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

coelasquid:

I think almost every time I’ve written a situation where I planned for a character to get killed off, when I thought like “well what if I didn’t do that” the prospect of them just dying seemed like the lazy way out, or something I was just writing because “that’s how stories like this go”.

Like, years ago when I thought I was going to be on an extended hiatus I was planning to do a MGDMT graphic novel that had nothing to do with video games and just focused on the original super soldier characters. Mostly the idea was the same theme, Macho Action Dude Reacting to Movie Tropes Like A Reasonably Normal Guy, so it was gonna have all the motions of those same old conventions, but play out differently. At one point the idea was “the girlfriend character dies and he has to deal with it like an emotionally believable person and not a larger than life action guy”. But when I thought about it, that didn’t sit well with me, because even if it was trying to comment on a trope, it was still “female character gets killed for no reason other than the male lead to have a character arc about it” and that rubbed me the wrong way. So I thought, okay, what if she still gets kinda messed up, so they build her some cool robot parts and she’s like Shit Yeah! This is the best! And she thinks it’s so rad having robot parts it kinda throws off the course her life was going down because suddenly the idea of being Robocop seems a lot more exciting than nesting with her high school sweetheart. And he doesn’t have to go have emotions about a dead girlfriend, he has to learn to come to terms with someone he was very close to having a life experience he can’t exactly empathize with that put her on a road to becoming the person she’s decided she wants to be, but not the person he ever planned on her becoming. So his arc is sort of dealing with the grief of a lost hypothetical person, and learning to respect her autonomy to make decisions that he might consider “a bad idea” but improve her quality of life as she wants to live it. Which, in the end, felt like a lot more of an interesting story than “the girl dies so the main character can have emotions about it. But I only got to that point by recognizing the original idea was stale and racking my brain to do something different.

I guess what I’m saying is, when I see professional TV writers get excited about what a twist it is that they kill a beloved character in something to shake up the snowglobe so to speak, I can’t help but think that they fell into that rut of thinking “this is the convention I have been trained to attach to this story”, and didn’t even stop to think there may have been a more interesting and unique route they could have gone. Intrigue comes from giving the audience something they don’t expect to see. It’s easy to think that killing a character for shock value suits that task, but that’s become such a normal device to throw out there that it doesn’t surprise anyone anymore. It’s always worth at least considering what would happen to the story if you didn’t just go down the first path that came into your mind, because the first will almost certainly be the most well-trodden with the least surprises along the way.

(via skymurdock)

Summarize your newest OC in three words

morethanthedark:

Let’s see how weird our tags get

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

How to quickly improve your art

howtodrawanime:

furrypeanuts:

howtodrawanime:

Find a good artist who is a terrible person and let the sheer force of bitterness alone drive you to draw and improve in order to surpass them

I know this is a joke, but I’m seriously pondering the success rate

It’s actually not a joke at all I had a very clear image of a certain someone in my head when I wrote this

Fun fact: this also works for writing.

(Source: officialartdad, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

athenaltena:

ubercream:

mister-smalls:

ubercream:

mister-smalls:

Petition to sit down all the people who make coma theories about Adventure Time and tell them “listen, this fucking show is about the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world where deadly magic has been reawakened following a global thermonuclear war that wiped out the rest of the human species, how much fucking darker do you want it to be”

Even though I thought my first Creative Writing professor was kind of a douche, he made a good point about this. One of our first assignments was to write in this eerie, otherworldly style (we were mimicking a specific author whose name escapes me), so we had to write about eerie otherworldly things happening. It’s no exaggeration to say that more than half the class had a “big reveal” where we find out that the story’s strange events and themes are all in the mind of some person in an insane asylum, or someone having a drug trip.

My professor said something like, “you just successfully wrote a world that feels separate from our own, but got frightened last minute and shoe-horned in normalcy. You showed that you were afraid to commit to something different and interesting.” Though I’m typically a contrarian and a piece of garbage, I am inclined to agree with my professor. I feel like people who write coma theories and the like are afraid to accept that the world of the story is separate from our own. They like everything wrapped up in this crazy little realism box where nothing out of the ordinary happens in fiction.

you win the Best Addition to a Post prize

Thank you :)

This pretty well hits the nail on the head as to why I generally hate coma/dream theories and people who think they’re so fucking deep for coming up with it. In my book it’s LAZY, plain and simple.

(Source: frog-and-toad-are-friends, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

Shoutout to those who aren’t writers or artists

cullenstairshenanigans:

That’s all those of you who don’t produce drawings or comics, fics or drabbles.

All of you who just reblog, only comment, don’t do anything but look and read.

This one’s for you.

Because you’re the likers, the sharers, the taggers, the ask-senders. The reviewers, the praise-givers, the supporters, the flailers. The response, the feedback, the reward for all that hard work. Sometimes the difference between giving up and continuing.

You’re the cornerstone, the heart and soul of this community. It wouldn’t exist without you. Please don’t ever ever think otherwise. Please don’t ever think you shouldn’t talk to the creators whose stuff you enjoy.

And please let me say this:

Thank you for being awesome.

I’m an author–of original stuff–and the only reason I’m considering trying to get my stuff published is because my roommate is, as she reminds me regularly, a fan in need of a fandom.  Having someone like your stuff, leave a comment, scream in the tags, anything, it’s such a godsend.

(via suzukiblu)

Weird Question

I’m working on a novel that has a very broad range of characters and I’m trying to do them all justice, so that means that I’ve been doing a lot of research–I’m white and cis, and I know that presents an inherent limitation in my experience, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to just…not do the best justice I can to my characters and the very real people they represent.  To wit: I’m working with an especially prominent side character who identifies as a trans man.  Because of the limitations of the universe, gender reassignment and hormone therapy are currently not available to him, and he struggles with fits of dysphoria.  If you’re not comfortable, there’s absolutely no pressure, and you can pretend that you didn’t see this, but I was wondering if there was anyone would would be willing to share their experience with me so that I can craft him as best as I possibly can.  I have anon turned on if you’re more comfortable that way, or you can message me privately.

Describe your writing process in three words or less.

fireflyca:

osointricate:

winjennster:

majesticduxk:

tsuki-chibi:

sakuai1:

dayanknight:

why-do-you-want-my-user-name:

winchesterenthusiast:

deanscolette:

bradburydiary:

booflo62:

megara09:

nekithamajere:

standbyyourmantis:

emospritelet:

deariedoo:

the960writers:

emirael:

scarvesandcelery:

deathchrist2000:

wackd:

philsandifer:

creepingmonsterism:

mrnelson007:

unconqueredcats:

ununnilium:

justusinheretogether:

erikadprice:

writerfan2013:

holyromanempress:

ninjacookiexd:

ryttu3k:

thatpersonrightbehindyou:

glitchboygirlidek:

periegesisvoid:

jewishzevran:

turbomun:

under-the-bed-tales:

octoblets:

prismportrait:

frankpanioncube:

papyrusthegreatskelenton:

older-and-more-determined:

demmyguard:

ask-shadowknight-of-the-stars:

smollizardandrobot:

therealshootingstar:

toastyhat:

fatal-blow:

g-g-freak:

cameoappearance:

thegladhatter:

casketscratcher:

blackcrowcalling:

“Well, fuck.”

“USE THE SPOONS”

“oops okay nevermind”

“throw things together”

There we… are?

“Just fake it”

“Someone should cry.”

“I’m very tired”

“Ok gotta scribble…”

Okay, which ship?

“goodbye, lettuce friend.”

“This is shit”

“Writers block why!?”

Undergrads will SUFFER

Long winded, commas

“Where’s the eraser”

How do ending

DONT STOP ME

what middle?

fuck fuck fuck

Not enough smut

needs more plot

LOUD FRANTIC SCREAMING

So much sin

Stream of consciousness

Peril solves everything

who did this

The blueprint’s done…

Fiction about fiction.

wut r werds

How’d THAT happen?

Metafiction, sprituality, lesbians

Shit, almost dinnertime.

It’s one am

LET ME SLEEP!!!!!!

Help. Help. Help.

Understate your understatements.

Fucking write already!

annoyingly blank page

Angst AGAIN, seriously?

Make it smuttier

Angst, ANGST, humour

Just end already!

the end, probably.

well… fuck it 

oh…that wasn’t supposed to happen….

oh well

“well, I tried.”

“This isn’t working”

What the f**k?

This…I…Huh?

Yeah, fuck it

…that could work

FUCK YOU DEAN

I added more

wordy angst curve

Time for sadism

sfiddy:

roachpatrol:

gamerinserepeat:

stealthbuffalo:

evildorito:

onewordtest:

trikruwriter:

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement. 

“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”

Dear Tumblr,

Does anyone know why this is? It really bothers me and I find myself actively breaking this rule all the time, because I feel like the comma often weakens the dialog involved–only to be corrected later, literally every time I show a piece to anyone. I am generally OK with bowing to grammatical structures needed for clarity but this one is really arbitrary to me and I can’t see why putting a period at the end of a dialog that, were it a first person narration, you would put a period after. No one ever seems confused by what I mean, they just say that it is incorrect and correct me. Is there something I am missing here?

Confused Grammar Disciple 

English BA here.

So, when you use the period, it essentially denotes that the dialog is separate from whatever the action is the character is performing, whereas using a comma signifies that the dialog and action are happening at the same time or in conjunction with one another. It helps bring clarity to the reader imagining the scene.

If that helps.

“Right now I’m providing an example of how if the dialogue’s part of the action you should use a comma,” I type while sitting in my bed. If I had used a period there, ‘I type while sitting in my bed’ would have been an independent thought or action.

“This is another example of how if the action happens after the writing, you use a period.” I put my computer down, stand up, and do a really cool backflip. That was definitely a different thought or action than the dialogue, as well as being sick as hell.

“But if I were to do the backflip while explaining shit I’d definitely use a comma,” I elaborate, backflipping again. I’m a master of doing both exposition and acrobatics at the same time.

“I didn’t do any backflips at all, actually. I was lying to you.” I finish this example and click ‘reblog’. 

I could have used this while writing that gd massive fic a few years ago.

(Source: theclonewriter, via lupinatic)