#pia's dodgy advice

[not-poignant]

Raphael has a very poetic and grandiose way of speaking that is absolutely not the norm for day-to-day life. How do you get in the mindset to come up with his dialogues? They're perfection and I just can't even imagine how long it would take to do one paragraph of the way he talks, but you're writing an entire story with him...

Oh I love this question because I can answer it, lol sadlkjfsda

Okay so, Raphael's character is tough for me.

Normally I do a lot of dialogue research before starting to write a character in fanfiction and original fiction, but Raphael actually gets proportionately very few lines that really show his full emotional range (compared to say, Astarion), and he's got an incredibly specific way of talking that sounds similar to Astarion but at the same time is very different.

They share enough similarities (calling people darling and dear for example) that it's easy to fall into the trap of giving them the same 'voice.'

I find Astarion's voice a lot easier to 'get' and I feel like I can hear him better when I'm writing him. But Raphael I'm taking into emotional spaces we simply never see in the game, and then I have to really guess how he'd sound (like coming up with the idea that the theatricality vanishes when Raphael is genuinely panicking).

I ended up listening to a lot of interviews with Andrew Wincott, the Voice Actor for Raphael who is an incredible actor and extremely articulate. He was very clear in one of his interviews that one of the reasons he was selected to play Raphael was because, in part, he already sounded like him. Obviously there's differences / skill in changing cadence and more, but for the most part, Andrew Wincott uses similar vocabulary and talks in a similar manner to Raphael naturally, so I had an abundance of interviews that I could then listen to in order to get a feel for Raphael's voice. I picked the things that felt more 'Raphael' and added them to my dialogue notes.

I often have to go back and edit Raphael's dialogue. Sometimes it's very simple things, I had him say 'much more' in the chapter I'm editing right now, and I edited it to 'far more' because I think he'd just phrase it like that. Sometimes I expand a sentence into an entire paragraph.

I've also leaned a lot from Korilla's transcripts in the game, which have been super useful. They really cement, more than anything, how much he loves lullabies, nursery rhymes, children's tales and more.

HOW TO DO DIALOGUE RESEARCH:-

If you're new to dialogue research, it mostly involves listening to - and watching a character and then literally taking notes of how they talk. The things you observe are:

The tone of their voice - Fast or slow. Loud or soft. Musical or flat. Theatrical or matter-of-fact. High or low. Questioning or complete statements. Considered or hedging (i.e. very well constructed sentences, or a lot of pauses, ellipses, broken sentences). Rambling or concise.

How often they talk - Some characters actually say a lot with very little. Raphael is actually a lot of observation and facial expressions and eyebrow movements in between his dialogue. Little smirks, hand gestures and more. Do they interrupt or let people finish their sentences? Are they comfortable with silence? I find Raphael oscillates between long theatrical paragraphs, single sentences or words, and then a lot of silence. He's actually not very conversational, in that you can have a conversation with him, but I doubt he'd see the point of two hours of small-talk. (At this point you might be realising that dialogue research is also character research, how a character talks tells you so much about a character.)

The words (and metaphors/subjects) they use - This is a big one and I'm going to break this down a little bit more:

How they pause if they don't know what to say. Is it 'um' 'uh' 'ah' 'hm' 'mm' 'mn' or nothing at all (or something else) because they've mastered self-control over their dialogue? If Raphael says 'ah' he does so on purpose.

Filler words. Things like characters saying 'like' in a sentence. 'He was like, 'I can't believe it'' etc. This is very similar to how they pause, but it's the things people say to get from point A to point B. People who don't do this have often had training or think very hard about what they're going to say before they say it. But people say 'like' or 'and then' or 'well' or 'i realised that' or 'i thought that' etc. to carry them on. Some are more acceptable than others (people do just have realisations for example).

Profanity. How often do they swear, and how intentional is it? Some characters only swear when they get hurt or stub their toe or get angry. Some characters swear all the time for fun. Some characters only use some swear words and not others. Be specific. Be aware that some swear words are cultural! This includes blasphemy. In Faerun they use 'gods' and 'gods damn it' more often than we use 'god' or 'oh my god.'

Vulgarity. This is useful for Raphael (and Astarion) because he's very happy to be vulgar. This is like... how comfortable are they talking about sex, about sexual subjects, being crude, being seductive, flirtatious? And if they use it, do they use vulgarity to shock, seduce, scare, threaten, or for humour?

Salutations and farewells. How do they greet people? Silence? A calm hello? (A lot of greetings are omitted in dialogue but this is still good to know). How do they say hello, goodbye. How does that change between friends and enemies and strangers?

Single word sentences. This might sound weird, but sometimes when a character hears something that shocks them, or needs to acknowledge something, they may say anything from 'huh' to 'yeah' to 'fuck' to 'okay' to 'all right' to 'sure' to 'go on' to 'indeed' to just laughing out loud. The list goes on. Raphael is team 'indeed' lmao.

Sentence structure. Raphael's sentence structure is - when he's most comfortable - gently provoking, teasing, vaguely threatening, and makes liberal use of simile, metaphor, fairy tale, rhyme, sayings, colloquialisms and more. Raphael talks like someone who knows someone could quote him at any moment lmao. But from here, how a character structures their sentences can be helpful to know. Go back to 'the tone of their voice.' Those notes will give you an idea of structure.

Emotionality. How emotional are they? Do they have rage rants? Joyful giggling dialogue? Do they infodump with little emotion? Or with sheer excitement? Does their dialogue feel fake or real? Opaque or transparent? Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves, and others will never be able to say 'I love you' in anything other than actions. Raphael's emotionality in dialogue is more present in his anger and irritation, and also when he feels triumphant and/or turned on.

The symbols, sayings, colloquialisms and metaphors themselves. Not all characters use these. But some people/characters will talk through analogies, colloquialisms. This is actually Raphael's biggest dialogue departure from Astarion, imho, aside from the fact that Astarion is a lot more emotional with his dialogue.

Take into account their culture, ethnicity, conceits, upbringing, education and the people they're close to:

This one is vital. Firstly, some people tend to 'absorb' elements of those around them. A person raised by affluent people will often 'sound affluent' and a person raised in poverty will often have dialogue that reflects this and if they don't there will be reasons for that. It might be a conceit (some people self-teach themselves different accents), it might be education, it might be training, it might be the subculture/s they've entered into, and so on.

~

When doing this research, you'll end up with a kind of master-list of actual words and probably some sentences you've written down, along with a lot of notes. You can also do this for any original characters you're making at all, you're just then making it up based on the character, and this research will also give in many ways the shape of the character.

It's a fun exercise and I highly recommend everyone tries it literally for people who don't exist and also observe your friends and family, and do a dialogue cheat sheet for some of them. It's pretty eye-opening! Even one page will teach you more than nothing at all. You can go deep and write many pages, or you can do what I do and keep it lean at 2 pages. Anyone who struggles with characterisation I suggest at least try this exercise, because anyone can put on a YouTube video and/or streaming service or even a favourite Tiktoker and start doing dialogue research! It's a way of building a character from the top down while also getting information about their foundations.

[not-poignant]

Hello, I was wondering if you have any tips for how to start getting into writing?? I’ve always wanted to write the stories in my head down but I struggle with writing and am not very good in general haha. When I read your books I get so filled with inspiration but feel like it’s too late for me to start ( even though logically I know I’m still quite young, but being in my final year of university feels like I’m running on quicksand ).

When reading Falling Falling Stars for the first time, it was like being shown a new type of love, being shown that has changed me as a person, which is why I’m reaching out.

Thank you for your time and for sharing your wonderful stories.

Hi anon!

People can learn how to write - especially for themselves - at any age. In fact sometimes it's easier to start when you're a bit older, when you've read and experienced a lot more stories and have an idea of the kind of things you enjoy reading.

It's important mostly to just be patient and gentle with yourself. You don't have to sit down and write a contained story, free yourself from the idea that you have to write a chronological/sequential complete story when you get started.

Start with the things you want to see most. Say there's a show where you just want two characters to hook up. Write a page of that. Not even the reason why, just...start with what you're imagining.

At first it might not be exactly what you're hoping for. There will be lines you like, and dialogue you think 'oh yeah this is kind of what I wanted' etc. that's okay. Think of it like...when people start out in art, it's not what they imagined yet, but that doesn't mean it's bad! It's a 'sketch.' It's good to do lots of writing sketches too.

If you find you enjoy writing things that you've always imagined and wish you could read, practice other things too! You can look around your environment and write 'how would I describe where I'm sitting if I loved this place more than anywhere else in the world' and then write 'how would I describe where I'm sitting to an alien' or 'how would I describe how this place smells, or looks, or sounds (practice listening for the sounds outside too, it can be meditative!), or feels to the touch.'

You can do those 'sketches' anywhere - in cafes, in restaurants, on public transport, on your notes app at a friend's place, at a family dinner after everyone's eaten and you're just chilling.

And then often without thinking about it, you will use those skills to breathe more life into the things you want to see most in your writing. Instead of just a one page hook up, you might write four pages where you describe the bedroom, how things feel, what the 'mood' is etc.

All you need is an urge to see certain things in the world and wanting to write them down. Put down random lines of dialogue. If you imagine two characters arguing, or hugging, or making up, write down somewhere quickly: 'These two characters hugging' to inspire you later. Maybe something specific about it makes you happy. 'They're hugging but this one is grabbing the other one's jumper/sweater really tightly.'

Writing for me is a sequence of moments, and while I write chronologically / sequentially now, I didn't used to! I gave myself permission to write scenes because I found it freeing, because if nothing else, then I have a scene of something I always wanted to see in the world. Maybe I do nothing more than just read and enjoy it sometimes, well, that's what I wanted - to write something I wanted to see in the world!

Anyone can do that, anon, and age is seriously no barrier to that. Writing creatively is one of those things that, like wine, tends to age/get better with time, whether you're practicing it or not. Learning more about the world, other people, ourselves, and the things in it, reading more, watching more film and TV, that actually enriches our imaginative landscape, and that's what fuels writing (even if you don't have an 'imagination' in the classic sense).

Writing creatively isn't about writing 'books' - anyone can sit down and write a moment, and you can too. And if you don't like looking at a blank page, just put down a sentence. Even a sentence from another story that inspires you.

My favourite writing advice to defeat a blank page because it always makes me laugh is:

Write the worst sentence you possibly can. Like, go out of your way and make it bad and silly.

'What a dumb brown rug.'

There, you no longer have a blank page! And you can definitely write a better sentence than that!

'He hated that rug, the colour reminded him of mud, and it didn't suit the room at all.'

'He rubbed his shoes on the brown rug, locking his hands together, twisting his fingers and hoping no one noticed him.'

But you know, 'what a dumb brown rug' is fun too. :D

And ultimately, you just have to try and have some fun with it <333

[not-poignant]

Do you have any advice on how to write more words on a regular basis? I find it difficult to write regularly but am fed up of only being able to produce sporadically in small amounts. Whenever I sit down to write it feels like I'm feeding gravel into a blender (if that even makes sense). I've tried getting advice from others and am told to just "stop trying to write then". But I can't because I want to write. Writing is all I ever think about. It feels like oxygen to me and when I'm not doing it (or thinking about doing it) I feel like I'm dying inside. But damn, I just wish it wasn't so difficult.

I really want to finish my stories and I know I could if I just wrote regularly but I don't know why that's so hard for me to do.

Hi anon!

I might have some thoughts on this because I certainly never used to write as much as I do now!

Firstly, I'll get this one out of the way now, if you have money to spend, join 4thewords - ignore this if you don't have it. But this gamifies writing in a genuinely fun way. Each monster you kill gives you loot, and fulfills quests that give you more loot, that opens more worlds and more options that give you clothing / house furniture and more. This was - given how much more productive it made me - a game changer re: writing more.

If you don't have money to spend, let's ignore that and go to other methods.

If you want to write more, the answer isn't to stop writing, it's to write more. The best time to hear 'it's time to stop writing' is if you're burnt out, or you hate everything about it. It sounds like you don't hate everything about it, you just wish it was a bit easier.

Decide what you want regularly to mean. I don't have a daily writing habit - I don't write every day! I'm too sick to, so i have a monthly minimum wordcount instead of a daily minimum wordcount and try and hit it by about week 2/3. Regularly for you might be once a day. Once every two days. Or it might be 'I have to write this many words a month.'

Find a way to track the words you're writing. The only way you can accurately see how much you're writing is by tracking those word-counts! Because you will have days where you feel like you wrote nothing and actually wrote a fair bit, and days where you feel like you wrote a fair bit and sadly wrote...hardly anything, lol. But it's also the best way to see yourself achieve more as you increase your wordcount.

Let's also talk about flow. Sometimes you don't get to feel 'flow' - that feeling of the words coming out easily onto the page, and you have to kind of struggle for every sentence. Are you okay with writing more knowing that this is actually normal for many writers, and the gravel blender feeling might not go away? It will over time get easier to write more words, but it might mean more of that gravel blender feeling. Flow is not predictable, and is often story and scene dependent. Chances are you will have more times feeling writing flow, I just want you to be honest with yourself in case it doesn't happen the way you wish.

From there, it's a combination of developing the discipline (which is like exercising a muscle - start small and grade upwards, don't aim too high at first, consistency is better than bursts), and finding the tricks that help you.

Look at how many words you think you could write a week. Let's lowball and say about 100 words a week. When you assess this for yourself, always undershoot, don't round up! 100 words is like... a long paragraph worth of words.

The following week, depending on if you want a daily / once every two days etc. habit, you'd aim to write 150 words that week. A paragraph and a half.

The week after you'd aim for 200 words.

You might find in week 2 it was easy to write 1000 words, great! But the week after you're still only aiming for 200 words. Don't base scaling up on the bursts / writing sprints - they'll lie to you. If you want consistent discipline, base your increases on the low days. If you reach a week where 200 words feels impossible, aim for 200 words the following week, if it's still impossible, go back to 150.

Now for you it might be... 500 words in week one, 600 in week two, 700 in week 3 etc. It might not seem like much, but you'd be surprised how quickly you start scaling through those numbers with practice.

Increasing writing output is a numbers game. And it's a patience game. And it's a 'being forgiving and gentle with yourself while also being a little bit stern with yourself' game.

Here's the thing no one tells you (except for NaNoWriMo every single year) re: increasing your wordcount.

Those words don't have to be good. They don't have to be good in fact it's better if they're not.

You're just getting used to the feeling of writing more. Not writing more good words, that will come naturally with time. You're getting used to sitting in front of a document for longer, thinking of more sentences you don't necessarily love (it's better if you don't! Write the bad ones!) And this is what I mean by it's a numbers game. Getting better at writing happens the more you do it anyway, so you can just focus on 40 bad sentences.

The trick to letting yourself write badly? That one is just...gritting your teeth and screaming through them while you go 'AHHHHH' in your head and let those suckers loose. Or whatever version of this that you have.

Because here's the thing, it's actually pretty easy to write 1000 words of inconsequential terrible story that no one's going to read. I mean 'pretty easy' - it's easier than writing the stories and characters you love the most and are so invested in, it's hard to write the sentences because you want to do justice to it all. That's fucking stressful, friend, and increasing writing output is just better if you're not always a) doing it on those stories or b) invested in writing those stories well in those early draft/s.

But once you're used to writing more words of stuff you don't love, it becomes easier to write less words of stuff you do, and chances are that will still be more than you're writing now. <3 Some of my stories are really easy to write, and some are way way harder. A chapter of The Ice Plague took as much time as three chapters of Underline the Black. So story is important here too. But also the point is basically that... you don't have to scale up your writing output with the stories you're most invested in, but need to be at a certain standard of writing. You can scale it up any time, with any kind of story - anyone can do this. Increasing your wordcount is a matter of like... easy methods that are less easy to implement irl because of the psychology around letting yourself write badly, and letting yourself validate the time / put the time aside to do that.

And here's the other thing - find a ritual that helps you. Whether it's brewing some tea before writing. Setting up a little space. Putting on some music or a noise generator specifically for writing. Listening to Lo-Fi Girl or Synthwave Boy. Whether it's writing a few words on paper first, or changing the font. Eventually you will have a Pavlovian response to the ritual, and every little bit helps.

As for the psychology, this is why you lowball. You make it as easy as possible. 'God writing 1000 words seems really hard oh but I only have to write a sentence today, cool, I can do that.'

The thing about lowballing is that on the good days, you will write way, way more than your goal. Which means a) you're done for the week if that happens if you want to be done and b) when you're back to feeling exhausted and like GGHGHGHGHHHHH about writing, you're still back at that initial lowball wordcount.

On my worst days, I lowball to like, 5 words, 10 words, and just write 5 / 10 / 15 etc. down on a piece of paper and cross them off. 30 words can be a sentence. 10 words can be a sentence. It feels nice to cross off numbers on a sheet of paper and see the increasing words. I can almost always get to 500 words with that method, and I think you could definitely get to 100.

Anyway the TL;DR

Consistency is way more important than quality

Don't be surprised if you don't find 'flow'

ALWAYS lowball when you're developing an increase in words

Figure out what 'regular' means to you (daily / weekly / etc.)

Make a ritual

Focus less on the stories you love most when developing this habit

If you have a bad week, just go back to the previous wordcount goal. And keep doing that, this won't be a linear process!!!

...It didn't need to be this long I'm so sorry anon idk why I'm like this.

I wish you all the best! I 100% disagree with the folks telling you 'just stop writing then.' I'm like nope, embrace the gravel blender, eventually you'll end up with smooth sand in an hourglass, I promise. <3 You just might have to add more gravel sometimes. ;)

[not-poignant]

Techniques for writing a bad drug trip:

We're going to be using excerpts from one of my own chapters here from my story Eversion to discuss the kind of writing techniques that will help make a bad drug trip more believable. In context, the character Connor has nonconsensually been given a synthetic made-up highball of drugs that gives him a horrible time, and this does not accurately reflect what bad drug trips look like across all drugs, for example sometimes throwing up on ayahuasca is a feature, and not a bug. What I'll be focusing on instead are the actual narrative techniques that indicate an affected mind and body vs. specific technques for specific drugs.

Beginning Stages:

Firstly, pre-bad-trip, it's useful to depict your character beforehand as being fully - or as close to fully lucid as possible. Have them realising things, actively thinking, describing their surroundings, and doing things in a kind of logical way - show them doing something mundane even, like walking into a room, or a cafe. In this case, Connor walks into a cafe, describes the cafe, makes some mental notes and then has a lucid conversation.

Next, most of the time any drug gives you physical symptoms even before the bad trip part, so describe those. In this case:

Seconds later Connor’s heart began to race

The needle slid free and Connor hardly felt it.

He stumbled over nothing as he passed the group of cyclists, staring at them as his heart beat harder and harder, as sweat broke out over his forehead.

At this point in the story, another character takes over, the person who gives him the highball picks up the conversation because Connor is overwhelmed by the physical sensations and doesn't feel like talking. He stops thinking about his environment accurately and starts to notice things while dropping others. His thoughts are already being affected.

This is when you can start using techniques like time skipping, forgetfulness, memory loss, or alternatively focusing on one thing a lot and a lot of other things a little.

Connor nodded, thinking that he needed to get away, that he needed to go somewhere. He reached for his phone, but it wasn’t there. Where was his phone? His vision slanted, time slipped away from him. He was beneath a tree, throwing up while Gabriel petted his shoulder and waited beside him.

Here we have a strong time skip - Connor goes from looking for his phone, in the next paragraph he's throwing up by a tree. This progression of events has no logic, except for the bad drug trip. Which means we now know Connor is being really affected by what's happening. These two paragraphs also show forgetfulness - Connor needs to get away / needs to go somewhere, but can't remember where. He looks for his phone, but has forgotten Gabriel took it from him. You don't even need the 'time slipped away from him' description, vision slanting or blurring tends to indicate to readers in situations like this that someone is being quite seriously affected by what's happening to them.

Middle Stages:

Then, he was walking, but couldn’t think past the scattered, rushing noises in his ears, looking like black jags across his vision.

He landed hard on his knees and stared down bewildered at the grass. He looked around, vision turning to brightness, cars zooming by too fast and too large, the sky distorted, the clouds inverting. He raised a hand to his head, but another hand – warm and gentle – rested at his temple, thumb gently stroking. Connor leaned into it, whimpering.

We're doing a lot of time skipping now, alongside mental symptoms.

The writing technique itself is changing. In one sentence we cover a lot of choppy subjects - vision turning bright, cars too fast, sky distorting, clouds inverting. It gives a sense of too much information happening at the same time - Connor's senses are overwhelmed.

This kind of choppy information can be delivered in short complete sentences, but I liked one run-on sentence here because it gives that sense of 'and then this and this and this and this and this' which is sometimes how it feels to have too much information coming in at once.

It's also making use of the senses. We have vision and hearing and touch all in the same paragraph. We also have 'too fast' 'too large' - things are too much. Not only that, but describing things as distorted indicates strongly that Connor's already hallucinating and hasn't realised yet.

At this point in your bad drug trip, you should not be using your regular writing style. If your character isn't thinking like normal, you might want to consider also not writing 'like normal' for that character.

(This is the same for when a character is having a flashback, is overwhelmed, or is experiencing something intense for any reason).

He took great, shuddering breaths and then pressed shaking fingers to his stomach. The knot of pain in his thigh was manifesting there as well.

Now, for the bad drug trip to truly be bad, we also have the physicality of the experience. The body comes along for the ride and it often feels like it's dying during a bad drug trip.

Huge shuddering breaths and shaking hands can indicate an overloaded nervous system, also someone who might be going into shock, or who is hyperventilating, or who is literally experiencing respiratory distress. We don't have to know what it is - one or all of them could be true! A person on a bad drug trip, unless they're a medical professional or experienced with bad drug trips, will not know or be assessing what is happening to them as it happens.

He flinched back when he saw black inching out from beneath his knees on the grass, dimly knew it as a hallucination before that awareness vanished and he pushed himself back and away.

Boop a hallucination. Connor was already hallucinating, but now he realises too. You don't need to include this. I was writing a smart, analytical character, and he does know he's having a bad drug trip, so he's allowed little moments of realisation. Your character might know more, or they might know less.

Intense / Peak Stages:

He could feel the way his body pulsed at discordant rhythms, too fast, too slow, never in sync throughout his body. The tips of his fingers were throbbing. His feet felt like stones. He looked at Gabriel’s perfect beard and thought of tearing his face off. It would be brief, brutal, bloody, but then he could just lie down.

Writing emotional distortion here is that Connor feels like behaving violently, which - to this degree - isn't normal for him. The drug overdose is making him vengeful. We know it's part of the drug overdose because the first part of the paragraph focuses on all his physical symptoms. The drug trip might make your character too terrified to function, it might make them aroused (i.e. fuck or die sex pollen scenarios), it might make them giddy. Have some emotional distortion going on on some level. Even if it's extreme anhedonia or apathy in the face of potentially dying.

The hospital was clearly giving him too many sedatives. He didn’t know how to tell them that he had no tolerance, he couldn’t take the dosages that his father was pushing for.

Now we hit full flashback. Connor now believes he's being overdosed with sedatives in the hospital, and is no longer in the present at all. He's not even 'I remember' - he's just there. Flashbacks won't happen with every bad drug trip but they are common to any bad drug trip that is hallucinatory in nature.

Connor stared up at the ceiling of his apartment, and his hands rested on the floor. His heart was beating far too fast, fluttering in his chest. He felt hazy. Every now and then he had to clench his hands into fists so tight that his knuckles ached. A compulsion. He couldn’t stop himself from doing it. He’d feel himself shake, and then he’d stop, and he’d stare upwards. He was lying on the floor.

Connor stared ahead. The corner of his mouth felt wet. He was drooling. His fingers and toes kept twitching against his will.

What Connor is describing now is seizure activity.

Connor isn't consciously clenching his hands into fists, his body is doing that. He calls it a compulsion, but it's not. Feeling your body shake and then stop and then shake again is - in this instance for Connor - active seizure activity.

Not all seizures cause full unconsciousness of the entire brain, for example. Connor doesn't know what's happening to him, but we can tell from the physical symptoms here - heart fast and fluttering, feeling hazy, physical movements completely beyond his control - that he's now in a danger zone.

If you want the bad drug trip to reach 'a normal person would be in an ambulance by now' - this is a good place to be. Focus on strange sensations of the heart, the pulse, shaking, the sensation of overheating or being too cold. If you want, look up the symptoms of shock, or tachycardia.

Aftermath of bad drug trip:

In the aftermath of a bad drug trip, be aware that it can take some time for a person's thoughts to return to normal. Don't write an instant return to normalcy once a person is physically stabilised. Often they show mood shifts that are quite profound. Even a person coming down from MDMA often experiences depression or flatness after a great night out with zero negative memories.

Normal aftermaths/ongoing side effects from bad drug trips include apathy, depression, suicidal ideation, anhedonia, flatness, lethargy, exhaustion (literally, the body physically went through several marathons), pain, and foggy, disconnected thinking (both because the brain went through something traumatic and the drugs take a while to work through the system). GI (gastrointestional disturbances) are common, from 'not going to the bathroom at all' to 'diarrhea' etc. Sometimes these after-effects last days, sometimes they last weeks, sometimes they even last months.

-

So! In summary helpful techniques for bad drug trips can include:

Shorter, choppier sentences to indicate overwhelm

Physical symptoms being 'experienced' - character often doesn't know what's happening except in special circumstances

A progression of physical symptoms.

Focus on all of the senses

Hallucinations and/or flashbacks (one usually happens with the other)

Unusual emotional affect or emotional distortion

Time skips / non-linear time jumps

Inability to think properly

Focusing on some things too much and other things not at all

Realising there is a progression, that must include a heavy aftermath (unless you're trying to be special, or unless it's one of the few drugs that can make you feel unusually euphoric afterwards and then there's still usually a crash after that lmao)

Different drugs create different, known effects, however, people will have different 'bad drug trips' depending on their circumstances.

I'm a little bit afraid this post is going to crash so I'm going to post it now! And for that anon who asked me what kind of writing I used - this is it! :D

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia!

Do you have any advice on how to hook readers? Like how so you decide on what sentence or subject or scene to start with at the beginning of a story that will encourage readers to continue?

I've told multiple different things by people, like to start in the middle of the action or with dialogue, but I'm still not sure and have no idea what I'm doing 😆

Hi anon,

Hilariously I have been told that my beginnings aren't always very good so you should really take this all with a grain of salt, lol. Go beneath the 'read more' if you want to just get some actual practiceable advice that you can start doing immediately to get better at beginnings.

Generally speaking, starting in the middle of the action scene or with dialogue is a distillation of something deeper and simpler:

Most authors start the story too early, because they need more exposition than the reader does, because they're learning the world and the characters and often have to learn it by writing them. This means that by the time they get to the good stuff, in many cases, they are 5-10 chapters in, and you can often safely drop all of those chapters, and other readers would have zero problems understanding the story, because the author has basically told themselves the story of those characters etc. and set up the major action.

This is especially true of authors who are learning to write, and still learning to feel out a story. And anon, you can't always shortcut this even if you do start in the middle of an action scene or in the middle of a dialogue scene. Sometimes you've just got to take it with grace when you hand a manuscript to a beta and they say 'cut the first 10 chapters, it's stronger without them.' I've had to do this to friends, and I've had this done re: my own writing.

The Ice Plague initially started - before I ever put it up - with Olphix going into the Aur forest and setting it on fire. That's a very strong, traumatising, major scene! No one can deny that's not starting with an action scene of great gravity. But it just wasn't the right place to start. I realised something was wrong and took a long hiatus, and then it came to me that it was more important narratively for the reader not to understand where Mosk's grief came from or what had happened to him.

The story had to start with Eran, and it had to start 9 months after that action scene, and if I had started The Ice Plague with my initial idea, I would have had to cut around 15 unnecessary chapters to get to the good bit, lol. (I do actually think The Ice Plague has a strong beginning). Mosk's history had to be mysterious and something that got revealed over time, in the same way that it was revealed over time. And I couldn't learn that until I started writing the story.

Sometimes, anon, you can know all the technical things about why some stories are stronger if they start in an action scene or with dialogue (some are weaker for it), but the only way you can really get through it is via...writing the story.

(Actual practical advice beneath the start plus a whole bunch of opening sentences).

Re: A hooky start, for myself, I want to start with an interesting first sentence. Something that interests me, lol, but something that I think would be interesting if someone else read it too.

I actually think the opening sentence of Stuck on the Puzzle is terrible, lmao. But I think the opening chapter is great. Anyway, here's a list of some of my opening sentences and you can decide or think about what you like about them, what you don't like, and if any of them prompts you to read further. Think about why, as well. What was it? What bit did you want to know more about:

Cateline described Grimglass as the ‘ass end of Corambis,’ and certainly while the heavy clouds hung over the sea like a pall, I could see what she meant.

Connor stared intently at the computer as it booted up, looked around the otherwise dark room, and then up to the security cameras he'd disabled. (This is not a very strong opening sentence, I think the whole paragraph is better lol).

Alex liked that they were both, in a way, failures.

In high school, Alex used to imagine forcing Sebastian to give him blowjobs. 

Red galaxies fired beneath Efnisien’s eyelids. (This one is also stronger in the whole paragraph imho).

The An-Fnwy estate was just as grand and imposing as Augus Each Uisge had imagined when he was an underfae teenager, living in a lake nearby.

When the Oak King proclaimed the new fae era, the ‘Season of Turning,’ we all assumed it would be a time of positive change, of growth. (Blah, the ORIGINAL first sentence was from the start of the next chapter).

Augus Each Uisge, predatory waterhorse, Unseelie fae, was bored.

Jack shifted uncomfortably in his ceremonial soldier’s uniform.

The magic around Eran’s wrist throbbed, the beetle-black ink of the months-old tattoo sinking deeper into his flesh.

Gwyn stood, embarrassed, in his wrestling gear.

Efnisien had forty four books in his plain grey melamine bookshelf.

The sun was bright red on the horizon, looking more like a bomb, the smell of smoke acrid in the back of Faber’s nose.

‘I hear they want to promote you to nursery manager,’ a voice said smoothly. ‘What a coup indeed.’

Almost eight months had passed, the next time Gwyn saw Augus.

-

Generally speaking I like to establish mood quickly, particularly embarrassment, discomfort, boredom, or the kind of emotion that you want to see resolved. These folks all have big and small problems they need fixing, and with very few exceptions, I want people to know that immediately, so that they'll...ideally stick around and watch the problems get fixed (or get worse lol). I also start strongly with character, rather than just...detached setting description.

That works for me, it might be different for you! Go find all your favourite books and read their opening sentences and paragraphs, do some research anon. Stop listening to friends (and ChatGPT written articles on how to write because there's so many now x.x) who say 'start in dialogue' or 'start in action' and do the research that teaches you why people say stuff like this and why it's also not always right. Don't even listen to me - I don't always write strong beginnings and I'm very open about that - go get 10 books, 20 books, 50 books, and write down their first sentences or paragraphs in a word document or in Google Docs and study them.

Which ones do you love? Which do you find boring? Which do you remember thinking 'ehhh maybe it gets better.' Notice and actively look for the things that hook you and the things that don't. How many start with dialogue? Or action? How many start with emotion, or description? How many are starting with setting, character, something else?

Try practicing writing sentences like this, or imagining openings like this for your own works. Learn by doing. How would you change the openings by genre? How would you change the voice by character? Alex's opening sentences are very strongly in his voice. Meanwhile Mosk's voice in Smoke in Autumn is non-existent, we literally start with Augus' dialogue dominating and intruding upon his mind and thoughts.

And then realise sometimes you still have to write 10 chapters that you might need to cut (hey bonus content that readers will want to devour one day! Make sure you save it :D ), to find the right place to start your story. It sucks, but it happens. I've been through this with Mallory & Mount and only now after like over a year have I figured out exactly where I have to start that damned story, and I finally have my opening sentence, which is:

The guard looked at Lewis Mount like the murderer he was.

And I love that opening sentence :D I'm biased, but I think it's very hooky.

Writing beginnings and endings is a craft, but you'll learn with practice! And you'll learn a lot via research. Thankfully, you probably like reading, which means you can start researching literally right now.

The best way to learn what you're doing is to learn from the people who have already done it successfully. This is sometimes famous writers, but just as often it's looking at what your favourite writers are doing. Chances are you maybe want to write a little bit like them, so go study their opening sentences! Maybe they don't have strengths in that, but I bet some of them do.

And from there you can study opening paragraphs, opening chapters. You can feel out the ones you wanted to skip, the ones you'd read again and again, the ones you love, the ones you didn't feel anything over. :D

Anyway I think this is probably a pretty good place to start! The folks giving you advice have the right idea, it's just good to understand why it's the right idea. The best way to get to that is to just...research openings of books for yourself and decide what you like, what you'd like to write like, and then trying it out for yourself :D

[not-poignant]

random genuine question. how do you write a book? I've written multiple fanfics successfully and want to be a full time author nothing too crazy but just enough to make a good living. But I'm finding myself stuck when it comes to executing my original ideas. I plan them out well but when it comes to the acts/chapters and actually writing I can't seem to pull the trigger. I understand it takes time and I may just be overthinking but still I'm worried I won't be able to execute.

Hi anon,

You are probably better off asking someone who writes books for a living, because I definitely don't, and when I did publish two novels, they have never done as well as my serials (and writing a serial is very different - for me at least - to writing a book). Like, they did moderately well, but I consider myself a professional serial writer and not a novelist, and those two things are 100% not the same thing. (Which is also maybe where you're struggling.

Writing fanfics successfully can often have zero bearing on whether you can (or want to) write a novel. Writing one is not writing the other! The processes are totally different, unless you were just writing novels and splitting them up into serial chapters and then, well, you wouldn't be here asking this question sdalkfjad)

There are some great novel-writing books out there, and many can be requested through libraries, and many of their authors have blogs or similar where they teach many of their techniques online. There are so many different ways of structuring a novel (and it can change depending on your genre, and I don't know what your genre is either!) I can't recommend any personally, because I don't read them, because I don't really write novels.

When it comes to actually sitting down and actually writing anything of length though, it's sometimes down to asking yourself a few things:

What feelings are happening in you that hold you back? Are you afraid it won't be good? (In which case there's no way but through, anon, you have to write some bad writing in order to get to the good writing, it's a mandatory part of the practice - a garden needs shit/manure in order to grow, lol).

Are you bored because you planned it all out? (In which case you may need to look into writing novels without plotting them first).

Are you more excited for future chapters instead of present chapters? (Write out of order! And make the present chapters shorter).

Are you more interested in fanfiction's regular feedback from readers? (In which case consider creating a reader group for your original writing, or finding a really good beta who can give you that feedback). (I can't get dopamine from writing novels, so I don't write them, I just find the process boring in a way that's pretty intolerable to me).

Is the novel too huge of a road into meeting your characters and setting/s in prose? (Consider writing small oneshots for your characters and world first. Consider writing side characters in the world in a 2-3k fic. Treat it like responding to a fanfiction challenge. It can often make access to the world a little easier).

Is something about the story actually broken? Do you need to go back to the drawing board re: the strengths of the characters?

Learn how to fall in love with your characters the way you've fallen in love with fanfic characters. If they're not strong enough to earn that 'love'/'obsession' - make them stronger. (Although, frankly, sometimes you can only learn that love by writing them. Think of it this way: When you start writing fanfiction, you've already invested hours of time into learning the characters and their depth. You need to invest at least the same amount into your own characters and their stories before you might stumble across that same love).

Outside of that you can apply any number of techniques to novel writing, but ultimately, a lot of it is sitting down and just writing (sometimes pretty terribly) and learning how to overcome writer's block and understanding why it's happening for you.

For me, I learned that the cons of writing novels just didn't outweigh the pros. The lack of dopamine feedback re: readers doesn't play well with my unmedicated ADHD brain, which means writing to no feedback at all tends to leave me extremely unmotivated. And fitting the novel formula re: story lengths ultimately just didn't work with me either, most of my long stories naturally hit or exceed the 250k mark, which is fine for serials, but not fine for most novels outside of epic fantasy or hard science fiction.

So I would also recommend sitting down and asking yourself what did fanfiction give you that made you able to write it? And what do you need novel writing to give you, to make you able to write it? Likewise, ask yourself - do you want to write original novels? Or original serials? There's a good market for both now, and novels =/= serials. Like, they are naturally written in different ways!

Do you think you would struggle to write an original serial the same way that you're struggling with novels? All of these things are important to ask yourself.

But ultimately, just... I hate to say it, but sometimes you have to force yourself through the struggle, and write stuff while groaning because you know it's bad, to get to the other side. It's like learning any new skill - and fanfiction writing does not naturally lend itself to writing novels with everyone! You are learning a brand new skill!! Just because I know how to draw with pencils doesn't mean I know how to paint with watercolours, and I may be even more intimidated to learn watercolours because I know now how long it took to get the hang of fanfiction. Sometimes you just have to actually sit yourself down and be like 'okay I have to get real good at being real bad at something for a little while, even if I hate it.'

Chances are it won't be as bad as you think anyway, and then even if it is, well that's a normal part of writing a novel. That's why the first draft is the first draft, and not the final product. :)

[not-poignant]

I wrote something in response to someone who called their writing cringe, and said that they hated their early fanfiction writing and that it's the kind of thing you wouldn't think about at night because it was so horrible. The language they used was really self-destructive, but they followed it up with 'writing used to bring me joy, how do I get back to that?'

I was shocked that they didn't see the connection between calling your writing cringe, and then not knowing why you can't write anymore.

So anyway, I wrote a response catered to them, but Glen said that he would have appreciated hearing it as a writer when he was younger, and suggested I post the response here too.

So this is for all the writers who think their writing is cringe.

*

It could just be me, but I suggest compassionately unpacking the shame you have around the fanfiction you wrote in the past. 

What's wrong with thinking about something that brought you so much joy? It's probably hard to break that door down and access it again if the first thing you do is call it 'cringe' and say you make an effort to no longer think about it anymore or you 'won't sleep at night.' 

Calling things cringe, or being ashamed of them, is the enemy of creativity. 

Hating all your old writing, when writing it was what brought you joy, kind of destroys all the things that you want to bring you joy in the first place. Chances are you didn't feel as ashamed about it back then, and that's why you could write it. If you want to get past the anxiety, a good step might be owning what you did and really work on at the very least changing your language: 'I'm proud of doing something that caused me joy. I might not enjoy reading it anymore, because that old writing helped me grow into a better writer, but it made me so happy! I want to think about that time more so I can remember being that happy and free again.'

You don't need to give us big ugly disclaimers about how awful everything was, you can embrace it, there's plenty of people still writing fanfic right here, for example, I'm one of them. And no way in hell will I ever think of anything I've written as cringe, even if I'm a better writer now. It's just what I did when I was a less good writer! It has absolutely no bearing on my value or worth as a person, and learning a skill is not something to be ashamed of. I still loved it at the time, and still got a lot out of it. 

Even if you still feel the shame - we all still do sometimes - it's important to...at least give some care to yourself. It's like you're attacking something vulnerable that gave you happiness, and all you have in exchange is weapons and cruelty. It's hard to unlearn being abusive or mean or neglectful to ourselves and the vulnerable parts of ourselves, but even just starting with not putting everything you did down in the past before saying 'it used to bring me joy' (that's amazing!) is a huge step. 

It's way easier to write when you're not kind of getting in your own way with the language and disclaimers and caveats you're using. 

I'm not saying it's easy to stop hating your writing because of course it's not, but you 100% didn't used to feel this way to the point that you couldn't write at all, and it at least partly is connected to how you talk (and think) about your writing now. The thinking part will take time, but the talking part you can start changing now if you want.

I would say re: the impostor syndrome, it's worth noting that firstly - no one can write the stories you can write, except for you. And the only way you can get better at them, is by continuing to write them, and putting them out there. You don't have to share everything, and you can orphan fics or add them to Anonymous on AO3 to make sure they're not connected to your username. Give yourself permission to write badly. Give yourself permission to write stories you won't love later, if they might bring you some enjoyment now.

Writing in the past let you connect with community and make friends - there's nothing shameful or cringe about that. It gave you happiness and joy. It doesn't do it anymore in the same way, that's normal, it means *you've grown as a writer* and you could only have grown if you wrote those stories to begin with. Even that's amazing. 

Feel free to ignore all of this of course, I just know if I talked to myself that way, and about my writing that way, I would never want to write ever again. And it's one thing to have a bad day (we all do) but it's another thing to just be cruel to the self re: writing while expecting that self to provide you with joy via writing. Nothing about your writing is cringe. It's a skill you're learning, that you once had fun with, maybe give yourself permission to just let it be a skill you're continuing to learn, not something cringe, not something to be ashamed of.

[not-poignant]

Have you ever received any helpful writing advice? If so, what is the best writing advice you've gotten so far?

Hi anon!

I've never really looked for writing advice (I actually avoid a lot of 'how to write' books and similar and prefer to get my advice from artists and screenwriters etc.)

I'd say probably the most useful advice for me so far has been something along the lines of: 'Any writer that gives advice that starts with 'all writers should/shouldn't' is saying something you can safely ignore if it doesn't apply to you or it doesn't feel right.' There are no universally applied rules. Adverbs aren't always bad. Past tense isn't always evil. And no, you don't have to keep a daily wordcount (and for some people it's only unhealthy to even try).

The other piece advice that's been useful to me, which isn't writing advice but advice to anyone who wants to do a creative pursuit, is that it's generally foolish to wait for inspiration to strike. Waiting for inspiration before creating is the hobbyist's indulgence (and a nice one, there's nothing wrong with doing something purely for fun and fun only), but if you're doing it as a job, discipline is an important skill to cultivate, and discipline + inspiration don't always go hand in hand. (I.e. sometimes you'll be writing when you really don't want to, don't feel it, and aren't 'immersed' in it. That's normal).

There are writers who can do a writing job and feel inspired every day and this doesn't apply to them. But for me personally, I had to learn discipline.

But honestly the first piece of advice matters most to me, because a lot of proscriptive writer's rules don't specifically apply to what I'm doing (for example, scriptwriting television drama structure rules apply far more accurately to my serials than novel writing structures, so looking for writing advice from novelists is going to fall down for a lot of serial stuff, and vice versa). I became a better writer when I threw out a lot of what I learned at university (I did creative writing there), and when I stopped reading books on 'how to write' and threw Stephen King's writing book into the bin. (It was ableist as fuck - most writing advice isn't designed for disabled people dealing with fatigue or pain issues and it shows.)

So basically my favourite piece of advice is 'if someone gives you a rule like it applies to all writers, just remember they're only writing what works for them, and if you're not them, it's fine to ignore it.'

OH WAIT, I forgot my favourite piece of advice ever (I don't have a favourite anything anon, sorry you're finding this out the hard way, my neurodivergence simply doesn't allow for it):

You need to write some shit if you want the flowers to grow.

I.e. You have to write some bad stuff, some objectively terrible shit, because every garden needs fertiliser and you know what fertiliser is? It's generally just poop, manure, shit, it stinks, it doesn't seem like it's going to create anything! But, hands down, that is how you get the best garden.

You want beautiful mesmerising coordinated garden-level immersive writing where people go (metaphorically) 'wow, what an amazing garden holy shit I could never'?

Get ready to write some shit first, lol. And a lot of it. And because gardens need repeat applications, it never ends asdlkfjsafdsa I have so much affection for this advice, because it recontextualises all of my creative pursuits. It's the same with art, with comics, with playing piano, with doing cross-stitch. You want to do it well? Get ready to put some shit on that garden bed lol. And if you stop because you don't like the feel of shit on your fingers, look at other people's (metaphorical) gardens and remind yourself that they needed to a lot of shit to get there too.

It's crude, but it cuts through so much of the jargon and gets down to the truth of the matter: You can't get good at something unless you're prepared to put in the time to be bad at it first. (Or, philosophically, even the bad stuff is crucial, and therefore great, because it is essential to your growth and your process).

(Feel free to ignore, this is just stuff that works for me - as I said, any writing advice that someone gives is just advice that works for them, and means nothing else to anyone it has no meaning for).

[not-poignant]

pia I just finished the ice plague how are you so good at writing satisfying endings???????????????

I'm so glad you enjoyed the ending! :D :D

Re: Satisfying endings, I don't really know. But I know for myself, I just think:

As someone who loves fandom and fandom fix-its, I like to write the kind of endings where someone doesn't think at the end 'shit I have to fix this in fanfiction.' I mean I don't mind if people do that, but I mostly want people to feel happy or very very hopeful. I guess I like to write 'fanfiction style' happy endings, which are more transparently happy, and more.../thinks/ I guess overt? There's been some exceptions which I'd say are more hopeful (like Stuck on the Puzzle), but I think I still write more obviously happy endings than many actually published fantasy stories etc. of similar length.

I write long happy endings. It's either a few increasingly happy chapters in a row (Into Shadows We Fall, Falling Falling Stars) or one really long chapter (The Ice Plague). No skimping on the happiness! I strongly feel that if I put people through that much pain and angst and whump, why should I skimp on the fluff and cheese and happiness? So I really try not to do that.

I try and leave the characters in psychologically healthier places than where we found them, which I think (ideally) gives most readers the sense that even when problems come up in the future, characters will be able to solve what's happening far more healthily than they did in the past. Which I think feels more satisfying than if a couple is arguing right up to the last chapter and we have no real belief that they can healthily get through any situation at all. Romance stories that do this feel really weird to me. I've read romances where like, a couple is toxic, toxic, toxic and then in the last chapter they get married and I'm like oh no babes, you're getting a divorce in five seconds dsalkfjsa - so even though my characters often still have Stuff (TM) to deal with, ideally, readers feel like these characters have got more support, and learned more communication tools to deal with their issues. :)

And I think that's how I manage it!

I love the word satisfying, that's really what I'm going for. And it makes me so so happy that this came across in The Ice Plague, especially because chapter 39 is absolutely horrendous in what it does to all of the characters. I think that's the biggest risk I've ever taken right at the end of a story - to put some of the worst things in right at the end. Normally I have a slower wind-down, because I'd prefer an anticlimatic denouement that feels gentle and satisfying, than something like huge and bombastic where you doubt everyone's doing okay after that trauma lol.

But I think it worked with The Ice Plague because I could skip so much time in the epilogue and because I could make that such a long chapter that people could really settle into it like they might a novella.

Tbh it goes against some of the writing techniques I was taught in university to write this way. To like, never give readers exactly what they want (and I definitely can't give everyone what they want), and to kind of...always be subtle or hint at things or give glimpses into happiness or whatever. This idea that happiness is sparse and angst is huge but not overwrought etc. idk... I don't really vibe with a lot of that kind of literature. Learning that I could write like...'literature' made me realise that personally I prefer enjoying fanfiction and tropes and big emotions, and that I enjoy writing them too.

So while my writing isn't very 'university level' - I like to think it's a bit more emotionally satisfying, even if it doesn't make you think or philosophise as much, lol. <3333

[not-poignant]

New-author-Anon here. Thank you so much, Pia. It just... It's so easy to see the "small" wordcount and think "oh, this is nothing." I'm pretty good at churning words out normally, but on top of this, I have a legal job that takes up 25-30 hours a week, and I teach Japanese 3 hours a week. I kept telling myself that it's not too much. The salary is good for my area (about 19k AUD a year), and that's the probationary one. Thank you. You're probably right it's burnout. Ill try to adjust my workload

It's so easy to see the "small" wordcount and think "oh, this is nothing."

Honestly I agree! I saw the 1,600-1,900 words and thought 'oh that's not too bad' and then I saw 'twice a week' and was like '....hang on' and then added up the numbers on my calculator and did a tiny little scream in my head about what you'd committed yourself to.

I'm just a little worried about you anon! You're obviously a superstar with everything you do, and I'm really really glad you're getting paid a decent amount for your area! I want this to be a good fit for what you're doing because you like the content and you like the work. But man, non-fiction takes a toll. It's harder to write than fiction, for the most part, because it requires more research every single time. You don't get to 'settle down' into characters, and those hours of research and editing aren't invisible.

One thing you can maybe consider doing while you figure this all out, is sit down and - if you aren't doing this already - work out the hours you spend realistically on the writing job. Not just the writing itself, but the editing, the researching, and also thinking about what to write re: the topic itself. It's sometimes easy to forget that these are also the hours of your new job, and they are all equally important.

Another thing you could do if you're very committed to keeping this job, or can't restructure easily, is seeing if you can try and get ahead on your schedule, so that you feel less like you're constantly at the mercy of your deadlines - I don't know if it's possible, but if you can even get a week ahead sometimes, it can help remove some of that dread. ADHD makes this very hard, and so this may not be possible with what you're already doing, so don't stress if you can't. It's okay.

Your feeling of helplessness may be your body or mind trying to communicate to you that you're just overwhelmed right now. And if it is writer's block - there will absolutely be different techniques that you can use to help you.

And 100% you need to look at scheduling some rest. One of my hardest earned skills personally is the ability to go - after staring at a chapter and hating myself for not writing anything - is 'Right! I'm not going to write for the next four hours! I'm clearly tired! I'm going to go lie down, and get some rest. Or I'm going to do something fun or relaxing. Or I'm going to go for a walk. But the thing I'm 100% not going to do is stare at this document. I'll come back later.' The hardest part of this skill is catching it before 3 hours have gone by, lmao. Sometimes I'll just do the 'endless scroll' and distract myself and feel guilty and stressed, and I have to actually just be like 'walk away and go do something else.' I may still worry about it, but at least I gave my brain a TV show, or a movie I love, or a book, or I ate something tasty, or I drank some water.

The fact is, people tend to write better when they're not exhausted all the time. I have to take days off because of chronic illness anyway, but taking actual rest time is vital to you actually being able to feel inspired and motivated enough to write. You obviously have discipline! And reaching out for help is great too. Give yourself some mercy and kindness in amongst feeling like you're not getting anything done, you're getting a lot done, and are maybe now needing to re-evaluate a little. I really hope it works out though, and it sounds like you're working damn hard to achieve it. I do wish you all the best, seriously.

(Oh, and random tip that isn't in my other writer's block links - if you can, consider hooking up with some Twitch stream 'write ins' or other writing groups. Sometimes the gentle pressure of other people who 'get it' all kind of figuring it out at the same time can actually help? I'm not one of those writers who benefits from this, but I know plenty who are, and it might end up being your thing too!)

[not-poignant]

Hi! Sorry if you have been asked this before, but I wanted to know if Patreon is very useful for posting serialized writing (the way you use it)? And, is there any chance you have tips or could point me to somewhere that does, on how exactly to use Patreon for this? Thank you!

Hi anon,

Okay, so first I want to break some stuff down, I know you've said 'the way I use it' but no one is stupid enough to do Patreon the way I use it, so I want to explain the difference:

I actually don't post my serialised fiction on Patreon! It's all on AO3. So I may not be the right person to ask, because I don't actually like using Patreon to host serials (I like Patreon for some things, but I don't actually find it super user-friendly for commenting, and I've noticed that most of my readers prefer to comment on AO3, here, or on Twitter and other sites before they use Patreon - even when they're subscribed).

You might want to check out Facebook groups like Subscriptions for Authors, which has a lot more folks who are actually hosting their serials on Patreon!

As for why I'm not the best person to ask about this: It's not smart to host original fiction on AO3 while running a Patreon, because advertising Patreon or Ko-Fi on AO3 is against its Terms of Service/TOS for very good reasons, which means I can never advertise my Patreon directly to my audience. It's the biggest business no-no of all time.

The second business no-no that I do all of all time is that I put my serials up for free, so no one actually has to pay for them at all!

Serial authors do not use Patreon like I do. I ended up doing it this way for a big combination of reasons (which I've talked about before), but I would never recommend it to anyone else who wants to make money. People tend to like to pay things that they can't get for free already, and audiences grow when you can advertise to them. These are two things I'm not doing. I can't point you to anyone else who is doing this, because idk anyone with as little business sense as me.

Now, outside of that, authors can be very successful using Patreon for serials! Serial writing is actually huge on Patreon. But I am the wrong person to ask about that because a) I am not very successful by serial author standards (esp serial authors who write as much as I do) and b) those folks are usually not hosting on AO3, and are paywalling all of their works except for a few: in other words, people are paying for the privilege of reading something they'd have no way of accessing otherwise. Which is the same with novels and books.

I'm sorry anon, if you want to be a successful serial author, then literally don't listen to me, I'm actually probably the worst person to ask for re: advice. It's a miracle I'm doing as well as I am, but it's not a business strategy, and I couldn't in all good conscience recommend this path to anyone else. Please check out some of the Facebook groups instead. There are authors out there making 6 figure salaries off Patreon serials and I am not one of them.

[not-poignant]

[1/3] Hi Pia, I wanted to ask u something cuz Im getting shit for an OC Im writing & idk what to do. When I read ur Fae Tales I was v confused by Gwyn&Augus' relationship as I felt like Gwyn hurt more than felt better during their scenes. W time tho I kinda understood that in order for Gwyn to overcome part of his trauma, Augus was having him deal with it by doing stuff that Gwyn hates. Im trying to deal with a similar topic here, but Ive been told that my dom OC is abusive & that its disgusting

[2/3] of me to think abt it as something acceptable. My OC has been abused since he was a kid, both physically & emotionally and he’s now at a poit of his arc where hes desperate to feel better and not disgusted w himself. So he asked his dom to help him break (and he’s v resistent, since he bottled up everything since he was young). Im not writing that the dom enjoys it in any way, but I still get shit like “youre sick, you cant do this, you know nothing abt ptsd”. // [3/3] I really feel bad for this, since I dont wanna pass the message that I condemn abuse in any way. I dont understand whether this is fandom purity or me not doing my research right and fucking up. Also bcos it’s a one-time thing, it’s not something that will go on and continue, since I myself am not comfortable with writing abuse. Idk what to do, can u help me?             

***

It is really tough for me to give advice on something I haven’t read. I mean I kind of…can’t? I can only really give like, very very general advice, to you as a writer, and I’m not sure how helpful it will be.

Like, maybe you are misrepresenting PTSD. Maybe it is coming across a certain way. I can’t tell you whether that’s happening or not. I don’t know if you’re getting any positive comments, or any positive feedback, and I don’t know what fandom you’re in to say whether it’s definitely purity wank (like Dragon Age, where it often is, but still doesn’t mean that some people don’t make good critiques of things).

However, I will say this:

An author has the right to write the scene you’re describing, and even misrepresent PTSD or BDSM or whatever is happening, and it still has a right to exist in the world. That doesn’t mean it will be free from criticism, and if you write controversial or ‘dark’ content, it likely won’t be free from criticism. Them’s the breaks.

You have the right to delete comments, ignore them, or choose to take them on board. And probably some other choices (like taking some of it on board, adding an extra warning in your story like ‘this isn’t a representation of a healthy relationship’ or whatever, and then deleting the comments or ignoring them).

You’re clearly being bullied, and getting personal hate. As soon as someone takes the feedback from ‘this is unhealthy and squicky’ to ‘you’re sick’ - they are erroneously assuming that you are the same as your writing, and that’s not okay. It’s not accurate, not correct, and usually indicates the comment itself is only really fit for the trash. It strongly points towards purity wank bullshit. You don’t have to honour attacks on your personal character, and I strongly believe that folks shouldn’t bother engaging with people who attack their personal character in fic feedback.

I get comments like this on my work sometimes. I delete them. On the very rare occasion I might respond, when I think it’s more valuable for a reader to see a sound, reasoned, non-defensive response that calmly explains what I’m doing in a way that shows both sides of the situation. That’s rare. I just delete them. Once or twice those people have chased me into my inbox, where I block them.

I can’t comment on your story, the quality of your story, or whether you’re achieving what you set out to achieve, or if it’s being done well. I haven’t read it, I can’t do that. The only thing I’d say is make sure that your tags are comprehensive, and if you don’t have one already, maybe consider a warning in your author’s note at the beginning that you’re not trying to write a realistic/healthy relationship and anyone expecting that should exit stage right (or something similar).

I warn for the same with Gwyn and Augus. Honestly you’d think people would know this, being in the fiction tags, but they don’t. Especially people who toe the purity wank line.

I can say that you - as a human being - do not deserve to be personally attacked for what you’re writing, and the delete button is within your reach re: these people’s feedback (if it’s on AO3 anyway). You need to make sure you can look after yourself, and also that you don’t cave to people who cast aspersions on your character. Maybe there are flaws in your fic, all you can do is change that in the future or choose to edit now, if you decide to do neither because you’re not comfortable with abuse, then that’s that. You still have the right to protect yourself from people who are hounding you, and blocking folks who don’t understand one of the most fundamental laws of fanfiction - The First Law of Fandom: ‘Don’t like? Don’t read.’

And maybe take some time to remember what you like about writing fic. Go find some positive comments you’ve had, or read some stories you’re proud of. I’m not sure if any of this stuff helps, because it always hurts a lot to get these kinds of comments, but haters will always exist in the world, and sometimes the most important thing is to just let them know that you won’t tolerate them around the things that you’re creating out of love, for free.

[not-poignant]

Hello Pia! Would it be possible to share/take a photo of any of your worldbuilding notes (perhaps Golden Age's)? I am recently trying to do my worldbuilding notes and I am very curious how does your look. If that is OK with you ofc! Thanks a lot. :)

Replying to this is cursed (I've tried twice THREE TIMES and uploading pictures just consistently breaks the ask). And now I'm having to literally transcribe my previous answer word for word because it will only show my previous answer indented which is driving me up the wall lmao.

OKAY. Tl;dr is that no, I don't make notes 95% of the time, and when I do have them, I forget to use them.

I didn't make preliminary notes for The Golden Age that Never Was. It was a fic I winged. Winging means no notes. The only page I have was made right at the end, after chapter 50, when I was figuring out where all the 'closure' scenes would go, so that I didn't forget any of the cast.

I haven't updated my Fae Tales worldbuilding notes since 2017 overall. I do have some Ice Plague notes but mostly I just rely on my chapter plan and searching through the story.

If I need to remember something, I search through the story to find it. My worldbuilding tends to come in the form of writing tiny phone notes (usually just one or two sentences that only make sense to me), and then I think about the world, and then I write the world. A huge amount of it is just in my head. There are exceptions, but I can't show you screenshots without breaking the ask! *shakes fist at Tumblr.*

My ADHD just personally makes this whole note thing kind of not workable for me. The process of making elaborate notes and having to constantly refer back to them ruins the process of writing for me. Imho, writing notes is not writing the story, and all I generally want to do once I have an idea is write the fic.

Not all writer's are the same! I'm not the person you need for this one, anon. You need to find someone else who is actually known for using notes a lot in their writing process. I have no consistent pattern for taking notes, I prefer not to make them, and I frequently forget to refer to the files when I have them.

If I have the energy later I'll try and make a separate post with note screenshots etc. but spending like an hour on this today has been a little demoralising (it's not your fault anon, it's that Tumblr broke every time I tried to upload a pic, and destroyed each answer again and again). And also I just...don't have a system for note-taking and mostly what people will see is how chaotic I am 'behind the scenes' lmao.

[not-poignant]

PART1:Hey Pia! I'm an admirer of your writing and you as a writer and I'm kind of in a little pickle. When I read your stories (longtime lurker but I give every kudo that I can!) your characters feel so real and when you answer questions about them it feels less like a thing you talk about and more like you just k n o w how they would react/feel if x happens. A few years back I had that feeling for a few original charackters of mine too. I didn't need to ponder hours or days to figure out what they will do or how they feel about x, I just knew. I felt like an invisible spectator who just needs to watch and write down what happens.

Now? That feeling is gone. I still have ideas for stories or characters and I want to write, but that inherent feeling to just k n o w is missing which leads to not writing at all or writing like 2k, but everything just reads and feels flat. Like going through the motions.

I miss the i-just-know- connection to my characters.

Do you have any advice how I could get that connection back or how I could foster it for my characters/story ideas?

*

Tbh, you don't need to have that knowing to actually be able to write characters? It can make it more fun, but I haven't always had it. I didn't always have it - for example - with Thomas and Aodhan while writing The Gentle Wolf. Sometimes the decisions I made were based purely on logic and understanding of human behaviour, and the groundwork I'd done at the beginning of the story to create these characters in the first place.

And honestly, sometimes knowing lets you down, because sometimes it's wrong. Being in that position can lead to being very biased on a character's behalf, which can be fine sometimes - especially in Id fics! But is less great in like, realistic fiction or in general. That kind of immersion has pros and cons, just like not having that immersion has pros and cons.

So the main thing is you don't need that immersion to still write great characters and a solid story. It just might take time to learn essentially a new skill in characterisation that you haven't gotten used to using before (which is probably why it reads as flat, not because the non-immersion style is flawed or wrong, but because you're not used to employing it as a skill and might need more practice with it - it reminds me of Lyra with the alethiometer in His Dark Materials - at first she can just instinctively read the alethiometer to predict the future, and then she loses the ability, and has to learn another way of doing it - and there's a kind of grief there - but she learns the other way also has its own value too).

(I feel like Philip Pullman used that analogy to demonstrate that sometimes we can access a skill that is effortless and easy, and if we lose that, we get discouraged and don't want to learn it a new way - but it's worth learning a new way, even if there's grief there too).

The other thing is to...I guess think of the kind of characters you do experience immersion with these days. What stories are you reading where you feel more connected to the characters than normal? Why don't you write those kinds of characters, or even fanfiction of those characters? Is there a disconnect between the characters you're immersing with most vs. the characters you're trying to write?

If you're not feeling connections like that to any character right now, I don't know if you can 'force' immersion. It's usually a sign of burn out or exhaustion or even depression when it's to the point where you're not even connecting/immersing with fictional characters for the sake of entertainment or leisure.

And then honestly I'd recommend rest or...well, whatever you employ to look after yourself when you're Going Through It.

*

Also, sometimes pushing through that flatness can get you through to the other side. I don't think you should force yourself or anything... I mean I don't know you or your position exactly, but I know for myself, I can be tired and start writing and then find the thread of it after a few days or weeks. I'm not always sitting there in fun immersion land, basically.

I've written entire stories where I didn't have the benefit of in-character immersion while writing (I think Eversion comes immediately to mind, I didn't have that for huge chunks of the story - and some of The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle comes to mind). Sometimes I gained aspects of that immersion after writing a 10,000 word chapter, which helped me re: comment responses, but that doesn't mean I had that feeling or experience during writing, y'know?

Sometimes you only really get to know your characters after 50k of writing them. Which is infuriating. Sometimes you never once experience immersion with them. Tons of successful writers have never experienced it once and wouldn't trust it even if they did, y'know? I don't always trust it myself, I often stop making hard decisions for characters when I go into that zone, so I've also had to learn the skill of detaching myself from that immersion at times too. That's especially true for Augus. Immersion in his character makes me write him badly. I need to step back for him, and he often gets the most brutal overhauling/editing in chapters afterwards, which is a sign of how that style of character connection can be a con, not a pro.

Basically tl;dr there's lots of ways of writing characters and feeling flat on this new technique doesn't mean it's a bad technique. Think about the characters in stories that make you feel immersed and connected to them - ask yourself if those are the characters you're writing, and if that's a possible direction to head. Good luck, anon!

[not-poignant]

You listed all this before but I cant find it and was wondering if you have enough spoons to share again: You kind of walked through your writing process before. I'm starting to write and I have some ideas but they are a cluster fuck and was wondering about your process of world building and how you format your story lines to make sure its heading where you want it to be heading.

Thanks for taking the time!

Heyyy, I found the post that refers to this!

It's here and it looks at your story acts, and story arcs. Or your acts 1/2/3 (or however many acts, different authors sometimes use a different number) and your A/B/C arcs.

The reality is, I don't plan a lot of my stories, so there's only a limited number of stories where I've done any of the things you refer to. So probably The Ice Plague is the best bet, on that.

Normally I get an idea of what I want to happen in my acts, and I won't start a story until I have a fairly clear idea of how at least the first major story ends. I don't like starting stories without knowing the ending, and if that's how other folks like yourself do it, I can't help you, because it's pretty foundational to how I do things.

Once I know like, the ending and the major beats (the major beats being the things / scenes that inspired me to write the whole story in the first place), and once I know my characters, I will generally start to organise everything into chronological acts, with A/B/C storylines, focusing on my character's motivations (all of the characters, not just my main characters - Vane's character motivations, in The Court of Five Thrones for example, seem like such a minor thing until the end, and the same with Mikkel. There are so many seminal scenes in that story - as with Ash's mutiny as well, or Albion attacking Gwyn, that would never have happened quite that way if I didn't give each character their own goals and motivations and only focused on my main characters).

For authors like myself who are more character than plot focused, plot comes from the character's motivations and actions, and not the other way around.

Anyway, that link might help! I mean I hope it does. Give that a read and if you still have any questions feel free to let me know. :)

[not-poignant]

you: not getting treatment for digestive problems incl chronic diarrhoea can cause irreversible damage

me: well shit. should probs call a Dr then >.<

(thanks for the poke lol)

<3

I know it's hard to see doctors in general let alone about this stuff, but firstly: there may actually be a genuine cure and secondly: this stuff has massive knock on effects even when it's not causing irreversible damage (for example, if you're iron deficient, or vitamin D deficient, it could all entirely be because of chronic diarrhea, which can cause malnourishment even when you're eating enough - and that can make you tired, and that can make you depressed.) I will be permanently Vitamin D deficient, for example, partly because I take a PPI to manage my reflux disease, which causes a ton of knock on side effects - I will have to take a doctor prescribe supplement every day forever. I'd rather know that, and take it, than not know, and get the extra side effects.

We're raised to be ashamed of our digestive systems, or ignore symptoms, or pretend it's not that bad - and maybe it's not! But...your body is trying to help you stay alive, and you can help your body too by trying to chase this stuff up. I wish you good fortune, anon, and good doctors (and if they are not good doctors, you can always get a second opinion). And finally, there is no reason to be ashamed, the digestive system is amazing, even when it's being a (literal) pain in the ass, and you deserve pain, support, and care over these things.

Before you go in to see a doctor consider writing down:

1. How many episodes of diarrhea per day, and how long they last (on average, but also the longest) 2. If there is cramping, if it occurs only during, or before, or before, during and after, or only after. How long the cramping lasts. 3. Rate the pain of the cramps on a scale of 1-10 as best as you possibly can - don't give them your lowest score, be honest. 4. If it happens more at night, in the morning, during the day, or during sleep 5. If anything helps (eating or not eating certain foods - i.e. dairy, gluten, high fat etc., being hydrated, taking pain meds - and what kinds, etc.) One thing to ask yourself is if high fibre foods make it worse, and if fruit makes it worse, because these are common intolerances that doctors don't always ask about. (Like fructose malabsorption). 6. Quality of life impacts (sometimes you can access doctor empathy by saying: 'this is really hurting my relationship with my friends and family' or 'I haven't had a good night of sleep with this for X number of months' 7. How long you've been dealing with this for (how many years/months), and have things gotten worse over time. 8. If you're AFAB, if it coincides at all with your cycle/period (this can indicate endometriosis or hormonal-triggered issues like possibly PCOS and other things)

9. The texture. I know this one is gross, I know, but is it oily, or watery, or tarry, or black, or pale, are there bits of whole food still there, is it accompanied with gas, etc. Trust me, I know this one sucks to tell a doctor about (feel free to just hand them the piece of paper you wrote this down on! Or your phone!) - but tarry can = old blood, and texture (like oily) can point towards specific conditions. (Also note if there's any bright blood that you've noticed).

10. If there's any history of digestive illnesses in your family, and if they've ever pursued any diagnosis (can indicate a genetic-linked condition).

*

Even for yourself, before you see a doctor, these are good questions to ask yourself because they might give you some research clues as well. <3

But also just distant hugs from Western Australia, this stuff is hard and can be frustrating to deal with, but I've also seen people's entire lives turned around by actually chasing this stuff up. And, honestly, even if you do have something chronic that won't necessarily go away, there are really good support groups out there, and you are 100% not alone dealing with this stuff.