[ID In Alt]

Digital canvas titled "How to: drawing characters with paralysis on their face" with "since I barely see it and would like to see more" written underneath. It features three colored drawings of different characters with various kinds of facial paralysis, labeled "ones that look more like this", next to a drawing of a heavily exaggerated character with cartoonish facial paralysis labeled "and less like whatever this is". There is a diagram in the corner of all the cranial nerves in the brain, with half of them scribbled out. The rest of them are labeled "i.e. what happens when any of these get fucked up". In the corner there is the artist's signature "@saszor" as well as "by: someone who has it" written out.

Second digital slide. It's titled "basic information". Underneath is a spectrum colored from dark green to red, with the dark green end labeled "works perfectly" and the red "complete paralysis". The light green, yellow, orange, and light red middle is labeled as "some degree of paralysis. It's not a 0:1 thing". Below that are 4 very simplistic drawings using the spectrum's colors to show different kinds of paralysis, including Moebius syndrome (complete full face paralysis), trochlear nerve palsy (both eyes being mildly affected), Bell's palsy (half of the face being slightly affected) and "multiple (me)" with the forehead, mouth, and eyes being labeled in different shades. The text around the characters reads "All these people have some kind of paralysis on their face. Before actually drawing a character, you need to pick what part of their face is paralyzed and how much. Having your whole face completely paralyzed is really rare. Weakness on one side of the face is the most common. You probably saw someone with it since it's very common after a stroke". Another block of text in the corner reads "If you have a simpler artstyle, paralysis of the eyes and/or mouth is the easiest to show. Jaw or forehead are more subtle (usually)".

Third slide, titled "Ok, but how do I draw it? (With asymmetry, mainly)". There is a drawing of a man with Bell's palsy, captioned "I will be doing examples showing unilateral (one sided) paralysis to showcase this since it will be easier to show the differences". In the top right are two drawings, one in anime style and other in a western cartoon one. The text box reads "While I encourage to try out multiple options, focus on the features that are more important in your artstyle. Big eyes? Focus on ptosis. Big mouths? Focus on lopsided smiles, etc. Otherwise it can look out of place". The main section of the slide is titled "Upper third of the face". There are simple drawings to accompany the text. It reads "paralysis on the forehead: it looks like one-sided botox essentially. The wrinkles will be weaker or non existent. Paralysis of the eyebrow: moves less. It rests lower than the other eyebrow and can have a crease under. Eyelid paralysis (arguably the most common one): generalyl affects the upper eyelid. It rests lower and has less or no movement". There is a drawing of a pair of eyes, where one is so closed the iris is invisible. Text reads "Note: paralysis very frequently comes with strabismus. Severe ptosis+hypertropia can look like the eye is just white. The iris can be hidden like that". Another text box to another drawing reads "it does get a bit trickier in angles that don't show both sides of the face; IMO focusing on strabismus+eyebrows pointing down is the easiest way to get it across". In the bottom left is a diagram showing different eyes with increasing severities of paralysis. Text reads "As a rule of thumb, more severe paralysis = eyelid rests lower. Here you can see how much of the eye could show".

Fourth slide, titled "Eyes specifically since people tend to put more detail into them than the rest of the face". The "First step" has 2 characters with unaligned eyes, titled "Step 1: give them strabismus (easy)". Below that are examples of eyes with strabismus, captioned "literally just draw the eyes to be unaligned. Inward, outward, up, down, etc.". Step two is titled "Don't make it into the most unfunny joke possible (very hard)". It shows two characters, one having a very exaggerated strabismus and the other having a more realistic one combined with a falling eyelid. The first character is crossed out, and is saying "I'm stupid because I look weird haha (laugh)", while the second character has the checker mark and is saying "I have a personality trait that is not related to having an eye condition". The text below the step 2 reads "Not every person with facial paralysis will have strabismus but a lot do and I never see that in drawings". In the bottom right is a designated square with a character who has significant hypertropia and slightly red eyes. The text reads "rarely, people will be unable to close their eyes rather than the other way around. I meant to put it on the previous slide but I ran out of space".

Fifth slide, titled "mouth and smiling". There is a simple drawing of a man with bell's palsy smiling, there are red lines illustrating how the smile is lopsided and pulls towards the nonparalyzed side. There is another "correct/incorrect" demonstration with the incorrect one, labeled "not how faces work", having their face essentially halved, with one side smiling widely and one actively frowning, and the correct one, labeled "it just pulls to the nonparalyzed side", smiling normally on one side and having a neutral/relaxed expression on the other. The incorrect one has additional text box: "if it looks like the ancient Greek theatre mask, stop. I couldn't do this really downward frown on my paralyzed side even if I wanted to. You need to be able to move your face for that...". At the bottom of the slide are two drawings of the same character smiling; he has bell's palsy in one but not the other, highlighting the differences. The text reads "There are other things that can also be affected but smiling is the main one, especially for drawing. What is not affected are like, jaw muscles. Someone can have problem with that as well but it will be from something else". The rest reads: "A lot of people will overdo smiling so that other people can actually tell they're smiling and essentially do a really wide smile on just one side of the face. So things like gums showing, nose skewing to the side, lower eyelid going up, lip being thinner on the smiling side, etc.". There is a colored disclaimer "also a disclaimer (in case that's not clear): not all people with facial paralysis have it visible on their eyes. I do it here so that you can easily tell which side is supposed to be affected".

Sixth slide, titled "have fun smile emoji". It features a Hindu woman in a powerchair, a Black man walking with a cane, a Brown girl posing, and a white guy looking stern. The first two are captioned "Most people have facial paralysis because of a stroke/traumatic brain injury and a lot will have other disabilities". The girl is captioned "Some people are born like this also. You can draw people with facial differences as pretty people BTW, it's allowed". The last character is drawn with a straight line scar going through his eye. He is captioned "if you're giving your scarred OC #3743 this fuckass scar then at least give them nerve damage like get real LMAO. He would not be fucking ablebodied". While the main drawing doesn't show the character with any sort of paralysis, there's a smaller one where his eyelid and eyebrow are clearly paralyzed. There is another box of text in the corner reading "We are also just normal people and yous on;t have to name your OC with bell's palsy some combination of "half-face" or whatever the fuck".

[ID in alt]

Tutorial on drawing characters/OCs who have some sort of facial paralysis. It doesn't cover all possible variants because I was using mirror as my main reference lawl

Keep in mind that this is an introductory drawing tutorial and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People 👍

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

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starrls

3 weeks ago