#writing refresher

[literaryvein-reblogs]

some more commonly confused words

Aggravate - make something worse Irritate - to annoy

Alternate - to take turns Alternative - an option

Ambiguous - something unclear or vague Ambivalent - about something, you can take it or leave it

Aural - refers to the ear or hearing Oral - refers to the mouth or speaking Verbal - expressed in words, either spoken or written

Definitely - for emphasis Definitively - for the final say

Didactic - teaches a lesson Pedantic - just shows off the facts

Envy - when you want what someone else has Jealousy - when you’re worried someone’s trying to take what you have

Fortunate - lucky Fortuitous - by chance or accident

Gambit - a kind of sacrifice* Gamut - a range

Gibe - to sneer or heckle Jibe - to agree** (but, jibe is a variant spelling of gibe)

Historic - has a great importance to human history Historical - something is related to the past

Holistic - treatment of the whole person Holy - having a divine quality (e.g., related to a god)

Partially - implies bias in favor of one or the other Partly - more precise when portion or proportion is meant

Rob - focuses on the place or person from which the thing is taken Steal - focuses on the thing that is taken

Sound - something which you can hear Noise - when a sound is unwanted or unpleasant

Tortuous - marked by repeated twists, bends, or turns Torturous - describes something painful

Voracious - describes someone super hungry Veracious - means truthful

Who - acts (like "he" or "she") Whom - receives (like "him" or "her")

Wreck - to ruin something Wreak - to cause something to happen Reek - to smell bad

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ⚜ More: Writing Basics ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

EDIT

*specifically: Gambit - a chess opening in which a player risks one or more pawns or a minor piece to gain an advantage in position

**in sailing: Jibe (US) or Gybe (Britain) - a sailing maneuver whereby a sailing craft reaching downwind turns its stern through the wind, which then exerts its force from the opposite side of the vessel

Thank you to @introvertia & @anumberofhobbies for these additions!

[literaryvein-basics]

Writing Basics

will update this every few weeks/months. alternatively, here are all my tagged writing basics/refreshers

Basic Grammatical Terms ⚜ Improve your Vocabulary

Parts of Speech ⚜ Punctuation Marks ⚜ Poetic Meter

Adjective or Adverb ⚜ Conjunctive Adverbs ⚜ Tips on Adverbs

IPA Symbols ⚜ "i.e." & "e.g." ⚜ Lexical Universals

Prepositional Meanings ⚜ Prepositional Phrases

Questions Part 1 2 3 ⚜ Avoid Wordiness

Words

Commonly Confused Words Part 1 2 3

"Troublesome" Words Part 1 2 3 ⚜ Transition Words

Word Alternatives Part 1 2 3 4 ⚜ Nonsense Words

all posts are queued. send questions/requests here ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[ceilidho]

prompt: you and Price get in an accident (1.6k)

-

He comes into your life like nothing less than divine intervention.

A fender bender, of all things. It’s a bad day and you’re distracted, too busy thinking about your dad calling to tell you that he lost ten thousand from his retirement fund when the stock he’d invested in crashed and how you’re supposed to help him out of this mess, and the roads are slick with that last snowfall of early spring, still unsalted even hours after the snow started. 

So when you slam on the brakes at the last second after noticing the car in front of you stopped at a red light, your car slips on the ice and slides forward, hitting the back of the stopped car and sending it forward a foot. It’s quick and sudden, and though you stepped on the brakes early enough to avoid a worse collision, your head snaps forward with the jolt and the seatbelt yanks you back violently, winding you. 

Your hands go tight around the wheel, eyes so wide that they nearly pop out of your head as you stare at the car directly in front of you. All of the dread in the world pools in your mouth and then down your throat when you swallow, heart galloping in your chest. You almost can’t believe it for a second.

Then the car in front of you—a big, fuck-you SUV that only worsens your anxiety because of all cars to hit, it had to be someone with a fancy, brand new car that probably has a lawyer on speed dial—puts their hazards on and the driver’s side doors opens and reality snaps like a rubberband back into you. With shaky hands, you put your car into park and put your hazards on as well. 

“Oh shit,” you whisper under your breath. An understatement.

A tall man in a brown parka steps out of the car and stares at you through the windshield, a stern expression on his face. He has a beanie pulled down over his head and a full beard, and for a second, the mental image of a bear emerging out of its den flickers in your imagination, all snow-dusted and irritable. 

He’s grizzled and older than you. The only consolation is that he doesn’t match the image of the driver that you had in your head—no seven thousand dollar suit or bluetooth earpiece; instead, he seems like the kind of man who’d drive an old pickup or a schooner, wearing an Aran sweater and a skipper's cap, with a pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. He seems out of place in the middle of the road in your small town. 

But he is real, and even though you watch him march over to you, you flinch when he raps on the window with his knuckles. 

“Roll the window down,” he instructs, voice muffled through the glass, and you do because the command cuts through the buzzing in your ear. When you do, he reaches into your car with one hand and pops the lock, then takes a step back to open the door. You’d freak out if the situation were different, but you must be in shock because all you can do is stare at him dumbly as he leans into the car and undoes your seatbelt. “C’mon, sweetheart. Out.”

It doesn’t take much coaxing to get you to step out of the car. All he has to do is step back and you get out, knees nearly buckling, like jelly under you. He holds your elbow to steady you. Your elbow feels delicate and tiny in the width of his palm. 

“You alright, sweetheart?” he asks, looking all over your face.

You want to answer him, but all you can do is whimper, “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, none of that. It was an accident. You alright though? Anything hurt?”

“Uh…I don’t…I don’t know.” It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you think. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be sore all over, but right now you feel fine. On the verge of shaking out of your skin, teeth nearly clattering together, but more or less okay. 

“Nothing too bad then. Wanna give me your insurance so we can deal with this, sweetheart?” 

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Let me just—” You move to reach back into your car to fetch your purse, but he stops you, insisting on getting it for you. 

And you let him, docile like a doll, watching as he leans into your car and across the seats to grab your purse, big frame looking comically large in your little car. Looking like he’d barely fit in the front seat if he tried to get in. 

He comes back out with your little purse in hand and opens it, handing you your wallet and purse by its strap. Your fingers are still shaking when you pull out your insurance information and hand it to him. Everything feels surreal and muted, and the tears are going to flow at any minute now if you don’t get a handle on it. 

He must notice because a knuckle fits under your chin and lifts your head up. “Hey, what’s wrong? 

“No, no,” you say, reaching up to swipe your fingers over your eyes. “I’m just—I’m really embarrassed. I’ve never been in an accident before.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about.” His voice is much softer now, pitched low in the way handlers talk to spooked animals. He puts his thumb to your chin, holding you in place. “No one got hurt. Could’ve been worse than it was, and we’ve both got insurance, so what’s done is done. I don’t look mad, do I?”

Trapped between his thumb and knuckle, you can only give a slight shake of your head. “No.” 

“Then let’s just take it one step at a time and no tears. Okay?”

You sniff. “Okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to call the insurance, so you get back in the car and sit tight, alright?” 

You nod. 

“Good girl,” he says, a hint of praise in his voice. “Put the heat on too. It’s too cold for that jacket.”

That makes you go warm all over, flustered and tongue-tied. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to expect a response out of you. The only thing he expects you to do is get back in the car and turn the heat back on, the warm air billowing into your face when he leans in to crank it up all the way. 

Though most of the sound is muffled from inside the car, you turn down the heat and crack the window open slightly to hear him give his name to his insurance company. John Price. Even his name evokes the image of him somewhere else in the world, settled into the nooks and crannies of history. 

John handles everything for you while you sit in the car like he told you to, settling everything with the insurance companies and calling for a tow truck right after that. You don’t realize that, of course, until the tow truck pulls up in front of his car and he comes back to usher you out of your car. 

“How am I supposed to get home?” you croak. The tow truck driver hitches your car to the bed of the lift and pulls it up, your little car looking pathetic all alone up there. 

“I’ll drive you home then bring mine in later.”

“Why can’t I drive my car to the garage too?” You’re petulant now that you’ve learned that he won’t bite, and you know it’s petulance because you don’t actually put up much of a fight to get your car taken off the tow truck. 

That petulance trembles when his expression grows stern again. “You’re getting it checked by a mechanic before you get behind the wheel again,” he tells you in no uncertain terms, eyes daring you to contradict him.

You don’t. It’s hard to argue with someone so adamant on your wellbeing. A mechanic in later days will tell John, with you by his side, that your car was mostly fine apart from some slight damage to the bumper, but that you made the right call to bring it in just in case the frame cracked during the accident.

John’s arm will be around your waist at the time and he’ll pull you tighter into his side when the mechanic says that. And what do you do but go with it, curling into his side like it’s natural. You’ll have already fucked him by then anyway. It’ll be no less forward than letting him take you for coffee and then back home, following you up to your apartment and into your bed. 

Now though, you let him usher you into the passenger seat of his car and shut the door behind you, the wind cutting off abruptly. It only comes back when the door opens on his side. 

You rattle off your address and watch bemusedly as he programs it into his GPS and hits save. You don’t have the temerity to question him, to poke a hole in the bubble of familiarity ballooning around the two of you. The real world seems far away in his car, like you’re in limbo, the rules different here somehow. 

“How about a coffee?” he asks at the next light, putting his hand on your thigh and shaking when you don’t respond right away. “Does a hot drink sound good right about now?”

“I guess?” you say. In truth, it sounds great, but you’re losing the thread of this conversation, your old preoccupations getting further and further away from you. 

John gives your thigh a squeeze, lingering for a beat before pulling away. “Good. It’ll be a nice little pick me up before we go home. My treat.”

All you can do is nod, your throat dry.

[egophiliac]

hear me out

silver vanrouge ❌️

silver draconia ✔️

malleus beats lilia to the punch

[crimeronan]

god i wish i wouldn't have to explain the intricacies of the neopets economy to you guys to give the full context for this but. the new neopets team that took over from jumpstart pledged that they were going to curb the inflation of rare items, which is great because a lot of rare items are worth literally hundreds of millions of neopoints, they are unbuyable unless you've been playing actively for 20 years. they did this earlier with a site festival that included random loot boxes, some of which had Unbelievably Fucking Rare And Precious items worth 200 million neopoints apiece.

well.

today they have gone a step further. by releasing this year's trick-or-treat bags. and having the trick-or-treat bags be stuffed to the brim with unbelievably fucking rare stamps, weapons, paint brushes, defense magic, and other unbuyables. (all prohibitively expensive and in-high-demand types of items.)

jellyneo, the premier neopets website, has recorded prices of some items plummeting from 2,000,000 neopoints to 4,000 neopoints IN THE LAST THREE HOURS. this is when most people haven't even heard about the event or OPENED THEIR BAGS YET.

and of course. cherry on top. 20-year-old account holders are crytyping on the site events neoboard about how mean and cruel it is to make rare stamps part of the prize pool, because their entire identity hinges on being part of the neopian bourgeoisie, and they are having MELTDOWNS over their assets being devalued until they're part of the lowly proletariat.

this is a children's game for children btw.

none of the money is real.

i'm having such a good time.

[thief-of-eggs]

everyone heading to tumblr as soon as they get the “error 503” message from ao3

[physalian]

How to make your writing sound less stiff

Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.

1. Vary sentence structure.

This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.

So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.

2. Vary dialogue tag placement

You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.

Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”

“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”

“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.

Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.

They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at

They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~

They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.

It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.

3. When the scene demands, get dynamic

General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.

Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.

Drip Drip Drip

Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.

You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.

Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.

4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.

The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.

If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

—

Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.

[biblically-accurate-dca]

i just wanted to post something before the year ended

[orionhelluvaranting]

Stolass has been banished, lost all of his powers and suffered from a nervous breakdown but still...

That's how he kicks Andre's ass right after arriving at the palace. And he lifts a huge ice statue up like it's nothing. And, uh... Elsa's evil rip-off just lies down, squeaks and sucks it up submissively despite he has appropriated ALL of Stolass' powers!!! Bitch, WTF?!

Also a little bit earlier in the same episode:

Vivzie, could you please be consistent at least throughout a SINGLE fucking episode of your own show?! You literally have so little to no interest in something outside of the glorified toxic yaoi you doesn't even try to hide it anymore!

[deerspherestudios]

Hellow!!! Its been almost year for know mushroom oasis and I really really enjoyed day3…🥹 like rive my shirts and cry out in pain…..❤️‍🔥🍄 AND END OF DAY3 i noticed the cutie from next door was……. Not.. death alma from left your sprits

I REALLY LOVE THAT GAME TOO AND LOVE ALMA TOO so my heart was beating so much

And soon I remember something I wanted to ask about college and Alma! Is the college (of MC and vida) have drom? If they have drom alma can they appear in that building too? If MC can live there and Alma can appear, I want to draw of them watching movies all day in the dark or staying all night talking about themselves when roommate is not there! Or roommate got scared of drom room because Alma appeared in there room like this... (I made a little doodle of it!). 

Btw i really want to thank you and your team for made amazing games!! It was really good memories and im so exciting to see more scripts and story of mushroom oasis or another games🥹 I will wating for new projects and scripts patiently!!!💕💕 ((Sorry if sentence looks messy english not my first language ㅠ////ㅠ) ))

Thank you so much for the support!! Omg,, that would be so in character for Alma, ngl. If they found out you were living close by they'd definitely will themselves to visit.

The thing is, the college building is based off of the one I went to during my studies, and it was basically one tall building in the middle of the city consisting of 35 (if I recall correctly) floors. The student dorms are a 15-20 minute public commute away.

But! Since LYS was such an open-ended game and hardly went into detail about what the rest of the campus looks like, I'd say the scenario above is definitely possible! :-)

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Went

Went—past tense of go (i.e., to move on a course; proceed)

Actuate - to move to action

Avoid - to keep away from

Bolt - to move or proceed rapidly

Bound - to move by leaping

Depart - to go away; leave

Escape - to get away

Exit - to go out or away

Flee - to run away

Fly - to be moved with sudden extreme emotion; to flee

Forge - to move forward slowly and steadily; or with a sudden increase of speed and power

Hop - to move by a quick springy leap or in a series of leaps

Jaunt - to make a usually short journey for pleasure

Jolt - to move with a sudden jerky motion

Journey - to go on a journey; travel

Leap - to spring free from or as if from the ground

Leave - to go away from; depart

Lurch - to move with a lurch; stagger

March - to move in a direct purposeful manner; proceed

Mosey - to hurry away

Move - to start away from some point or place; depart

Pace - to move along

Parade - to march in or as if in a procession

Pass - move, proceed, go

Progress - to move forward

Retreat - to make a retreat; withdraw

Saunter - to walk about in an idle or leisurely manner; stroll

Scoot - to move swiftly

Skip - to move or proceed with leaps and bounds or with a skip

Split - to leave, especially: without delay

Step - to be on one's way; leave—often used with "along"

Stride - to move with or as if with long steps

Stroll - to walk in a leisurely or idle manner

Tour - to make a tour (i.e., one's turn in an orderly schedule)

Travel - to go on or as if on a trip or tour; journey

Vanish - to pass quickly from sight

More: Word Lists

[ex0toxin]

awughhh silly shipchart.. my canonverse hcs 🧠

og post

[beckettkatherine]

RUBY BELL AND JAMES BEAUFORT 1.06 | Maxton Hall

[mamawasatesttube]

superboy (1994) #100

"I... I'll make you proud."

"You already have. Now it's time to make yourself proud."

[sunny-knight]

KINGERS GAMBIT - CHAPTER 1

“Why couldn’t we just play in the tent-“

(Work In Progress and Behind The Scenes stuff in my Shitpost account!)

[side-of-honey]

Sorry for being kinda dead lately it's been hard to motivate myself to make full pieces ToT Have some doodles in the meantime tho. I enjoyed the purple game big surprise from the portal fan I know