Tag: writing

thewritewolf:

moonpaw:

A tip for authors: Try to avoid putting things like “I’m bad at summaries” when making one, because that’s one of the first things readers see and judge on whether or not to open the fic and chances are a number of potential readers will turn away when seeing it

If you are unsure of what to put for a summary, instead of saying that you’re bad at them, look for a paragraph in the fic you are proud of and use that excerpt as the summary

Then later on if you come up with a proper summary you can change it later, or just keep it as is 

That goes for a lot of things too – chapter introductions, notes, the like. If you say its bad or that you aren’t good at it, then that’s what the reader is primed to think.

If you let them come to their own conclusions, you’ll be surprised at how much more likely they are to enjoy it.

irisbleufic:

quasi-normalcy:

quasi-normalcy:

quasi-normalcy:

What I can tell you as a transgender woman is that occasionally I will read trans woman characters written by cisgender authors. And I can pretty much always tell when the author is cis, even if the character is portrayed respectfully, because they get some details wrong or something. But I certainly don’t think that they shouldn’t be allowed to take a stab at it, and I actually appreciate any representation that isn’t egregiously harmful. And I certainly don’t think that only transgender women should be allowed to write transgender women because then it falls on me, and that’s rather tokenizing, isn’t it?

Also it seems like demanding that only #OwnVoices authors should be allowed to write certain characters is an excellent way to enforce a situation where most books are about cishet white people.

And no: you probably won’t get all of the specific details of someone else’s lived experience correct, in much the same way that most authors don’t get all of the specific details about how, say, nuclear reactors or space work. But so long as your character passes as realistically human and not a one-dimensional caricature of what you think that other types of people are like, then I think that that’s reasonable.

Also, sensitivity readers are a thing, and enhance all of the above actions! Paying a reader from the demographic you have written to go over your writing and give constructive feedback is a wonderful thing to do. It benefits both parties involved not only in the financial and craft-honing senses, but also in the exchange of ideas and learning about someone whose perspective and lived experience are different from yours.

heywriters:

writeness:

stickydragonpaper:

writeness:

one of the best pieces of writing advice i’ve ever gotten:

if a scene isn’t working, change the weather.

it sounds stupid, but seriously, it works. thank u to my screenwriting professor for this wisdom

Can you elaborate?

idk i literally just mean change the weather. if the scene feels wrong to you, have you tried writing it so the scene has rain? is a terrible, crazy thunderstorm about to rain down on your characters? is the wind mussing their hair?

adding more extreme weather can make the stakes feel higher. weather affects us, and it’ll affect your characters, too. if your characters are tired, weighed down, sluggish, making it incredibly hot outside will only add to that and help push the emotion of the scene along. if something dramatic is happening, a good storm will always work. wind whipping a character’s hair around does wonders for tension.

my most boring real life moments have been greatly amplified by the heat. as soon as something happens, I’m either so overheated or desperate to escape the heat, that i might do/say uncharacteristic things because there’s sweat dripping into my eyes and i want to jump in cold water with all my clothes on.

if it’s intensely windy, foggy, freezing, or just dry and dusty, every scene in real life is affected by it. writers should definitely take the weather into consideration when the writing feels slow.

And if the scene is entirely indoors, shut off the power, the heat, the ac, or put something smelly in the room. Really irritate your characters.

spacefroggity:

spacefroggity:

spacefroggity:

That trope of the, like, All-Purpose Scientist™ can be annoying but also sometimes it’s very fun if it’s in character that they would just. Study everything. Like sometimes it’s suspendably believable. Sometimes a character is like “I’m A Scientist™” and ur like “ok cool what’s your field” and they’re like “Yes” and I can just accept this because they’re Like That

If you have an All-Purpose Scientist™ character you need to have a scene where they count their phds on their fingers

Highlight the absurdity of this person knowing Fucken Everything it’s funny let Dr Science be funny have other academics look at them like “what the fuck? What the fuck?”

shellsan:

heywriters:

greenbergsays:

kedreeva:

theraisincouncil:

kedreeva:

When I say “writers don’t want your unsolicited criticism” and “leaving unsolicited criticism on fanfiction hurts writers” THIS is what I mean.

This isn’t even all of them, this is just from a FEW posts on the subject. Read through these, and then look me in the eyes and say you’re ~helping writers~ by leaving that criticizing comment on someone’s fic when they didn’t ask you to.

You’re hurting or, at best, annoying us. You’re hurting fandom.

You’re not helping us.

Here is what good criticism looks like:

1) Start with something you loved!

You can even stop here, because positive feedback is still constructive criticism.

2) Ask questions that you wish the Author had asked themself

Was there anything that you wish had been explained or developed more? What direction do you wish the Author had taken? Let the author know if there were any places you got confused.

3) Ask the author if they had any specific concerns, then address them.

Maybe the Author stressed over a certain paragraph being too boring. Either offer suggestions, or put their fears to rest.

4) End with something else you liked!

If you are reviewing a hard copy of someone’s work, put lil hearts by the phrases that made you smile!

-Don’t correct spelling or grammar unless you are not able to understand a sentence/paragraph/the whole story because of it. Grammar and spelling will improve naturally as a reader/writer matures, and that is not your job. You are not the grammar police. Anyone who self-proclaims themselves as one needs to grow uo.

-Don’t say anything about who the author is as a person. Feedback should just be a product of the interaction between reader+work.

My life as a writer began when an English teacher decided to take my sappy teenage work seriously. Writing is a journey of constant improvement. The best feedback you can give is: “I’m proud of you.”

@theraisincouncil

Stop this. Stop it.

You’re obviously jumping into an argument with no idea of the history of it , but this is the exact behavior I’m talking about that’s damaging.

Fandom isn’t a writing class. We are not in English 101 with you. You’re not our teacher, and we’re not students that you need to correct by giving us unsolicited criticism. You’re not even my beta reader. You’re Joe Schmoe on the internet and we don’t want your unsolicited criticism on how to improve.

Listen, I know you mean well, but please take a moment and look at what you just did. You looked at a hundred comments from a hundred people saying “please stop doing this behavior, it’s hurting us” and said “okay, but here’s how to do this behavior anyway.”

No! The point is stop doing it. YOU are the one hurting us.

“My life as a writer began when an English teacher decided to take my sappy teenage work seriously. Writing is a journey of constant improvement.“

I mean, listen.

I started writing fanfiction at eleven–and you can imagine how terrible that was–which my dad found and read.

Despite the fact that it was terrible, thinly veiled Mary Sue self-insert, my dad took it seriously. He told me that it was amazing and imaginative and he never would’ve thought to do the thing I did in that one story, etc, etc.

It was terrible writing, but he only ever encouraged me to write more. He only ever gave me compliments.

You’re right, writing is a journey of constant improvement, but nowhere is it written that that journey must be made on a road where random passersby throw rotten fruit at you under the guise of helping you.

I am the writer I am today not because my dad criticized my work or because of snotty, holier-than-thou comments on the internet. I’m the writer I am today because I’ve been practicing for over fifteen years.

Year after year, fic after fic, fandom after fandom, I have gotten consistently better at crafting stories and it’s not because of so-called “constructive criticisms” on fanfiction that I’m already done writing.

It’s because I got encouragement when I needed it and silence when I needed that.

I’m not saying that everyone’s story is mine or that people even grow the way I do and I’m not saying that criticism is never warranted.

I’m saying that constructive criticism is a beta’s job and that it useless after the fact, which is when the author gets your comment–after the story is posted, after it is done being written–and that are there enough writers out there that DO learn and grow just by practicing that perhaps you should be mindful of what you comment on a fic.

That is literally the entire argument.

How many screenshots of messages and tags have to be posted before people get that they’re hurting writers instead of helping them?

“You’re ruining my fun thing by turning it into homework” is my favorite screenshot from this post.

@ao3commentoftheday I recall a huge discussion on your blog about this sort of thing, and thought might be a addition to offer the masses on the subject of unsolicited criticism and why fandom etiquette is not to give it.

Source: kedreeva

fidefortitude:

lornacrowley:

O God, let me write with the authority and the panache of a self-assured male fantasy novelist with a very specific fetish 

There’s nothing more indicting of male fantasy novelists than everyone in the replies insisting that this is referencing a specific guy, and everyone saying a different guy.