writingwithinwriting

[writingwithinwriting]

I think I just lost one of my best friends. Idk if it feels like losing a limb or cutting out a rot. I feel awful. why couldnt he just apologise.

[writingwithinwriting]

#Repost @mattxiv

may the universe reward their bravery

first image by @soulwork6

[writingwithinwriting]

No offense but I think some of you would be a lot happier writing a fictional atlas or encyclopedia instead of a narrative story

[writingwithinwriting]

in honor of the Oblivion remaster coming out I'd like to remind everyone of this absolute classic that singlehandedly changed my entire attitude towards life

[writingwithinwriting]

Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

[writingwithinwriting]

One of my favorite realizations from biology is that like... every creature is your relative. You look at your sister or brother or your parents and you think "that's my family" and you look at uncles and second cousins and distant relations you've never met and think "well I don't know them as well, but we're all part of the same... clan, you know. They're my family too". Surely not everyone thinks this, but some people do. Well anyway, that same thing is true of your dog. The ants crawling on the ground. The birds in the sky. They are, literally, members of your extended family. Not merely as species but as individuals, the way each brother or cousin is an individual member of your family. There is no line between these things. My distant relation, this guy, this bug crawling around. I'm related to him. We're very different, we've lived different lives and are good at different things. But he's my family.

[writingwithinwriting]

hanfu-ne miku!

[writingwithinwriting]

make a minimum of 20 posts a day, be annoying as fuck, repeat things you said a few weeks ago, destroy your follower’s dashboards, never kill yourself

[writingwithinwriting]

fruit sando 🍊

[writingwithinwriting]

hey. hey do you happen to like sturgeons perchance. maybe. it's a kinda fish if ya don't know.

Never heard of “sturgeon” before, not sure if it would really be my thing but thanks anyways for the suggestion

[writingwithinwriting]

sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

[writingwithinwriting]

I’m noticing an increase in new fic writers on AO3 who…uh…mayy not know how to format their fics correctly..so here is a quick and VERY important tip

Using a random fic of mine as example..

The left example: ✅✅✅

The right example: ❌❌❌

Idk how many times I’ve read a good fic summary and been so excited to read before clicking on it and being met with an ugly wall of text. When I see a huge text brick with zero full line breaks my eyes blur and I just siiiigh bc either I click out immediately or I grin and bear it…it’s insufferable!

If a new character speaks, you need a line break. If you notice a paragraph is becoming too large, go ahead and make a line break and/or maybe reconfigure the paragraph to flow better. I’m not a pro writer or even a huge fic writer but…please…ty…

[writingwithinwriting]

If you're a writer you're supposed to write a lot of bullshit. It's part of the gig. You have to write a lot of absolute garbage in order to get to the good bits. Every once in a while you'll be like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time writing bullshit," but that's dumb. That's exactly the same as an Olympic runner being like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time running all those practice laps"

[writingwithinwriting]

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[writingwithinwriting]

so weird how in english some words are really just used in expressions and not otherwise… like has anyone said “havoc” when not using it in the phrase “wreaking havoc”? same goes for “wreaking” actually…

reply with more, i’m fascinated

[writingwithinwriting]

I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

[writingwithinwriting]

In writing, epithets ("the taller man"/"the blonde"/etc) are inherently dehumanizing, in that they remove a character's name and identity, and instead focus on this other quality.

Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!

They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn't know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later ("the bearded man" is much less likely to show up again than "the man with the angel tattoo")

They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she's acting on behalf of the state

They can reveal the narrator's biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator's mind

But these only work if the epithet used is how the narrator primarily identifies that character. Which is why it's so jarring to see a lot of common epithets in intimate moments-- because it conveys that the main character is primarily thinking of their lover/best friend/etc in terms of their height or age or hair color.