Latest Posts by candlewriter - Page 6

well fuck

Current mood

when you finally realize why your wip is going nowhere:

Writers!! Describe your current WIP(s) in the most boring way possible. I want to see this skdjfkdfhk

Cause of death: trying to write a fight scene.

the sexual tension between me and the new wip idea that’s been sitting in the back of my head and distracting me the whole day

must i proofread my writing? is it not enough to unleash it on the public, sexy and unedited?

if ever you find symbolism in my writing please tell me i’d like to know about it too

My brain: so you are writing a fantasy novel?

Me: yeah. why?

My brain: a story that takes place in a fantasy world? a world you made up? a world of your own?

Me: pretty cool, huh?

My brain: you will nedd a map

Me: wait...

My brain: A MAP!

Me: I don't think...

My brain: *banging pots and pans* YOU NEED A MAP RIGHT NOW

writing tip #3377:

if writing your novel doesn’t feel like herding cats, your characters aren’t developed enough

“I’m glad you’re okay” but said by someone who has just had the shit beaten out of them, to someone who is not hurt at all, is a brilliant trope and I lose my mind every time.

The real measure of a writer is what oddly specific tropes show up constantly in their work and make you question What Happened

my art may never be as good as i want it to be, but i have hands and a pencil and i will make that everyone else’s problem

I love a character who’s like “I know exactly who I am and I’m being very authentic about it” and then when you analyse his behaviour even a little bit you realise his self perception is completely selective and delusional.

nah man i cant come over tomorrow im gonna listen to songs and think about characters. yeah no its gonna be all day

My only real and valid writing tip is that you google every word you make up for your fantasy stories. That's It

anyone else plagued by concepts and scenarios

Making your characters insanely OP is good for your soul sometimes. Just juice em up. Just crank the dial. Make them absolutely batshit terrifyingly good at what they do

Actually, can we talk about how Garbage a lot of ubiquitous writing advice in the late 2000's was?

Like "you have to begin in the middle of the action! your first line has to be a 'hook' that draws the reader further into the story!"

This is the bullshit responsible for the amount of books that begin in the middle of some sort of pointless fucking action scene that I care nothing about because I just got here.

Like I guess this makes books easier to "sell" or whatever on some level of the process, but it's garbage storytelling advice because setup and establishment of the Way Things Are is almost always necessary.

On some level I don't think it's actually possible to begin a story right on top of the "inciting incident" because...you don't have the raw materials to "incite" anything with. If you have to set up basic things about the characters and world after the "inciting incident," it's not really the inciting incident anymore, is it?

The event that "launches" a character into their plot line is something that follows from the character's established situation, desires, traits etc. It's a follow-up to a situation that makes a Story of some kind inevitable.

It is, by definition, an event that makes no sense and does not matter to the reader at all unless the "setup" already exists.

If you try to begin right in the middle of the event that "sparks" the plot, you're going to end up including a second, "real" event that actually does the job, because you can't do the job if the character, the stakes, the rules, etc. are not there yet.

Now the action scene you stuck to the beginning of your story is probably dead weight that is getting in the way of the setup.

its me boy the new wip idea speaking to you from inside your brain listen to me boy leave the old wip we don’t need her–

One of my favorite tropes is character with a nasty toxic personality who tries very hard to do the right thing anyway

I have learned over time to never give your characters placeholder names while creating them because while developing them you will absolutely get attached to the name to the point you don’t want to change it and ur epic character will be stuck with the dumbass name forever became it means too much to you

This isnt a joke my favorite piece of writing advice that I’ve ever seen is someone that said if you were stuck with a fic and couldn’t figure out why or what was wrong, your problem is actually usually about ten sentences back. Maybe there was something wonky about the tone or the dialogue or you added something that didn’t fit but it’s usually ten sentences back. And every single time I get stuck in a fic I count back ten sentences and it’s always fucking there

“I wanna write”

“So write”

“... not this scene though”

writing as therapy. writing as healing. writing as discovery. writing as self-love. writing as making sense of the dark. writing as rebirth.