Mac recommending mc Batwoman is the highlight of my week
Bonus:
look at all the “comic books”
Girls are amazing. Being friends with girls is equally amazing.
The Tatler, England, April 22, 1903
Charlotte Brontë: Here’s my novel about a young governess who falls in love with a charming asshole edgelord who keeps his wife in the attic
Emily Brontë: Here’s my novel about a tragic orphan and a young lady who torture each other and call it love
Anne Brontë: Here’s my novel about a woman who leaves an abusive marriage and nabs herself a hot young Yorkshire sheepfarmer who Treats Her Right
Me: Oh thank God, at least one of you is sensible.
Showing vs Telling
Do you have any narrative summary, or are you bouncing from scene to scene without pausing for breath?
Characterization & Exposition
What information do your readers need in order to understand your story? At what point in the story do they need to know it?
How are you getting this info across to your readers? Is it all at once through a writer-to-reader lecture?
If exposition comes out through dialogue, is it through dialogue your characters would actually speak even if your readers didn’t have to know the information? In other words, does the dialogue exist only to put the information across?
Point of View
Look at your descriptions. Can you tell how your viewpoint character feels about what you’re describing?
Proportion
Look at descriptions. Are the details you give the ones your viewpoint character would notice?
Reread your first fifty pages, paying attention to what you spend your time on. Are the characters you develop most fully important to the ending? Do you use the locations you develop in detail later in the story? Do any of the characters play a surprising role in the ending? Could readers guess this from the amount of time you spend on them?
Dialogue
Can you get rid of some of your speaker attributions entirely? Try replacing some with beats.
How often have you paragrapher your dialogue?Try paragraphing a little more often.
See How it Sounds
Read your dialogue aloud. At some point, read aloud every word you write.
Be on the lookout for places where you are tempted to change the wording.
How well do your characters understand each other? Do they ever mislead on another? Any outright lies?
Interior Monologue
First, how much interior monologue do you have? If you seem to have a lot, check to see whether some is actually dialogue description in disguise. Are you using interior monologue to show things that should be told?
Do you have thinker attributions you should get rid of (by recasting into 3rd person, by setting the interior monologue off in its own paragraph or in italics, or by simply dropping the attribution)
Do your mechanics match your narrative distance?(Thinker attributions, italics, first person when your narrative is in third?)
Easy Beats
How many beats do you have? How often do you interrupt your dialogue?
What are your beats describing? Familiar every day actions, such as dialling a telephone or buying groceries? How often do you repeat a beat? Are your characters always looking out of windows or lighting cigarettes?
Do your beats help illuminate your characters? Are they individual or general actions anyone might do under just about any circumstances?
Do your beats fit the rhythm of your dialogue? Read it aloud and find out
Breaking up is easy to do
Look for white space. How much is there? Do you have paragraphs that go on as much as a page in length?
Do you have scenes with NO longer paragraphs? Remember what you’re after is the right balance.
Have your characters made little speeches to one another?
If you’re writing a novel, are all your scenes or chapters exactly the same length? -> brief scenes or chapters can give you more control over your story. They can add to your story’s tension. Longer chapters can give it a more leisurely feels. If scene or chapter length remains steady while the tension of the story varies considerably, your are passing up the chance to reinforce the tension.
Once is usually enough
Reread your manuscript, keeping in mind what you are trying to do with each paragraph–what character point you’re trying to establish, what sort of mood you’re trying to create, what background you’re trying to suggest. In how many different ways are you accomplishing each of these ends?
If more than one way, try reading the passage without the weakest approach and see if it itsn’t more effective.
How about on a chapter level? Do you have more than one chapter that accomplishes the same thing?
Is there a plot device or stylistic effect you are particularly pleased with? How often do you use it?
Keep on the lookout for unintentional word repeats. The more striking a word or phrase is, the more jarring it will be if repeated
Sophistication
How many -ing and as phrases do you write? The only ones that count are the ones that place a bit of action in a subordinate clause
How about -ly adverbs?
Do you have a lot of short sentences, both within your dialogue and within your description and narration? Try stringing some of them together with commas
I really love the bold shapes that make up Jen’s outline and the way the hot pink contrasts with the blue green background.
Jem and the Holograms comic cover design for class. This was way too much fun to work on considering it was homework. I would love to make a cover for this comic one day but until then…
Might make this a print later without the IDW and Jem logo, or just remake the Jem logo. We’ll see!
EDIT: Tumblr is eating this color for some reason. Check out my Twitter to see the FULL-COLOR RANGE!
Instagram | Ko-fi | Website | Twitter
I think next thursday is gonna be the best day of my entire life tbh
Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
link to PDF
https://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/sites/fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/files/ct-mmb-147.pdf
Hi, are there any transcripts or play through videoes for lovestruckvoltage games? The hearts are bleeding me absolutely dry.
22/Bisexual/ Autistic/ ADD/ Dyspraxia/Dysgraphic/ She and her pronouns/ Pagan/intersectional feminist
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