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renn-aissance · 3 days ago

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Mom Plays BG3: Ep.5 - “Okay, Baron Afanas.”

First things first: She knows how to use waypoints now and got all the way from Dammon to the Blighted Village by herself 😌 To AND fro.

RUNDOWN:

It’s happening. She feels bad for being mean to Gale! Sort of lol. He needed an item and she talked to him. She told him “it’s more useful to me if unconsumed.”

Gale: “Ah, ever the pragmatist. But I assure you it is important I use this item.”

Mom: *Hands him the hat that restores bardic inspiration.*

Gale: *Eats a whole hat.* “The Magic wasn’t enough to satisfy it, but nevertheless thank you… it wasn’t easy for you to part with, nor easy to obtain. Truly, I thank you.”

Mom: *GUILT.*

Thinks Karlach is cool.

Had not encountered traps yet.

Encountered one.

She’s been clicking on chests when she sees one and waits for the character to get there themselves.

Mom: “Oh, a chest!”

Mom: *Clicks on it. Explodes. Soul leaves body.*

Astarion: “Oh look, someone’s left a trap out for us.”

She met Withers and loved that whole scene where the skeletons came to life. "It's so The Walking Dead!"

Her face exactly:

AAHH I'm just super excited because I can tell she's legitimately starting to get more into the game, not just because I wanted her to play. Like it's a different vibe. I usually set a timer for an hour and that's all we'll play, but the timer's been going off and she wants to play a little longer.

She's a gamer now, my dudes. She literally told me “Let’s play right now and you can finish up your homework after.” She didn’t even want to watch New Girl.

She feels like Withers is going to be important. I’m just thinking like “bestie, he’s gonna live with you literally rent free.

Withers: “We will meet again when the time is right.”

Mom: “… Okay, Baron Afanas… Because he looks like The Baron-“

Me: “Yeah.”

She threw dung at the goblins 😌

She’s been getting one-shots like CRAAAZY. Weirdest fucking luck.

She met her dream guardian. Has mixed feelings. How before she’s been using her illithid powers like crazy, after meeting the dream guardian she’s iffy about it now. Astarion called her an utter drip. She pouted.

She talked to Withers in the morning.

Withers: “There is little else to explain.”

Mom: “Can you elaborate?”

Withers: “No.”

Mom: “… okay…”

Astarion has still NOT told her he is a vampire 😀 But she’s been sitting on some pretty consistent neutral approval with him. She has had two dreams with the Emperor and has mixed feelings. She also said the dream visitor was ugly 😭

Me: “You literally MADE him!”

Mom: “I must have been in a rush.”

She picked up on the fact that Gale called his dream visitor a she and my mom’s is male. Which tbh I didn’t pick up on it because both of my dream guardians were she’s. 😗

SHE DID THE LOVIATAR THING LOL

Her face the whole time:

It was the morbid curiosity part of her that went through with it. But also because Karlach was like “I HAVE TO SEE THIS.”

She went down into the dungeons and freed the bear, but when the fight was over she talked to Halsin. She talked to him about The Grove and the tadpoles and everything. I was expecting her to be like “😏 who’s this guy?”

Mom: “… wait… was he the bear? Who is this guy??”

She thought he was just some guy who showed up out of nowhere lol

“Well… thank you for helping me, Mr. Bear. I guess… okay.”

Looked around the prison and looted some barrels. Literally so pumped finding the barrels full of pork meat and the pig head.

Mom: “You said the gears mean I can use it, right? Why is there an x on this one?”

Me: “You can sit on that bench or interact with it, but it’s out of reach. That table is blocking it.”

Mom: “The one with the mystery meat on it? I don’t wanna sit on that… ewwww.”

She freed Volo but didn’t tell him where the camp was.

He showed up later anyway and she was just like “Where did he even come from?!”

Shooed the goblins from hurting Liam.

Mom: “Alright, homeboy, what’s up. What’s going on.” *clicks to talk to him.*

Liam: *literally being tortured* “Please let me out of here.”

I forgot what she needed to do a check for, but she had to roll a 16 and had a +7 advantage.

Mom: *Rolls a 3.*

Mom: *Turns to me and goes 😏*

Me: “You failed.”

Mom: “My math isn’t great.”

She killed Minthy! But tbh I did, too, during my first play through because I didn’t know about the whole knocking her out thing. To be fair, she did not make the best first impression.

Minthara: “Another child of the Absolute in such a grotesque form.”

Mom: “Hey… take it easy.”

Yeah this whole session was just straight up confusion. She did reload because she started a fight after attacking Glut. She is currently still exploring the whole place. I might have her come back after going to Auntie Ethel’s to meet the Gur hunter just because I’m wondering why it’s taking so long for Astarion to tell her about the vampire thing.

Oh shit also Gale told her about his orb. She was not pleased. SHE ALMOST TOLD HIM TO LEAVE!! But she kept him. She also clicks on the companions to hear what they have to say.

Shadowheart: “I would have liked to have known the circumstances of the company I would keep before signing onto this journey.”

Mom: “Girl, you’re one to talk.”

So now she’s a little mad at Gale for a different reason. At least she knows he’s not lying 😀

When she finds an enchanted item she makes a show of it to send it to anyone BESIDES Gale to hold onto until he needs it because she thinks he’s going to use it right away lol

Bro and she’s gonna be pissed when Astarion confesses lol because he’s all “why would you guys keep secrets!”

She let Volo stab her eye, but chickened out in the end.

Sorry this is kind of a long post, this is an amalgamation of about a few days. Also it was her birthday on Wednesday :D

#shitpost #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #gale #gale dekarios #astarion #i’m making my mom play bg3 #dnd #withers #larian studios #halsin #loviatar #well maybe mad at Gale isn’t accurate #just disappointed lol #and a little scared #Larian #but so far she’s enjoying the game which is awesome

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archaeren · 7 months ago

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How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

#creative writing #writers block #writblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writers and poets #writerscommunity #fanfic writing #writeblr #writing advice

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