendy doesnt suspect anything.  - kenny has always been just a good guy. while he had the reputation for dating and sleeping around he was notorious for treating the people he was with good. he had charm and looks and he was a genuinely nice guy to people. however he never dated anyone for long if at all. until butters. the two had decided to hang out. when a mood struck, kenny decided to kiss him. he frantically went to apologize not even knowing if he actually liked guys. butters was really embarrassed and confessed that he had asked him to hang out hoping for like a date. for a about a week they awkwardly danced around “dating”, nervously holding hands and such. they mutually agreed upon dating. 

-stephen and linda were leery of butters dating kenny at first but wanted to be supportive. butters and kenny can have no physically relationship in the stotch’s residence when his parents are home and its hard to set the mood at kenny’s house.  - tweeks parents arent actually that bad you guys are just mean.  - tweek and craig have been caught having sex by craig’s family countless of times because tweek can just not be quiet. its actually really funny to craig but traumatizes tweek but yet it still keeps happening and they keep doing it at craigs house. tweek’s parents don’t interrupt them like craig’s family does, but they may comment about it in the morning.  -clyde cried the first time he had sex with bebe.  -stan was not smooth his first time with wendy. it was really awkward and not the most pleasant. his first time with kyle they were really nervous but it went really well (stan tops) - tweek is really excited about sex. he usually convinces craig to go multiple times. he seems always ready to go and craig is very excited to give him what he wants. they experiment a lot and have a very healthy sex life. they have had threesomes with craig’s friend thomas (la petit tourettes) (tweek and thomas were both bottoms in this scenario), and clyde (tweek usually bottoms, but clyde has been in the middle before). 

-craig is the most supportive guy ever. he knows exactly how to handle a panic attack (from years of experience and learning) and it always there for any of his friends.  - stan and craig listen to the same kind of 2009 emo rock music and are total bros. they jam hard together.  - craig is a smoker because he thought it’d make him look cool and now he physically cant stop and he hates it but he’ll be damned if he spends $40 for a juul and be made fun of. Kenny smokes with him. Tweek likes to take puffs. it makes him feel cool.  - speaking of smoking craig and kenny get together and smoke weed all the time. if theyre at kenny’s house, stan sometimes joins them. if they’re at craig’s, clyde and tweek like to join.  -token and bebe host parties all the time. everyone gets completely trashed. someone usually has weed too.  - kenny usually has drugs. no one is surprised because of his family but hes such a nice guy that people usually forget about it. craig is down to try anything.  - tweek has xanax as a prescription and lets craig take it for fun.  - clyde has an adderal hookup. tweek’s tried it but it worked like it was suppose to with him and he didn’t have as good of time as everyone else. 

im sure theres more but its like 6:30am now

[nickatnightwalker-blog]

damian doesn’t understand the entire concept of The Baby, nick’s apparently been engaged to a bird for months now, nick is honestly confused by damian’s blatant refusal to behave likeably or even neutrally in front of anyone but him

a-thousand-dreadful-things Is he talking about a literal baby?

nickatnightwalker oh uh i dont know how old iti s it might be a baby for all i fucking know

a-thousand-dreadful-things Is it his baby?

nickatnightwalker he found it, so i guess so he didnt like, give birth to it though i feel like that's beyond the level of weirdness we're dealing with

a-thousand-dreadful-things He found a literal human baby?

nickatnightwalker it's a six eyed bird that comes up to my waist and i personally cant hold up with one arm it's the baby.  it's helpless you know

a-thousand-dreadful-things Are you fucking with me?

nickatnightwalker ive met it eye to eye to eye to eye to eye etc

a-thousand-dreadful-things I hate this fucking school.

nickatnightwalker i know the whole concept of enormous bird of prey as helpless infant is kind of a lot but you just gotta roll with it just fucking. go with it.  or else youll wanna shoot yourself. besides, it's pretty ok.  little bit of a brat though.

a-thousand-dreadful-things It can't possibly be happy locked up in a dorm. It's a wild animal. He should let it go free.

nickatnightwalker it is free it just like comes to visit or something we went up into one of the towers in ra and he called it and it fucking came dude.

a-thousand-dreadful-things Beholden to a master who feeds it is not the same as free.

nickatnightwalker oh it can most definitely feed itself damian i think it comes to him for like, hugs

a-thousand-dreadful-things Unsanitary.

nickatnightwalker youre preaching to the choir here buddy birds fucking love me for some goddamn reason and they're the worst

a-thousand-dreadful-things How much experience do you have with "birds" as a general category that you know that they "love you"?

nickatnightwalker once i was in central park and as an experiment i just didn't move and no less than four pigeons eventually ended up sitting on me

a-thousand-dreadful-things Pigeons roost on anything that stays still for an extended period of time. Insufficient evidence for significance.

nickatnightwalker alright then the seagulls at LBI who not only didn't steal my food, they actually brought me someone else's sandwich and then laid down around my chair

a-thousand-dreadful-things You're making that up.

nickatnightwalker pictures are on facebook dont like, like anything or comment on anything though my dad's a demon also there was a crow that lived on my street and brought me buttons and shit once it brought me someones engagement ring that was awesome

a-thousand-dreadful-things Though I imagine less awesome for whomever lost the ring. Or perhaps the crow was proposing?

nickatnightwalker maybe they threw it, you dont know oh shit

nickatnightwalker i cant fucking believe im engaged

a-thousand-dreadful-things I can't believe you've been fooling around with me, and all this time... Your poor crow fiancee must be devastated.

nickatnightwalker i cant even believe i did that it's like i dont know myself

nickatnightwalker although on a scale of one to divorce papers i feel like you and i probably only fucked up at like, a level three

a-thousand-dreadful-things Perhaps she doesn't even know.

nickatnightwalker well damn am i supposed to come clean honey i held a guy's hand im sorry i know now it was wrong although actually i didnt at the time or do i spare her the pain

nickatnightwalker she doesnt even HAVE hands d that's gotta be a sore spot

a-thousand-dreadful-things You can tenderly clasp her scaled feet. Explain it was merely an emotional affair; beg her to forgive you.

nickatnightwalker ugh have you ever actually touched a bird's feet that's been a huge obstacle in our relationship

a-thousand-dreadful-things I see. Birds may love you; but you clearly do not return the feelings. Unfortunate.

nickatnightwalker all they really like me for is my hair

a-thousand-dreadful-things Well: understandable.

nickatnightwalker oh my god not you too

a-thousand-dreadful-things Frankly, I fear the day you get a haircut, Nick, and all my tenuous feelings vanish into thin air.

nickatnightwalker well what the fuck i thought it was for my motherfucking charming attitude and tact

a-thousand-dreadful-things What a pleasant surprise! Nick Walker apparently has heard the word "tact" before. I wondered, since you possess none.

nickatnightwalker pot, meet kettle

a-thousand-dreadful-things I suppose that's fair.

nickatnightwalker im a fucking UN diplomat next to you d

a-thousand-dreadful-things I can be composed when I want to be. Most of the time it just doesn't matter to me whether anyone thinks I'm tactful or not.

nickatnightwalker i thought you were aiming to keep the enemies to a minimum

a-thousand-dreadful-things *Mortal enemies. "Enemies" as a blanket category is much more difficult to maintain.

nickatnightwalker you think so? probably wouldnt be if you worked on that tact thing ive been here as long as you and theres only one person who hates my ass, jsyk

a-thousand-dreadful-things As long as no one's trying to kill me I have no objection to a pool of low-level dislike. I can only control myself, Nick, not others.

nickatnightwalker right but have you considered it might just be like

nickatnightwalker nice if people liked you

a-thousand-dreadful-things It doesn't really matter to me either way. All the people whose opinions I give a damn about like me already.

nickatnightwalker not daisy

a-thousand-dreadful-things I do not say this with intent to offend, but; you think I still care about her opinion?

nickatnightwalker damian, is there anyone else here like at all that youre on good terms with?

a-thousand-dreadful-things Ines.

a-thousand-dreadful-things I helped Valentine and Aud a few days ago. Not that they rank very highly on my list of people whose opinions I care about.

nickatnightwalker who IS on that list

a-thousand-dreadful-things You. Ines, I suppose.

nickatnightwalker damian.  did you care about having my good opinion before you actually had it because i feel like you might be doing this backwards

a-thousand-dreadful-things That depends. At what point did I finally succeed in gaining your good opinion?

nickatnightwalker who says you have it?

nickatnightwalker that was kinda presumptuous ngl you know if you talked to more people how you talk to me youd probably have and then care about their good opinion in that order

a-thousand-dreadful-things I suppose I understand that. But I have no real interest in it.

nickatnightwalker how do you not see how that could like, generally make your life easier d

a-thousand-dreadful-things My life isn't terribly difficult as is.

nickatnightwalker i dont get it

nickatnightwalker i mean i get not caring i do that every day but it's so easy not to make people hate your ass except for aud but shes a basket case

a-thousand-dreadful-things Aud's not so bad.

nickatnightwalker she HATES me so i kinda dont care for her

a-thousand-dreadful-things She seems incapable of true hate. Like a particularly angry kitten made of clay. Anyway; it's certainly possible you've done something by accident that riled her up. Any idea?

nickatnightwalker oh yeah definitely. wynn asked me to the dance and she decidedthat made us rivals

nickatnightwalker i tried to throw you under that bus actually by pointing out she ditched me for you but it didnt really stick

nickatnightwalker anyway sorry i was making a vinegar and baking soda volcano with misha it was a scientific breakthrough