usreadersshouldalsowrite

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

nasa: we're going to shoot three rockets directly at the sun during the total eclipse. for study and research purposes.

me: oh cool

nasa: we have named the rockets apep. this stands for atmospheric perturbations [in the] eclipse path.

me: oh cool

nasa: apep is also the ancient egyptian deity of chaos and darkness, who ceaselessly seeks to extinguish the sun. we launch these rockets directly at the sun in the name of apep.

me: oh... cool?

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

I pulled out the kudzu vines that I cut last week, which have been in a black plastic garbage bag under my bed for 5 days, and the leaves that are still attached are completely fresh, green and not withered at all.

IT'S STILL ALIVE

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

One of the software concepts that I found useful to bring over to writing is the concept of technical debt.

Technical debt is the additional work that gets created when you choose a fast option over a good option. It's "debt" because there's a very good chance that at some point you're going to have to repay it: you hardcode in some variables, deciding that you'll figure out the proper way to do it later, and eventually, surprise! It's later. You have to implement the solution you were putting off. And because you've been using the kludge for so long, sometimes that kludge has become load-bearing, and you have to spend quite a bit of time unraveling and refactoring. One of the reasons it's called debt because you have to pay interest on it.

And the thing is, it's not always wrong to accrue technical debt. Sometimes it helps you get to working on the important thing, and can clarify design details or implementation concerns, and sometimes you can just ship without ever having to do it the "right" way. Sometimes you can wriggle out from under that debt and never suffer any consequences from it, even if there were theoretical consequences in when you made the decision to do it the fast way.

The way that this applies to writing is mostly in terms of worldbuilding, character building, and plotting. You can sit down and map a whole novel out without writing a single world, whipping up character bibles and setting details and everything that you might possibly need, all before you write a single word.

... or you can accrue some debt and just gun it, writing as you go, making things up, adding them to some kind of tracking document or just not even doing that.

And as with code, there will come times you have to pay that debt back with interest.

Sometimes you skimp on a character's backstory, and then a few chapters down the road you need to make a decision about it, and suddenly there's a bunch of editorial work as you have to make sure that everything you just decided on matches up with what you've already written. A more extreme example would be writing a mystery novel where you haven't decided on what the answer to the mystery will be until very very late: it would either produce a bad mystery or require tons of rewriting.

As with code, the difficulty is knowing when you're incurring technical debt for a good reason and when you're shooting your future self in the foot.

Here are my rules of thumb for writing, in terms of what's acceptable technical debt:

Plot stuff should not wait. You should have a resolution for your story within the first few chapters of writing that story, and ideally, before you even start.

Everyone (and everything) gets a name the first time it appears. You cannot say "the gardener" a dozen times because you don't want to think of a name for the gardener.

All magic systems and superpowers and whatnot should be rigidly defined before they come onscreen. This doesn't need to be known to the characters, and "soft" magic has less of a requirement, but having rules be thought up midway through a fight scene is essentially the definition of generating technical debt.

Descriptions take little effort to bring into alignment, so can be skipped on first draft, so long as there is a description there. Having descriptions written afterward can help to understand mood and requirements of the scene.

Backstory is really variable, depending on how relevant to the plot it is. If it's going to be driving conflict, it needs to be worked out ahead of time. If it's flavor, it can be winged.

I am, of course, not the best follower of my own advice, and sometimes for very long webfic it's impossible to plan that much in advance. And of course I never go into every work having had every idea I'm going to have, and some of those ideas are good enough to include even if they disrupt a plan and require some refactoring.

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

I love how whenever ATLA recognizes Sokka is smart enough to solve a problem but it’d be too fast they just stick him in some kind of situation. Like he COULD’VE stopped jet from drowning a town so they tied him up and dumped him in a forest. He COULD’VE figured out what that spirits deal was so they lost him in the spirit world for 24 hours.

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

I know that—objectively—this is bullshit, but I have chosen to believe that the reason the US hasn't formally changed to the metric system is for the poets. When the going gets tough you can still claw your way forward inch by inch, but centimeter by centimeter just doesn't quite carry you. You're in love/excited/nervous/scared and your heart is beating a hundred miles per hour, whoa that sounds fast and dangerous! But a hundred kph? I've been passed by people going faster than that coming out of downtown on capital boulevard. The pound of flesh they take from you is raw and bloody and full of pain, the kilogram of flesh is impersonal and excised in laboratory conditions under strict observation. Liters are okay tho, if only because they sound like meter and a meter is used to measure things, so the measure of a man can be siphoned (as a byproduct of the kilogram) into a bottle with a screw cap lid and stored in a dark cool room until he is found wanting. A gallon would be wasteful, a quart too unserious, and a cup not enough to keep him from withering in the desert sands under 100 degree faeghreignheit sun. ...Okay maybe celsius gets a pass too.

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

I just spent 2 hours debating and testing and arguing in circles and bitching about library catalogs with two colleagues and I just want to say

AO3’s website is really, really, really impressive, functional and ergonomic and cohesive. the tag system is INCREDIBLE and AMAZINGLY maintained. this is my professional librarian appraisal.

I’ve found 1 library catalog that meets my standards. even the national library of France’s catalog is shitty in comparison to ao3.

praise.

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

Ive seen people be like in modern fantasy like "oh the pritagonists can just look up spells on their phone how do you solve that"

Imma be honest most people who go on recipe websites and book every recipe they see don't even use them lmao why would with be different

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

“Be a scar. Do not be ashamed of living through something.”

— Nayyirah Waheed (via quotemadness)

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

do yoU EVER GET SO UPSET THAT FICITIONAL CAHRACCTESRS HAVE THE SAME AGE AS YOU AND THEYVE GONE ON SUCH MAGICAL ADNVETURES AND YOU HAVENT????

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

This gif is outrageous

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

I miss when library books used to have little paper pockets inside with a list of all the people who borrowed it and when... I hate that this is now exclusive knowledge of librarians. I do care that a miss Mariana borrowed this book in 1985 and then Dario in 1997. They're my brothers and sisters

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

it sucks so bad that 'lightning magic' in every media is just some pathetic little strands of electricity. i wanna see some LIGHTNING. show me a magic setting where lightning magic lights up a room like the sun, and the bolt is only visible as an afterimage burned into your vision. I wanna see someone cast lightning and have the thunder rattling the room and shaking everyone to their core. i want lightning magic to be a split second blast of so much power it leaves everyone's senses reeling. c'mon guys don't you know what real lightning looks like? we can be doing so much better than this.

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

[usreadersshouldalsowrite]

REBLOG IF YOU THINK FANFIC IS JUST AS IMPORTANT IN A FANDOM AS FANART