to the world we dream about and the one we live in

People who write novellas must be absolutely going though it bc I've never read a novella that wasnt utterly devastating. These people really have Things to Say and whats more they do it in under 200 pages.

I'm curious--how do you guys go about creating your OCs?

writing be like

feeling that twenty minute gap lads

too many people are biased against 1st person fiction bc they associate it with shitty YA or booktok romance or whatever (or maybe some other reason, but it’s an opinion I’ve heard nonetheless). But really I think it’s the ideal POV when the narrator is supposed to be the Worst Person Ever

and also narrators who are fucking hilarious. i’ve found that i’ve never been able to replicate the hilarity of someone’s snarky inner monologue with anything other than first person. first person is the most fun to write when the narrator is funny, the worst person ever, or both

watch the full video here

Any time somebody argues that you should avoid the use of obvious pop culture references and current slang in prose fiction in order to avoid "dating" the text, I'm reminded that our primary evidence for when several of Shakespeare's plays were written is that their dialogue quotes specific pieces of contemporary popular media, and that there's strong evidence many of the words he's credited by modern authorities with inventing are literally just contemporary youth slang. Like, if it's good enough for Shakespeare it's good enough for me, buddy!

When inventing a fantasy religion a lot of people a) make the mistake of assuming that everyone in fantasy world would worship the same gods and b) assume that polytheistic religions see all of their gods as morally good

Some types of religions for your world building (any of these ideas can stand alone or be combined with each other):

They're doing "disability in fantasy" discourse on twitter rn and I wanna say that like, on top of the obvious & already discussed (by people more articulate than me) ableism, the sheer level of ignorance about how medicine & bodies work you have to have in order to say "why would you ever need a wheelchair in a universe with healing magic 🙄" is astounding.

The ability to speed the healing time of cuts and punctures in flesh & bone breakage (<- this is what most fantasy healing is) does not actually have a lot to do with the ability to prevent disability or long term complications. A wound or bone healing isn't the same as function being restored, even in real life? And what if there's nothing to "restore", someone was born without function in certain limbs? Then there's nothing to "heal". You would have to restructure their internal anatomy! And what about damage from bacterial or viral illness? Bone mending juice has nothing to do with that! Like I'm sorry but this is like looking at the real world and saying "oh so they have antibiotics but they can't solve cancer 🙄" lol. Real bodies do not have "HP" and not all forms of "damage" [sic] are created equal.

See also: if your fantasy has a "fix all" option, there's absolutely no stakes or narrative tension.

for clarification, this poll is not intended for fanfic writers. i'm asking actual writers who write original stories. sorry for the confusion <3

would love to know which one works better for you and why

op on the version of this I saw has turned off reblogs while posting lots of frustrated messages about how they don't care about people's actual responses. I'm adding some things they didn't think of.

I care about y'all's actual responses.

I wanna hear all about your writing in the tags. do tell.

Genuinely I think one of the best things you can do to build characters in your story is give them a kink. You do not have to put that kink in the story. You do not have to tell anyone but yourself. But thinking about their wants and needs and what would bring them comfort or desire, about whether they crave power or crave a situation where they're blessedly free from any power, about which taboo they might kind of want to cross, is really useful for getting inside their head. Also "what situation would make my character stupid horny enough to make a terrible mistake?" is a good plotting device. "It's a plot hole that they made that dumb decision" no they were just whistling like a lustful kettle and forgot to turn their brain on.

i understand the appeal of publishing "fic with the serial numbers filed off" as original work but i also feel like. what makes something a good fic is at odds with what makes something a good original story.

a good fic is in conversation with a source text, it may give a character an interesting role, it may reinterpret or subvert the rules established in the canon universe, whatever. but like. its transformative by nature. whereas original stories - good ones, anyway - have their own internal, non-referrential sense of logic and rules. it can be in conversation with the genre writ large but it has to have internal substance that can stand alone. which fic inherently cant do.

James Baldwin.

✨Having someone who is invested in your story and discusses it with you is like a solid half of the fun of writing. I'm not even kidding.✨

This is why I read the reddit comments

I love how the notes for this are just chock full of examples of the most batshit specific things people research for their fanfics. Truly a treasure trove.

Some of my favorites

And my absolute fav