Countdown To Halloween 2020, Day 24: Fears. 

Making your angst hurt: the power of lighthearted scenes. 

I’m incredibly disappointed with the trend in stories (especially ‘edgy’ YA novels) to bombard the reader with traumatic situations, angry characters, and relationship drama without ever first giving them a reason to root for a better future. As a reader…

I might care that the main siblings are fighting if they had first been shown to have at least one happy, healthy conversation. 

I might cry and rage with the protagonist if I knew they actually had the capacity to laugh and smile and be happy.

I might be hit by heavy and dark situations if there was some notion that it was possible for this world to have light and hope and joy to begin with.

Writers seem to forget that their reader’s eyes adjust to the dark. If you want to give your reader a truly bleak situation in a continually dim setting, you have to put them in pitch blackness. But if you just shine a light first, the sudden change makes the contrast appear substantial.

Show your readers what light means to your character before taking it away. Let the reader bond with the characters in their happy moments before (and in between) tearing them apart. Give readers a future to root for by putting sparks of that future into the past and the present. Make your character’s tears and anger mean something.

Not only will this give your dark and emotional scenes more impact, but it says something that we as humans desperately, desperately need to hear. 

Books with light amidst the darkness tell us that while things are hard and hurt, that we’re still allowed to breathe and hope and live and even laugh within the darkness.

We as humans need to hear this more often, because acting it out is the only way we stop from suffocating long enough to make a difference.

So write angst, and darkness, and gritty, painful stories, full of treacherous morally grey characters if you want to. But don’t forget to turn the light on occasionally.

Support Bryn’s ability to provide writing advice by reading their debut novel, an upbeat fantasy about a bloodthirsty siren fighting to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain!

Refrog indeed

Gays will see the word frog and instantly reblog huh

Should just know that I’m around

If you need to talk this out

Wanna scream it out loud

But too sad to make a sound

Know it’s hard when you have no friends or someone to talk to. If someone need to talk or is just lonely you can message me.

Zim feels appreciated. Happy bug.

Some concept doodles of Voot 2.0, built by the boys by combining Tak’s ship with the Voot. I can’t draw spaceships or make good blueprints sorry

I imagine their beginning ship to be scrappy, with just enough to get by and not grandeur at all. It’s kinda ugly, but it’s safe. It’ll be their main transportation when going on any space adventures.

if you use music to cope with anxiety, depression or to help with your ADHD (like me) reblog, I'm trying to prove a point to my teacher

Well, I was close

*****************SPOILERS*****************

Ok, finally, I have a theory! Do you remember how pink diamond looked on SU (poster? List of villains? Never mind)

She is pink! But why? Some people think that Steven hurt her, and it’s possible.

But remember, in “Change your Mind” her face became pink, after Steven pointed out her childish behavior? I think he can (and maybe Pink diamond could), similar to Blue control other gem’s emotions. He could have used this ability in the episode “Reunited” when he by touching others could fill them with DETERMINATION (sorry, not sorry).

So, where was I.

Steven can control others emotions, but right now he’s an emotional wreck. He’s mad, desperate, disappointed and guilty. And maybe, when he comes to a homeworld, looking for a way to control his powers, he has one of his “outbursts” and it affects White. If Steven shattered Jasper, what would White do? Will she hurt Steven and corrupt him? Or will she hurt someone else, which will make Steven even more guilty and terrified?

I’m a sad potato sack, mmmh, it’s this time of year, life.

“I go into my sweater until it gets better”

Uh.. what the hell, I thought I was crazy. Do I have it?? Is that the reason??

Stuck.

(it’s 2am, and according to your therapist, you have “a whopping case of ADHD”

This is the Lucky Ace. Reblog to recieve a wad of cash that is oddly specific to your current needs.

i really sat here thinking for a whole hour about an au/scenario where danny saves dash or something in a ghost attack (as fenton) and in turn saves the football team’s games for the season or something similar essentially earning danny enough Good Boy Points to be on genuinely good terms and befriending the entire football team to the point where they just follow him around and its hilarious to everyone because its One Tiny Boy surrounded by his group of giant protective jock himbo friends only to realize i was just recreating the body improvement club from mob psycho that was all i was doing