Words To Replace Said, Except This Actually Helps

You probably heard this a lot but your writing is so amazing it's literally god tier omg 💖 If you don't mind answering, do you have any writing tips? I really wanna improve my writing and try to be as good as you. (keyword: try)

oh god uh

so here’s a little list of stuff I PERSONALLY do, but please remember everybody writes differently and that’s a GOOD THING so this might not work for everybody

1. Skip around

Sometimes you just get a SCENE, like one specific scene in your head that you want to write. Write it out, and if it doesn’t end up working in the fic, copy and paste it into a different document and keep it, because it’s very possible (and LIKELY) that you’ll use it later in the story. It’s a way of pre-planning if you’re not one of those authors that likes to plan a strict outline at the very beginning, at least you’ll have a general roadmap based off scenes you’re imagining and have already partially written. I have a close friend who works for a publishing company and she always told me to start as close to the end as possible when you’re writing. It’ll not only encourage you to have a fluid, overarching plot line already thought out, but if you put all your effort and energy into writing an impeccable beginning, your story will gradually lose that spark as you go on.

2. Take a solid break between writing and editing

If you can swing it, try not to look at your story for a few days after you’ve finished writing the first draft. If you wait, the words will hit differently and it’ll allow you to edit as if you have a fresh set of eyes. Sometimes that isn’t possible, especially if you’re like me and procrastinate hardcore, but that also leads into my next tip

3. Write when you’re tired, edit when you’re awake

You’d be surprised at how fluidly the words will come when you’re not awake enough to focus on them. Seriously. Writer’s block can hit, and that SUCKS, but I’ve noticed a lot of that can just be due to you being overcritical of your work WHILE you’re writing it. You can totally be a writer AND an editor, but you can’t do both at the same time. It’ll hinder your creativity and stunt your progress, and it’s a hard mindset to escape. That’s why I usually write really late at night, sleep, and then edit the next day.

4. Actually write

This is an important one, kinda self-explanatory. It’s also usually the one people struggle with the most. Writing is hard. It’s HARD. It takes brainpower and determination to do, it doesn’t just come naturally. STORYTELLING is a natural human instinct, coming up with ideas and sharing them with friends, but actually taking the time to write it DOWN and make it COHERENT and COMPLETE is something altogether different. It’s exhausting and sometimes you just don’t want to do it. Do it anyways. Think about the end goal, not the effort it’ll take to get there. Keep writing, keep adding a sentence or paragraph or page every single day, and the more progress you make, the easier it’ll become. Lastly,

5. Set deadlines

This one is a little bit of a catch 22 and I don’t recommend it for everyone. This is only if you struggle with perfectionism and feel like you’ve spent literal MONTHS to YEARS on a single piece of work because it’s just not there yet. If you’ve had a document that you’ve been working on for a long ass time and you haven’t published it, set a deadline for posting. ANNOUNCE the deadline, even if you don’t have many followers who are paying attention. It might be a little anxiety inducing to set a date for yourself without having it finished, but it will force you to drop that perfectionist streak that’s stunting your work and buckle down instead. Again, THIS IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. I just personally was one of those fanfic authors that had 22 unfinished google docs and zero of them published after years of writing. I started setting deadlines for myself, and now I actually get to share my stuff with yall instead of hiding it away and being too critical about it. Deadlines. Deadlines suck, but they encourage productivity in some individuals, and I happen to be one of them.

Try some of these things out, see if they help any!! 🧡🧡

Writing Gender-Neutral Smut [18+]

Yes, you can write sex scenes in your reader-insert fic without specifying gender!

It’s not perfect. Reader generally has to be the one being penetrated, since doing the penetrating kind of gives away the presence of dick (though you can, if you’re sly, leave room for it to be pegging). There are some limitations to how graphic gender-neutral smut can be, since you’re dancing around the specifics of the genitals involved. But remember, everyone… 

has a throbbing, aching arousal between their thighs that can be sucked, stroked, licked, and circled with a tongue

has a tight entrance that can be stretched open little by little

glistens when they’re slicked with lube (or their partner’s saliva)

can be filled, thrust into, and fucked into the mattress

rolls their hips as they ride their partner

can receive anal and give oral 

moans and pants, chest heaving, covered with a thin sheen of sweat

has nipples that harden and send waves of pleasure through their body

has fingers to slip between their partner’s lips

fills the room with the lewd sounds of flesh on flesh

has a sensitive spot inside that makes them melt when their partner rubs against it

wails out their partner’s name as they fall apart

arches their back as they come

ruins the sheets with their release

Yeah. It can still be pretty hot. 

Here are some tips I keep in mind when writing gender-neutral smut. Please let me know if anything sounds wrong!

Keep reading

STAR WARS WRITING RESOURCES

PLEASE REBLOG AND ADD ANY OTHERS YOU MIGHT KNOW OF <3 <3

WOOKIEEPEDIA. The source of anything and everything you want to know related to Star Wars. Good for fact-checking, character history, or simply killing time. There is also, of course, the official Star Wars Databank! STAR WARS GALAXY MAP. A fantastic project that maps the Star Wars galaxy as we know it. Consider donating ( if you can! ) to help keep the site up and running! Also check out W.R. van Hage’s map and the Star Wars Atlas Online Companion. TIMELINE. While hosted on Wookieepedia, this is nevertheless deserving of its own bullet point. This page provides an approximate timeline with dates of all canon material. You can also filter items, so that it displays only TV episodes, for example, or only books, or only movies! Find the Legends timeline here. STAR WARS SLANG AND PHRASES. A collection I’ve been keeping of phases, slang, idioms, insults, and more from the Star Wars universe. This also contains a glossary of frequently used terms, such as “refresher” in place of “restroom”. Please feel free to use/share! 

STAR WARS NAME GENERATOR. This is a fun one AND a life saver. You can generate up to 100 Star Wars-sounding names ( first and last! ) with a click. 

OTHER GENERATORS: 

Spaceship names as well as spaceship type/models

Earth-like alien planets for any alien planet you don’t have info on

Random landscapes, see above

Technobabble generator for when you need a reason for a red alert

Alien plant/herb/flower name generator. Also: mineral/metal/gemstone names, material names, medication names, and descriptions of alien substances

Scifi tool names for gadgets and gizmos

OTHER WEBSITES:

Jeff Russell’s Starship Dimensions, Dirk Loechel’s Sci-fi Spaceship Size Comparisons, and other Star Wars Deckplans

Star Wars Post 

Star Wars News Net

TheForce.net

A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE. 

oh and also!!!!

draw what makes you happy. don’t draw for notes or attention. sure, it sucks when people don’t give it as much attention as you want, but don’t do it for that.

don’t draw to get noticed. draw for passion. draw because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. 

you’ll have a much better time if you draw for yourself, rather than others.

i am guilty of this sometimes, but i try my hardest not to fall into that cycle. 

I got bored and made A Thing.

It does help. Thank you :)

How did you start posting your writing here? I want to start posting some writing I've done but it makes me nervous. How did you feel when you first posted some writing?

First of all, oh wow thanks for asking! I’m shook.

I honestly just kind of…did it? I got super inspired and decided I wanted to share it with people, since at the time it was a fairly new fandom that was having a bunch of fun on here (A Heist With Markiplier had been out not even a week, and I posted a fic about one of the new characters).

I used to be afraid to share anything just because I was worried about what people would think or people I know IRL finding me or something, but then I just decided I didn’t care. Why deny myself of doing something that makes me happy on a site that I spend so much time on anyway? I love reading what people write so I decided that maybe a couple people’s days with what I’d written. And if not, well I was having a good time! 

I really try to make an effort to not let notes (or lack thereof) affect me. This site has an incomprehensible amount of content, tags fuck up, timezones are a thing, fandoms fluctuate, etc., etc…but honestly at the end of the day I don’t let it make or break me. I love the feeling I get when I write something that I enjoy reading back to myself, and putting it here is, at least for me, just a way to say “Okay yep. There is the thing. I did the thing. Good job, me!” 

Of course, I have been COMPLETELY blown away by the reactions I’ve gotten to some of my work. There are comments that put smiles on my faces for DAYS, and I’ve met some super cool people as a result. My fics aren’t even all that popular but I enjoy every interaction that I DO have, because it’s all in fun! 

Long story short, just go for it! You’ll learn what, when and how you prefer to write and post as you go along. Don’t be afraid to adjust if you want/need to and don’t let people give you shit for what you write or don’t write, whether it’s fanfic like me, or whatever else. Write for you. 

Writing Exercises for Stretching Your Style Muscles

There’s a lot of writing advice on the internet, and a lot of writing prompts, but something I see relatively little of is an idea of how to actually practice. 

The thing about learning a skill is that it requires practice – but practicing will only get you so far if you’re just doing the same thing over and over. you might get better at doing that specific thing, but it can seem really difficult to get over a specific hurdle to accomplish some new thing you’ve never tried. I think a really common frustration is wanting to do a thing, and knowing what your end goal looks like, but not knowing actually how to accomplish it. 

So that’s where practicing specific skills can really help you to feel more comfortable with your abilities. 

Here are some skills exercises I recommend experimenting with to gain proficiency and comfort in writing things. 

—–

Write the Same Scene from Multiple POVs 

Write a scene in 3rd person POV. Then go back and rewrite it from scratch in 1st person. Repeat for a 3rd person omniscient. Go deeper than just swapping out pronouns. Think: How does this scene change if I’m writing through the eyes of a single character vs over their shoulder? How does this scene change if I’m narrating the events through Character B instead of Character A? 

—-

Write a Scene in Present Tense

Present tense bumps up the immediacy level of whatever you’re writing. I think it also helps to break you from more passive sentence constructions. Try taking a scene you’ve written and rewrite it in present tense. Combine it with the above – try switching a 3rd person past to 1st person present, or even try writing in 2nd person. 

—–

Try Mimicking Another Writer’s Style 

Sit down with a piece of writing from an author you enjoy, and pay attention to the writing itself. Ignore the plot and characters and story elements – look at just the nuts and bolts of vocabulary choices and sentence construction. Try to pick it apart. Is there a specific way the author tends to use commas? Certain words, or types of words, that they use more often? Longer sentences or shorter ones? Longer paragraphs or short? How is white space handled? 

Study that and make yourself a little cheat sheet if that’s helpful to you. Then try writing a short piece – just a couple paragraphs, even – in their writing style. 

—-

Describe an Entire Scene Without Using Visual Description 

Imagine you’re writing a blind character, if it helps, or someone who’s been blindfolded. Describe a whole scene built entirely around the way things sound, smell, taste, feel. Try to make it clear what’s happening through description alone. 

—–

Eliminate All Words like “Thought” or “Felt” 

Write in deep-3rd or 1st person without any filter words. Make a character’s opinions and emotions obvious through the way things are being described without explicitly saying what they’re thinking or feeling. If you struggle with this, it might be easier to start in first person – write as a diary entry or even a Tumblr post from that person’s perspective – and then try it in 3rd person after you’ve had a bit of practice. 

——-

Set Yourself a Specific Goal, and Write a Drabble to Achieve it 

When I wrote “Happy Ending,” my entire goal was to write something that was highly descriptive in the most viscerally gross way possible. When I wrote “Mothman,” it was an exercise in writing something sexualized without explicitly being sexual, in the most disturbing way possible. 

This is an exercise in word choice. It’s an excuse to bust out your thesaurus, not to sound fancy, but to nail a specific meaning. It’s also an exercise in choosing what details to focus on and which to exclude. 

One way to approach this exercise is to describe something common and mundane that you’ve experienced, and write it in several different ways. Let’s say, eating a sandwich. How can you make eating a sandwich sound sexy? How can you make it sound disgusting? Which details do you focus on, and which do you omit? What words do you use to evoke the meaning you’re looking for? 

—————————————————————

I hope these writing exercises give you some inspiration on things to try out to flex your creative wings a bit!