Tag: writing

mouseymightymarvellous:

problematic-butnothateful:

i have seen some people criticizing the new things ao3 wants to implement and all of them seem to misunderstand the new proposed functions so much

for those who aren’t aware, the otw recently issued a statement on upcoming changes they want to make on ao3 in response to certain racist issues in fandom. i’ve seen people said they are “giving in to fandom police” or in some way want to put limit on the content that is allowed on the site, and that is not true at all. it’s not even close to what they are doing

all the measures they want to implement are due to instances of fans being victims of racial harassment and racist fans worsening people’s fan experience. all the measures proposed by ao3 will either help people protect themselves from harassment (freezing comments threads, turning off comments on your fics, muting/blocking users, updating the tos to allow the abuse team to deal with forms of harassment that were not previously covered) or improve their fandom experience by better filtering out content (changes to the search function in collections, possibly implementing new archive warnings, and again muting/blocking users). that’s it. at no point are they saying they will restrict the content you’re allowed to post. all of these are perfectly reasonable measures that can help improve the experience of literally everyone involved

overall, the concerns about fans of color being harassed/attacked are very real, and the otw is trying to give users better ways to protect themselves. it’s ridiculous to say ao3 is trying to censor people. when we say fans should curate their own fandom experience that also includes fans having ways to do it, and that includes giving them tools to block harassers, trolls, and other people who deliberately try to start shit

part of the critique of ao3/otw was how their structures and processes for denying censorship were failing to allow users (especially bipoc) to protect themselves from harassment (especially of the racist kind). to conflate critique and analysis of racism (personal and institutional) with anti-ism is such a bad faith argument.

archive of our own. if you want a space where authors can write whatever they like without censorship, then we must tear down the structures and barriers that prevent bipoc from safely and comfortably participating in fandom.

theradioghost:

theradioghost:

my favorite genre is “kitchen sink” tbqh. yes i want your metaphysical space opera Gothic haunted house horror-comedy. yes i want your medieval road trip heist mystery. give me time traveling werewolves and noir detective robots teaming up to fight alien supervillains. i want this sundae with every topping in the shop

genre matters for exactly two reasons

  • marketing
  • metafiction/self-referentiality/deconstruction

if you’re not deliberately engaging with the concept of genre then as far as I’m concerned you can, and should, do whatever the fuck you want. the idea of genre is fine on paper and fun to talk about but in practice genre does not exist except as a marketing tool, this is my viewpoint and I’m sticking with it

nonlinear-nonsubjective:

firefox-official:

dkpsyhog:

firefox-official:

i have this writing style i like to call “uncertain.” it’s where the narrator isn’t really sure what they’re talking about either

That is so powerful and I want to write a short story in this style now thank you

“the park had been there for as long as i’d lived there, i think. i couldn’t be sure. i was never one to go to the park anyway” nobody has any clue what’s going on

self aware unreliable narrator

heywriters:

magpiefngrl:

eddiestarchild:

jaskierist:

flootzavut:

notesoftruth:

jawnwats:

prismatic-bell:

cj-amused:

tenoko1:

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.”

“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”

Things I didn’t know

“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”

You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.

Okay, but someone please explain question marks when followed by a dialogue tag. How do?

“The speech tag is still part of the previous sentence,” she explained, ‘so it isn’t capitalised.“

“What do you mean?” he asked. “But there’s a full stop as part of the question mark!”

She nodded gravely. “I know!” she said. “A lot of people find this confusing. But the speech tag belongs to the line of dialogue, it’s still part of the sentence, so it’s wrong to capitalise it.”

She reblogged the post again, because she had recently read far too many potentially enjoyable stories marred by poor dialogue punctuation.

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots till now..

NOICE. Can’t wait to use this

“There are two more ways"—she pointed to the blackboard—“to punctuate interruptions. One is with the em dashes outside the quotations marks to indicate continuous speech. The action occurs at the same time as speech. The other—” she sipped from a glass of water “—is em dashes within the quotation marks to indicate interrupted speech.”

Thank you, because having more than one way to interrupt dialogue is not confusing at all lol (I’ve only seen em dashes inside quotations, the other way hurts my brain—I prefer commas).

noctumsolis:

underking:

genderflummox:

“never use this word because it’s common, instead use all of these things that i’ll call synonyms even though they carry different connotations and will change the meaning of your dialogue if you use them” — very bad and unfortunately very common writing advice

“Do you want this sandwich?” she elaborated, acquiring the sandwich from her rucksack with a set of fingers.

His visage was set aflame with a smile. “Sure,” he postulated.

This took a decade off my life.

thescarletgarden1990:

eldritch-crone:

Why is every piece of media now about “surprise! bet you didn’t see that coming” instead of themes, character arcs, internal logic, and consistency in writing?

It’s okay if your audience (especially hardcore fans) predicts your story. It means that they picked up the clues you put in, understood the themes you were trying to convey, empathised with the characters…

How is that a bad thing?

Instead each piece of media feels like it’s written by a marketing team that is looking at the latest statistics for TRP ratings and box-office collections.

Yeah… sighs.

kaylapocalypse:

mustangsally78:

animate-mush:

transgirlsamwinchester:

mylordshesacactus:

charamei:

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

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

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.

And, but no.