Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

hazeldomain:

sassy-un-classy:

Writing is slamming out an epic battle in one afternoon and then getting stuck on how a character walks across the room for three weeks

I am feeling so personally attacked right now

(via littlestartopaz)

mustangsally78:

animate-mush:

transgirlsamwinchester:

clairwitch:

mylordshesacactus:

charamei:

transgirlsamwinchester:

stop telling ppl to write like hemingway i promise u adverbs are not another face of the dark lord satan its ok

If writers took every bit of writing advice that was in the format ‘Don’t use X part of the English language’, all English fiction would read like Spot the dog

#Spot chases the ball#the ball chases Spot#the ball conquers nations#the ball still chases spot#see spot run#run spot run#the ball is coming

IMO Adverbs can be pretty nasty sometimes (”’I can’t wait!’ said Tom excitedly” is still a pretty bad sentence) but it all comes down to how you use them, and what words you put them together with.

Generally, you should try to avoid using adverbs in phrases like ‘she said happily’ or ‘he screamed loudly’. Aside from that, adverbs aren’t inheritly bad. 

And ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ isn’t a bad sentence at all. 

thats not really anything inherent to adverbs, it’s just redundancy. the dialogue is speaking for itself. ’“i can’t wait,” said tom excitedly’ is a bad sentence, but ’“i cant wait,” said tom flatly’ is chill. id probably throw a comma in there before ‘flatly’ for pacing but u do u

“dont use adverbs” is basically a really shitty way to verbalize “redundancy is often awkward and makes your audience feel condescended to if it’s not done well”–because lgr there are times when redundancy is okay, there are times when literally everything is okay

break the rules of literature. theyre shitty rules anyway

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, because verbing weirds language

Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing, because no verbs

Then they for the descriptive, and I silent because verbless and nounless

Then they for me, and, but no

REBLOGGING BECAUSE THE LAST POST IS BRILLIANT.

(Source: patrexes, via unpretty)

Dear Void,

Please make me feel less guilty about my total lack of inspiration for my long WIPs so that I can do the posting thing for my shorter finished stuff.

Thanks.

Sincerely,
The Guilty Party

unpretty:

I always get shit for using italics so much but you will take my excessive italics out of my cold dead hands because as far as I’m concerned each one of these is a completely different sentence:

• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – this can be read a lot of different ways depending on context honestly. I mean it’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with it but two people could read it aloud in entirely different ways you know?
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – someone was startled and originally was just going to say ‘what’ but then they recovered and turned it into a complete sentence
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – someone’s really elongating the ‘e’ on that ‘the’ for emphasis, this person’s probably really obnoxious. although tbh they’re probably say it more like, “What. The fuck. Are you doing here?” wow what an asshole
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – this guy’s so pissed, this might be peter capaldi, i don’t know
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – this chick is at an exclusive party and her best friend just showed up without an invitation and at first she was just glad to see her but now she’s concerned
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – oh shit that bitch should have known better than to show her face here after what she pulled, it’s about to go down. actually that might have been her bestie right above this saying that right after someone said this.
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – not only has someone just shown up where they don’t belong but they’re doing something weird, they’re probably a secret teenage hero and all their friends think they’re on drugs
• “What the fuck are you doing here?” – all the bars in all the world and you had to walk into mine, how did you even get here, you don’t even like bars, i didn’t tell anyone about this place i just filled a cave with some beer

(via unpretty)

petermorwood:

itsakattastrophe:

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

muttluver:

roachpatrol:

wallycaine:

friendlytroll:

dear fiction writers: 

as far as I know, there is no large carnivore who would abandon actively eating a killed meal to chase live prey. chasing and hunting live prey is a risk, as a healthy live creature has the capability to injure a carnivore, or tire it out through the chase. If there is, say, a giant pile of dead bodies to eat, which abandoning would allow other carnivores or scavengers to steal and eat instead, it makes no sense at all. 

please stop doing that thing

The sole exception I can think of is if the large carnivore thought the live prey was another carnivore or scavenger, and was chasing them as a threat display to ensure they didn’t steal the dead bodies. Even in that case, though, it would only be a short, mock charge followed by returning to the pile if the opponent fled. With possibly whatever the animal’s equivalent of “and stay out” would be. 

Another thing: most carnivores don’t like to fight. They have to mug something to death for every single meal, they have to stay in top shape while conserving their energy. Meanwhile, herbivores have plenty of extra energy because they eat stuff that comes out of the ground and doesn’t fight back, and they often live in big social groups, so they’re better at handling stress and more used to having to actually come to blows with other animals to get their way. 

So like, a zebra will try kick your ass just to see what’s up. A tiger won’t do shit unless it’s damn sure it can take you. I’d rather come face to face with a cougar than a stag— have you seen videos of what happens to hunters when a stag catches a dude on the ground? the stag tears the dude apart. Not even to eat him. Just because the stag didn’t like what was going on and decided it was time to curb stomp a motherfucker. 

So if you’re deciding what kind of Big Scary Animals to have be a threat, like, forget wolves and lions and eagles and velociraptors. Go drop in a moose.

This is why loud noise can scare bears away. It’s a threat display that normally convinces them that the charge isn’t worth the effort.

-Exception:  

If a carnivore is Not That Hungry it might drop something dead to chase something that is doing Extreme Prey Behavior– but it’s not going to be serious about it. I’m thinking of things like a domestic cat that chases birds and mice for kicks. Honestly, I think that the t rex in Jurassic Park was a good example of predator behavior– she abandons something difficult (like the kids in the jeep) for the bright shiny thing she has been conditioned to understand means food (tightpants math guy with the flare + gruff dino man with flare). For the rest of the film, she chases things that run, and then quits and chows down once she has something. This has been one of my biggest beefs with the later JP films, especially Jurassic World– rather than the scares coming from being treated and stalked like prey by animals, the scares are based on monsters killing and eating randomly. (And what’s with the treatment of all the herbivores as good and gentle? Herbivores will fuck you up because they got scared or because you pissed them off and those are the two primary emotions of large herbivores– they won’t eat you, but they’ll still trample you).

+Addition:

The predators that aren’t snipers (like cougars or herons) tend to test individuals in a herd– they want to gauge your health and willingness to fuck somebody up before they commit to you as a target. If you stare them down with your cold dead eyes and gear up to wreck their shit they’ll piss off unless they’re completely desperate. (Like I said, the main emotions of prey animals are Time To Fuck Shit Up and Time To Run). 
So, I’m desperately tired of all these people running and screaming away from wolves and velociraptors and bears oh my. 

Consider:

How much scarier fiction could be if predators acted like actual predators that can be intelligent and patient and are pressing around the edges of your party to find weakness and fear. 

Ever gone back and read the original Jurassic Park book?  Please don’t, fuckin’ awful I couldn’t even finish it for various reason but the predator behavior like this was a BIG problem.  I got so angry at it…haha.

In many situations you’d be more likely to get chased and damaged by a herbivore feeling threatened than a predator already feeding (though push your luck there and see what happens…)

My favourite example of the “herbivores are harmless” fallacy is the Cape Buffalo. If they’re unhappy about the presence of something that upsets them, they’ll make it go away…

…and if the something-that-upsets-them can’t run away fast enough (people, for one) then its going-away can be messy and permanent.

Someone (I think it was writer Robert Ruark) once described Cape Buffalo as “looking at you as if you owe them money.”

This lot all know you owe them money…

…but the big guy on the left knows how much, and that your repayment is late.

(via ifeelbetterer)

violent-darts:

star-anise:

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

bal-lantine:

ttracer:

draw women in post-apocalyptic world settings with armpit hair, leg hair, bushy brows and pubic hair ya cowards,, draw brown women/women with dark thick hair with arm hair and happy trails and sideburns and mustaches i’m sick of seeing silky smooth soapy clean make up wearing post apocalyptic dolled up women next to stinky sweaty crusty men with dirty nails and sweaty clothes and sweaty greasy hair and 3m long ugly beards

or, if you must depict women maintaining that shit, at least be interesting about it. I can actually buy someone shaving/putting on makeup if that’s their way of coping, something they do to tether themselves to the past or an ellusive feeling of normalcy. So show me the EFFORT put in, yeah? Show that woman risking a zombie horde because she spotted a fucking tube of scarlet lipstick and christ she hasn’t seen that color in five years but it’s what she wore on her first date with her now-dead husband. Show me the girl who is quietly starting to fucking lose it but covers it up with fanatical commitment to her appearance because if she gets these eyebrows right, maybe no one will notice how she stares at things that aren’t there.

I find it completely plausible that some women would go to incredible lengths to maintaining their appearance, because they’ve been socialized all their lives to caring about it, because it’s a part of their identity. So show me how that part gets negotiated with once the world has gone to hell.

Catch me in your local bunker doing a smoky eye with the ashes of my former life.

One of the visual images that still sticks with me is from the 2000 TV show Prairie Quest, when modern people simulated homesteading in the 1870s. They all got kind of bushy and hairy as they dealt with an extremely limited supply of clean, warm water or good soap.  One of the women hated the feeling of hairy legs while she slept, so as an act of love and care, her husband had her prop her legs up on the kitchen table while he carefully shaved her legs with a hunting knife.

… that is honestly fucking adorable and kind of hot and I am totally stealing it for a post-apocalyptic setting.

(Source: anglaziegler, via charminglyantiquated)