#intern tips

[nenelonomh]

how to not rot after a long day at school

₊˚ପ⊹ commute home while listening to music or a podcast that you enjoy. remember to be mindful of what you consume.

₊˚ପ⊹ get moving! physical activity can help to clear your mind and boost your energy. try going for a walk, doing some yoga, or even dancing to your favourite music.

₊˚ପ⊹ engage in hobbies such as reading, drawing, or playing a musical instrument.

₊˚ପ⊹ have something to eat! eating a snack can help replenish your energy levels. opt for nutrition over easy energy.

₊˚ପ⊹ make sure to listen to any app time limits set in place to limit screen time. if you take a bus or train, look out the window or people watch.

[offkilterkeys]

The world isn’t ready for my alpha kid readings.

[newrelationshipgoals]

It’s easy to love someone when times are good. Real love is about holding on to one another when times aren’t.

[queenretcon]

Comments

@ blazingfire . 3w ago

I will get you

👍 4k 👎

[deception-united]

Let's talk about internal conflict.

Having clear external conflicts is essential to driving forward your plot, but internal conflicts help add depth and complexity to your characters. They'll make your characters better rounded-out, more believable, and relatable.

Internal conflicts are the struggles, doubts, and desires that exist within a character's mind and heart. They indirectly hinder them from reaching their ultimate goal by influencing their decisions, actions, who they choose to befriend, their fears, or how they react in different situations.

Here are some ways to integrate and determine your characters' internal conflicts:

Explore their desires and fears: Figure out what goals are they striving to achieve and their motivations behind it. From here, delve into their fears and insecurities that could obstruct their progress by causing internal turmoil. This duality adds depth to their personalities and motivations.

Show conflicting emotions: Characters should experience a range of emotions, sometimes simultaneously. They may feel torn between loyalty and self-interest, love and duty, or ambition and morality. Allow these conflicting emotions to drive their decisions and actions, leading to internal tension and growth.

Develop a backstory: Every writer's favourite step. Determine how their past experiences, traumas, and relationships create internal conflict for them. Past events or unresolved issues play a key role in shaping their beliefs, values, and behavior, influencing their present-day struggles.

Use moral dilemmas: Present your characters with ethical dilemmas or moral choices that force them to confront their beliefs and values. These situations can reveal the depth of their character and provoke internal conflict as they wrestle with the consequences of their decisions, as well as providing further insight into their personality and character.

Show internal growth: Allow your characters to evolve and grow throughout the story by facing and eventually overcoming their internal conflicts. Make them struggle. Have them make bad choices out of fear, or love, or jealousy. Force them to deal with the consequences. And turn that—the confrontation of their fears, reconciliation of their desires, the difficult choices—into a transformative journey.

Hope this was helpful! Make your characters suffer ❤

Next

[novlr]

How do I make internal conflict subtle, without being so subtle the readers miss it?

Internal conflict is a vital component of any compelling story. It’s the central axis of any good character arc and drives the narrative forward. However, writing internal struggles effectively without resorting to heavy-handed exposition can be challenging. Here are some quick tips on writing subtle internal conflict.

Show, don’t tell

Reveal a character’s emotions through actions, thoughts, and dialogue.

Use body language and gestures to convey inner turmoil, like fidgeting, clenched fists, or avoiding eye contact.

Write sensory details to immerse readers in the character's emotional experience, like describing the taste of bitterness or the prickling of anxiety.

Incorporate changes in a character's routine or habits that hint at inner changes, like a punctual character being late, or changing taste in music.

Use the character's reactions to their environment as a reflection of their emotions. The same setting might appear grey and dark to one, but bright and vibrant to another.

Use subtext

Write subtext into dialogue, where characters say one thing but mean another.

Drop subtle hints at emotions that readers can infer rather than spelling everything out.

Experiment with non-verbal communication like meaningful glances, pauses, or hesitations.

Invoke subtext through characters' internal thoughts and uncertainties, without the character fully acknowledging their deeper feelings.

Use dramatic irony, where the reader knows more than the character does about their own feelings or situation.

Develop complex characters

Give your characters conflicting desires, values, and goals to naturally generate internal conflict.

Create backstories that reveal past traumas or experiences that continue to haunt and influence their decisions.

Consider using character flaws and contradictions to highlight internal struggles.

Use relationships to create conflicting desires and expectations.

Give your characters both internal and external conflicts to build tension between dealing with personal struggles and outside problems.

Employ inner monologues

Incorporate introspective moments where characters wrestle with their inner demons, doubts, and fears.

Use first-person or close third-person perspectives to allow readers direct access to the character's thoughts.

Balance inner monologues with external action to maintain pacing and engagement.

Use an unreliable narrator so readers try to distinguish between what is a misperception and what is the truth.

Create inner thoughts that highlight the difference between a character's public persona and their private world.

Create moral dilemmas

Force characters to make difficult decisions that represent turning points in their arcs.

Explore the consequences of a character’s choices on their sense of self and their relationships.

Have your character confront a personal sacrifice where they must question their own motives and values.

Have a character balance loyalty and personal integrity, having to decide where their personal morality lies.

Force a choice between self-preservation and the greater good where their choice not only has personal stakes, but story-wide ones as well.

[faerie-of-faerun]

Oh hey, the system requirements for BG3 got updated: The game now needs to be installed on a SSD, even under minimum requirements.

Edit after release: The game is playable even on a HDD, I can confirm this myself. There even is a setting to compensate for the lack of reading speed (although some textures still take some time to load sometimes). In their launch preparation post Larian say they "highly recommend" playing with a SSD, though. I am very glad it's not a hard requirement!

[erikasnothungry]

wdym your w3ight is in the triple digits...

[lizzybeanbutt]

tumblr is never gonna beat the white site allegations!!!!! from the top???? bro?????

[ibchemist]

Sunday, August 27th

Hello everyone! I'm back. I have been pretty much gone because I was in vacation but we are back. Started school two weeks ago and it's kinda crushing me but it's okay because I passed the first and only filter for sec gen of my school's mun. Please wish me good luck! I have nothing to do for tomorrow as I finished all my hw on Friday, but I do want to know if you guys want any type of new content or dynamics <3 Remember that my ask box is always open!

🎧 - do it like that (txt)

📚 - the ib chem textbook

Classes I'm taking in the IBDP

HL Chemistry <333 Biology Global Politics

SL English L Spanish L Math AA

[secondhandsorrows]

The Deal with Character and Plot: Which is More Important?

All stories have characters and plot.

Sometimes as writers, however, we pour all our focus into one of these aspects, overshadowing plot in favor of character, or getting too caught up in plot and leaving character for last. Really, both are the nuts and bolts of story — they work in unison, thriving in tandem. Without the other, the story just falls flat. But, there’s a little something that is the glue between plot and character.

So what is this glue?

That, my friend, is conflict. 

Conflict is the glue that brings together these two aspects, creating balance and making a compelling and engaging story. All good stories have conflict.

It’s helpful to remember that plot is the sequence of external events in a character’s environment  that get the ball rolling, whereas character give a window to the internal, the emotional. Internal conflict is often of the character’s own making: a secret motive, a battle of emotions, the opposing want versus need, the dissatisfaction in their life, the indecisions or hesitations. 

A character tends to get affected by the external events. A messy divorce may lead to one character’s depression before they finally motivate themselves to get a new date, going through multiple failed attempts until they meet their second-soulmate. A character getting a new job may catapult them into —what was supposed to be a fresh start— a waking nightmare as they try to navigate their unfair, demanding workplace. 

With these two examples, we can pinpoint their internal and external conflicts. In the first, we have the character’s external conflict of a heart-breaking divorce and the struggles of moving out and getting the papers settled. As for the internal conflict, this character goes through bouts of depression, wondering if she’ll find anyone for her, before finally getting encouraged to get back out into the dating pool once again, helping her to discover that nothing is too-late or at the end of road.

For the second example, the external conflict is the character navigating their new environment, driven up the wall from tedious work and snobby coworkers, but they can’t leave because of *reasons*. Their internal conflict, in turn, is their dedication as to not quit coupled with their eventual desire to climb the ladder of success. 

We can start to see here that there’s a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the external and internal: one cannot exist without the other. How a character might see the world can impact their relationships and other external factors, such as their environment. Similarly, external events can prompt a character to react or spark inner conflict that they have to deal with in one way or another.

I hope this is helpful. Thanks for reading!

[byoldervine]

What Is Your OC’s Internal Conflict?

Internal conflict is key to writing a character-driven story and helping readers emotionally connect to your characters. The external conflict would be, say, the Hex Squad defeating Emperor Belos and the Emperor’s Coven, but the internal conflict would be Amity breaking away from her mother’s influence, or Willow rebuilding her self-worth after years of bullying broke it down. It relates back to their personal journey of self-growth as they conquer their inner demons rather than an external force

If it helps, feel more than free to comment or reblog to share your own characters’ internal conflicts

[nightbunnysong]

what is something that you aren’t personally interested in pursuing, but think is really interesting?

I’m a really curious person who would love to pursue fifty different careers, but with only 24 hours in a day, I’m already struggling to balance everything I do.

Here are a few things I find particularly interesting:

Archaeology

I’ve been fascinated by archaeology since I was a child. Growing up in an area with many medieval, Celtic, and Lombard excavation sites, my school frequently took us to see the finds. This early exposure really sparked my interest in the field.

Astronomy

I absolutely love astronomy. I even subscribed to an astronomy magazine during high school and dreamed of becoming the next Stephen Hawking. However, the heavy emphasis on physics, math, and engineering made me think I might not be able to handle it all and stay sane!

International Relations

During high school, I participated as UNESCO delegate in few Model United Nations events with schools from around the world. It was a fantastic experience and for years it was my second choice for university.

[photos from Pinterest]

[alwaysbewoke]

When I was in college, I let German tourists take pictures with me in my graduation gown. Even at the time I thought it was weird. But since my college years, I haven’t allowed strangers to take pics of me “just because” here or abroad. “Curiosity” means very little to me. People on the clock app were saying in China they actually have been known to post pics of Black people on WeChat to make fun of them. So, maybe not the best idea to let strangers take pics of/with you. Anyway, I wish you all safe, joyous, and comfortable travels. You deserve to see the world in peace just like anyone else.

x

[ghostinthegallery]

Re-reading Twice Dead King, the character I was most struck by on a second viewing was Mentep. Now there’s a tragic figure. Simultaneously a mentor, an ally, an antagonist, someone so terribly understandable who I want to smack upside the head for being a lying liar who lies.

Ultimately, Mentep is a penitent. He has committed terrible acts (that we only get scant details of) and he wants to redeem himself. Thanks to his tampering with his own memories, he doesn't fully know what he is repenting for, which puts him in a bind. However, he knows that he played a role in creating the flayer curse/longing sickness, so he goes to a planet where a high concentration of them have gathered and works on his cure. He's respected, he's able to do his work with only occasional interruptions from the local angsty youth. Things are good-ish (until the armada shows up.)

Mentep and Oltyx have a weird relationship. Despite being his normal asshole-teenager self, Oltyx does respect Mentep more than most. Trusts Mentep enough to let the guy perform experimental brain surgery on him. Twice. And Mentep is able to be much more candid with Oltyx in return. He's one of the few consistently calling Oltyx out for his bullshit. On the surface, it is a standard mentor relationship, but what got me on a second reading is that there is hardly a single conversation Mentep has with Oltyx where he isn’t lying to and/or manipulating him.

It starts early with Yenekh. Mentep knows Yenekh has been suffering from the curse, he hasn’t told Oltyx, and when he finally has to tell him, he conveniently does so right before distracting everyone with the “oh btw, we’re all gonna die to a giant human armada” news. This is done with the best of intentions. Mentep wants to protect Yenekh (and Oltyx, in his way), so he delivers the news this way to get the bad news out of the way and then both of them on the same side. But it is the start of a pattern.

Which we get again when Mentep fails to mention a that Antikef is a flayer den ruled by a “We have Illuminor Szeras at home” Vizier, and boy does that end badly for Oltyx (see the last 60% of Ruin). Naturally, Mentep has a good explanation:

But it is another lie, one that costs Oltyx dearly (put a pin in this, I am coming back to it.)

There's some little fibs and ommissions along the way as they go to Carnotite, but it all builds up to The Big Lie. The one that sends Oltyx spiraling and gets Mentep killed. Because you know what really helps with paranoia? Finding out your mentor and your best friend have been hiding a secret blood pit in your basement! Again, it makes sense why Mentep is lying about this! He has every reason to believe Oltyx would have rejected the flayed ones he and Yenekh were sheltering (he in fact does exactly this), and Mentep's entire goal is to cure the curse to atone for his role in its creation. However...

I think Oltyx is correct to call Mentep out here (Oltyx is wrong about most things, but not this). Somewhere a long the way he became a means to an end for Mentep. Mentep was focused on The Curse and not the person in front of him who was cursed. He used Oltyx's friendship with Yenekh, his need to save his kingdom, his trust, his fears, all in service of admirable goals, but he was using Oltyx. Is it any wonder this is where it ended?

The lies were Mentep's undoing from the start. Remember the lie about Antikef? The one that led to all the events of Ruin? Yes, Oltyx and Djoseras did talk and avoid a civil war, but Oltyx also went through hell. He saw his home turned into an abbattoir, his father reduced to barely more than an animal. Oltyx was literally vivisected and almost consumed by his own dysphoria. And then committed regicide after leaving his brother behind to die. Antikef is where Oltyx truly learned that compassion was weakness and saw how horrific the flayer curse could become. So how was he ever going to accept the flayed ones as Mentep wanted him to? Oltyx experienced the comically perfect combination of traumas to ensure that would never happen, thanks in part to Mentep's manipulations.

I cannot stress enough that Mentep's individual lies all made sense at the time. May have even been the best option, at the time. But the consequences piled up, and even as he is dying he still refuses to give Oltyx even a scrap of the truth. That is the core of his tragedy for me. Well, that and this:

He bases all of his manipulations on his understanding of people's psyche's, which are usually accurate, but it also traps them. It gives them no room to grow or surprise him or for outside factors to come in and intervene. Contrast this with Zultanekh, who is upfront to a fault. He gives Oltyx advice and resources, but what Oltyx does with those things is up to him. Even when he is screwing up royally, he's allowed to make those mistakes. Mentep causes ones of Oltyx's darkest hours (the secret blood pit), while Zultanekh lifts him out of another (the Blood Angel's attack). In the end, Zultanekh is the one who sees Oltyx's true growth and witnesses the birth of his kingdom. A birth that comes not from curing the curse but embracing it.

There was never a sickness to be fixed, which means Mentep never would have achieved his redemption because he was focused on the wrong things. Which does make his death and rebirth as Xott a bit of a reflection of Oltyx. He was too burdened in his first life, but in his second he (or at least a version of him) was able to witness the people he hurt reaching a place of peace.

[dancingafterdark]

crummi lil’ radiostatic doodles in my sketchbook for the soul how tf is fuckass bob-wearing deerboi the EASIER of the two for me to draw, me being incapable of drawing a square feels illegal—