Writers - Blog Posts

me, having no inspiration to write in my wip:

also me, writing inspiring things on tumblr for other young writers: do you hear something? procrastination who? sips tea

it doesn't matter if you've:

never editted your WIP

never enjoyed it thoroughly

never felt satisfied enough

if you're nothing but pleased

if all you do is edit

if you never write anymore

if you've abandoned, ripped up, shredded, or spit on the very pages you held dearly—

your WIP is amazing and nothing will ever make you any less of an author.

Yes see totally agree but how do I convince my coworkers to let me count fanfics for our book bingo competition in the office?

fanfic writers are so fucking awesome man. they write novel length fics that are sometimes even better than some published bestselling books written by professional writers. like fanfic writers are professional writers to me and they gift us their masterpieces for free. they give us something we can look forward to after a long day. something from which we can seek comfort when life is hard. something that can be our own little getaway. in a world of capitalism, despite everything, they give us all of these for free. like holy fuck. shout out to every fanfic writer. I wish all fanfic writers a very ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I thank you from the bottom of my heart’

One of my greatest joys as a fanfic writer is me shoving the usually beacon of hope hero into a moral dilemma that he can't win, forcing him to hurt an innocent person to save a life.

I have made the hero sin and I will tear him apart for it.

I respond as much as I can (terribly, I believe)

reblog if you’re a writer who’s very terrible at responding to comments from your readers, but has read them all and loves and appreciates each and every single one of them very dearly

i wish i could draw because im sure that some of the prompts i make and some of my fics would be great but when i draw, it looks like a toddler got hold of a photo copier and threw cereal on it.

Writing Advice

If you want to include dark subjects and/or difficult topics in your writing (character death, addiction, mental health, SA, abuse, etc.) then you have to dive into the consequences of the topic - never shove it into the story just for the sake of drama, stakes, audience retention, or whatever other reason that doesn't have to do with the story itself.

To use one of the "lighter" examples here, let's so you decide to kill of a character - for the sake of simplicity let's call this character A. Now that they're dead, how does A's absence affect the story? How do other characters feel and cope with A's death? Who's grieves and morons A? Who's denying that A is even gone? Who's numbed and confused about A's death? Who's happy about A being gone? How long does it take for everyone to settle into a new normal without A? What does this new normal look like for them? What makes A's death actually important instead of a background character that no one would notice is gone?

These are all very important questions to ask if you're going to kill of a character, with each piece making the characters feel more alive and making A's death have actual weight behind it. To ignore these questions, leads to a flat world with characters who feel inhuman for how they can move on form the ultimate end and A's death feeling unimportant and something you'd only remember when looking over a wiki. This also means having characters die at the end of the story a half-assed choice. Don't get me wrong, it can still work if handled well - one way to handle this well is focusing completely on character reaction instead of the long running consequences. It's just that many times I've seen characters dying at the end of the story is just to ramp up the stakes, so their death isn't lingered on for long enough for it to feel like it has any importance other than being recognizable characters being the ones dying.

This advice runs true for all examples of dark subjects and difficult topics. You can't just have traumatizing things happen to characters and then not bother to look into the permeant ramifications of that trauma, along with just saying a character has a mental illness, not bothering to research the mental illness, and instead show only a stereotype of a mentally ill person. Not properly showing the consequences makes the world feel flat, the audience feel bored or annoyed, and worst-case scenario cause legitimate harm to those engaging with your work.

This is a rather common mistakes for first time writers to make, they tend not to fully think about the consequences of certain scenes and how it will permanently affect the story. If you've made this mistake before then that's absolutely okay, just remember to ask these impotent questions in the future.

Okay, fair warning, this last paragraph as less to do with actual advice and more me complaining about this mistake happening on a professional level even though if you've been in this creative field long enough to make it into a career you should know better by then. Okay? Okay.

But, and this is what led to me thinking over all this stuff and wanting to give out this advice to the world, this is also a common mistake made by middle aged or older men who are professionals in their creative field to make towards female characters and the topic of SA. I think this mistake stems from these producers/writers viewing SA as a "female trauma" (incorrect but you can't expect much of these dudes), so if they have a female character that they need to give trauma they'll just go with SA and not care about the long terms ramifications. Meanwhile male characters get family death, commonly his wife and/or child[ren], as their main trauma and it's still not treated with much respect - it's mostly just treated as the motive for why the male character is doing what he's doing and the dead wife and/or child[ren] are never shown having a life or personality of their own that would really make their death feel like a tragedy outside of the relationship with the male character, which is a disservice to the character(s). If you're going to make a character, or multiple characters, someone's whole motive then you should at least try and get us to care about the character on their own.

reblog if you believe fanfics are as valid as books that were published and sold by authors who write as their main careers. I'm trying to prove a point

I forgot that was something you could do

I just think bookbinding is cool, stop asking questions…

Mix this with werewolf found family and OH LORD

"Magic cares about what something means, not what it literally is. So when we adopted you into this family, when you truly accepted us as your parents, you became part of it in the eyes of magic. Which is why you've begun to manifest some aspects of our bloodline."

IM GOING FERAL FOR THIS OML AUAGHGAHHHA

Magic has returned to the world, and people all over the world have reported transforming into magical creatures. You are the owner of a tailoring business, and you have since gained an influx of new customers who need help modifying their clothes to fit their new bodies.

So Damien core lmao

You and your friends decided to summon a demon. You were excited that it worked, although it was somewhat undercut by your best friend giving the demon an awkward "Hi dad.".