Responsibility demands sacrifice.

Mayra. 21. Senior at uni. Queer. Preferred pronouns are she/her. History major, Psych/Japanese minor. Interests: the educational system, Homestuck, languages, feminism, GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities) rights, sewing, theatre, Les Miserables, Ib, and writing/drawing. Fights windmills in her spare time.
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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor

 

cold-creature: locktheuniversebehindyou: nataliesfantasticadventures: I Promise I’m Not a Murderer: The Story of a Researching Writer I remeber during NaNo, we were sitting at a table, all of us writing. I got stuck at this part in my sci-fi story, so I looked up and go “Hey, guys, how much of a spine would you have to rip out before someone actually dies? And what if they’re mechnically modified?” And everyone starts brainstorming about this, we figure it out and I continue writing. Five minutes later, this other girls goes like “What’s a good way to kill a baby?” So we continued talking about murdering babies. I love my life. Oh NaNo- you bring out the best in us.  Oh shit, that’s where I went wrong. I didn’t do brainstorming sessions with friends! Damn, I’ll need to set something up next year.

cold-creature:

locktheuniversebehindyou:

nataliesfantasticadventures:

I Promise I’m Not a Murderer: The Story of a Researching Writer

I remeber during NaNo, we were sitting at a table, all of us writing. I got stuck at this part in my sci-fi story, so I looked up and go “Hey, guys, how much of a spine would you have to rip out before someone actually dies? And what if they’re mechnically modified?”

And everyone starts brainstorming about this, we figure it out and I continue writing.

Five minutes later, this other girls goes like “What’s a good way to kill a baby?”

So we continued talking about murdering babies.

I love my life.

Oh NaNo- you bring out the best in us. 

Oh shit, that’s where I went wrong. I didn’t do brainstorming sessions with friends! Damn, I’ll need to set something up next year.

how to make your alternate medieval fantasy story both original and not shitty

khaleesi:

As a fantasy writer, I am RIDIC tired of reading the same goddamn story over and over and over again. It’s all basically Lord of the Rings, but with different names and different territories. (I’m dead serious about that. Whole books have been written about how LOTR changed fantasy as a genre forever, and while I get that, let’s stop rewriting it, ok?)
What I’m not talking about here is historical fiction. That’s another thing entirely. Alternate medieval fantasy (also known as high fantasy or epic fantasy) takes place in a recognizable world that is somehow reminiscent of the medieval period in our own history. There are roughly eight billion examples of this, including but not limited to: A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings, The Farseer Trilogy, Kristen Cashore’s books, pretty much anything about King Arthur, etc.
Most high fantasy has tropes. These tropes are fucking old. We can do better.
  • Stop making everyone white. Guys I am so fucking serious, all this does is show that you know fuck-all about history and how many people of color were doing a m a z i n g shit in the medieval period. Also? You are MAKING THIS WORLD UP. It is NOT ACTUALLY BASED ON EUROPEAN HISTORICAL FACT ANYWAY. The hell is everyone white for? (There’s a much larger conversation to be had here about most people who write high fantasy having no idea that the European world they’re loosely envisioning as they write has nothing to do with the historical reality, but that’s another post).
  • Don’t make it about white people vs. non-white people. If your white hero is going up against savages from the desert-lands, you’re fucking up.
  • Yo, for serious, no one cares about your reluctant noble bastard-born son of the king. Every other alternate medieval fantasy story has a reluctant noble bastard-born son of the king out saving the world. I just yawned writing that sentence. Do something else. There are literally BILLIONS of different characters you can come up with as a writer, come on.
  • People didn’t just start becoming queer in the 20th century in this universe. People have been queer basically forever, in a lot of the world. No1curr about your book full of straight people. Totally over it.
  • If your protagonist is a lady, her entire story shouldn’t be about saving the kingdom and also suddenly finding LOVE. Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, but I promise you can write a story where a woman falls in love that isn’t about the woman falling in love (with the only man who never doubted her!)

Avoid these hideous tropes and remember: YOU ARE MAKING UP THIS WORLD. Why should it be bound by the same bigoted bullshit we run into in our world all the damn time?

castillon02:

monetizeyourcat:

ludwigfalalalala:

The internet ruined grammar for the contemporary generation this is known because as we all know old people on facebook have impeccable grammar compared to younger people

realtalk: the internet revived the epistolary and essay formats, which were previously held in reverence by a telegraphic and telephonic and audiovisual culture

olds are mad about internet talk because they treat writing letters as a class signifier and it’s part of our way of life indistinguishable from our broader literacy

we are living in the renaissance of the written word

(Source: memejacker)

(Source: amandaonwriting)

Different Characters, Different Beliefs

mooderino:

image

In order to make a scene between two characters feel interesting it needs some degree of conflict. That’s fine if one character happens to be a cop and the other a robber, but the story isn’t always going to present you with directly oppositional characters like that.

But even if the characters in a scene don’t have anything to fight over and the scene isn’t highly charged or full of high stakes, you can still give characters something to clash over.

Read More

adioslola:

alohomorashlie:

montypythonandtheholyblog:

sheg0:

 #resources #that I will probably never use #because lol

except not fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment because I will never get over their blatant racism or the way they disregarded people calling them out on their shit. (also I find a lot of their advice kind of subpar, anyway, which, admittedly you will find in a lot of writing communities, but if you are having discussions you well ought to be willing to include all views and ideas)

anyway I dig prompts.

yes.

To All Writers of Everything Ever

latenightspooky:

I need to rant about this:

Also known as the best writing program ever! It’s a full-screen writing program!

So you open it up, and it looks like this:

You’re thinking, “Ok, so what? It’s a screen with a picture. Whoopdie do.” But it get’s better! It’s customizable!

See that “appearance”? Click it.

You can also use custom fonts that you have installed!

See that “music”? Click it.

If you drag your own music into the folder, like so:

You get this!:

But wait! It gets better!

See “typing sounds”? You can change those too!

Perhaps the best is - YOU CAN USE ANY PICTURE FOR THE BACKGROUND. It will automatically fade it for you!

Seriously, guys, this tool is wonderful. You can use it for:

  • Research papers
  • Novel writing
  • Play writing
  • Short stories
  • Homework assignments
  • Ranting about your friends when they piss you off
  • Writing your shopping list

It auto-saves. It exports to .rtf. Hotkeys from Word for italicize, underlining, and bold work. You can print RIGHT FROM THERE.

And the seriously best thing ever?

It fits on a flash drive. The entire thing with added music is maybe 131MBs.

The bestest thing ever.

It’s free.

(Source: beenokle.com)

Paint Bucket Resources: Gee, I don't know how to research writing Characters of Color tastefully:

castillon02:

youvegotlovetoburn:

stfuconservatives:

missturdle:

1.) It’s not hard to figure out what to do, there are plenty of resources.

People say you have to get it right, do your research, but … what else are you supposed to research? It’s not like people with more pigment in their skin have completely different personalities than those with less, any more than any individual. It’s frustrating when I can’t even figure out what the heck people are talking about.

Bam. Research step one done for you.


2.) Writing characters of color/minorities is a good thing.

I don’t like the notion that fantasy authors are under some kind of obligation to present ethnically diverse worlds. I’m English, and a fair sized part of English history consists of unwashed beardy white people in mead halls. If I’m inspired by my own history and cultural heritage, then that’s what I’m damn well going to write about. I’m not writing about some other culture just to appease the people who think there aren’t enough black characters in fantasy, or whatever. You want it, you write it. Nothing to do with me.

You’re wrong.


3.) Your all White Fantasy Land Didn’t Exist in Real Life:

…the rather medieval one has more diversity than real medieval Germany probably had […] In a world with medieval means of transport, it just doesn’t seem natural to me to mix dark-skinned people with blue-eyed blondes in one setting. I just try to give the people a colour that fits the place where they live.

You mean like the people from Africa and the Middle east who began to take over Southern Spain, as well as the Jews who were pretty well spread out throughout Europe, the Middle Easterners they would have met on the Crusades, and the incoming Mongol Hordes who spread to the very edges of Eastern Europe before the empire finally collapsed? Don’t forget that Turkey is right there, and the silk road would have gone from Song Dynasty China, through India, and ended in Turkey before moving further westwards into places like Germany. Also the attempts at the Franco-Mongol alliance would have been pretty interesting. (That’s about the 13th century - arguably smack dab in Middle Ages Europe and definite contact between France/Christian Europe and the Mongolian Empire.)

Unless you’re writing everything in the far reaches of Denmark or something, historically speaking, I call bullshit on people who have societies that are only all white ever, because it’s just inaccurate. Consider the relative closeness of Northern Africa to Spain, or Turkey to the rest of Europe, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Crusades, Slavery existing in Europe, including England, the slave trade, imperialism, Pax Mongolica, The Silk Road, Jewish Diaspora, the Islamic Empire vs The Holy Roman Empire, Egypt, Algeria, China’s sailing across the world, The Maruyan/Gupta Empires of India, tea trades, Columbus sailing in hopes of finding China, etc, etc, etc.


4.) I mean I just don’t believe you anymore. It’s unrealistic. Seriously guys.

You’d think I’d just denied the holocaust or something. Get a grip. All I said was that I’m going to write about my own cultural experience and anyone who thinks I should do otherwise for the sake of political correctness can bugger off.

This isn’t even about being PC this is just not being wrong about everything.

good lord.

A handy-dandy reference for not writing like a racist.

SWEET GOLD MINE OF KNOWLEDGE COME TO MAMA

(Source: turdlewexler)

Bizarre Victorian fact of the day…

vicfangirlguide:

From their publication in 1837 ‘The Pickwick Papers’ by Charles Dickens were incredibly popular and created one of the first cases of mass merchandising associated with a work of fiction. Pickwick-inspired chintz fabric appeared in drapers shops, tailors were asked to cut clothes to imitate those of characters in the book, the fictional members of the Pickwick Club were turned into jugs, and pastries called Pickwicks and sugar confections in the shape of the character of Joe the ‘fat boy’ were made.

tailors were asked to cut clothes to imitate those of characters in the book

GUYS. COSPLAY WAS A THING IN 1837.

“Write the first 250 words of a short story, but write them in ONE SENTENCE. Make sure that the sentence is grammatically correct and punctuated correctly. This exercise is intended to increase your powers in sentence writing.”

cherryslenberman:

This is probably the most horrifying writing exercise I have ever read.

250 word long sentence is bound to lose any reader’s interest. WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO LEARN TO WRITE 250 WORD LONG SENTENCES???

This.

Why would you even write a sentence that long…