I forgot that writing is very fun and that you're playing pretend. like all this shit and pressure about craftsmanship and art! NO!!!! you are a grown up playing with dolls! it is silly and you should have sooooo much fun pushing their heads together to make them smooch!!! or torturing them, which is what I did to my toys as a child, to the point where my mom thought I was going to grow up evil

Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.

Pacing

The “pacing” of a piece of media comes down to one thing, and one thing only, and it has nothing to do with your personal level of interest. It comes down to this question alone: Is the piece of media making effective use of the time it has?

That’s it.

So, for example, things which are NOT a example of bad pacing include a piece of media that is:

Bad pacing IS when a piece of media has

Another note on pacing: There are, except arguably in standalone movies, at least two levels of pacing going on at any given time. There’s the pacing within the installment, and the pacing within the series. Generally, there’s three levels of pacing–within the installment (a chapter, an episode, a level), within the volume (a season, a novel, a game), and within the series as a whole. Sometimes, in fact FREQUENTLY, a piece of media will work on one of these levels but not on all of them. (Usually the ideal is that it works on all three, but that’s not always important! Not every individual chapter of a novel needs to be actively relevant to the entire overarching series.)

Honestly, the best possible masterclass in how to recognize good, bad, and “they tried their best but needed more space” pacing? If you want to learn this skill, and get better at recognizing it?

Doctor Who.

ESPECIALLY Classic Who, which has clearly-delineated “serials” within their seasons. You can pretty much pick any serial at random, and once you’ve seen a few of them, you get a REALLY good feel for things like, for example…

If you’re not actively trying to learn pacing, either for literary analysis or your own writing…honestly? Just learn to differentiate between whether the pacing is bad or if it just doesn’t appeal to you. There’s a WORLD of difference between “The pacing is too slow” and “the pacing is too slow for me.” 

“I really prefer a slower build into a universe; the fact that it opens in medias res and you piece together where you are and how the magic system works over the next several chapters from context is way too fast-paced for me and makes me feel lost, so I bounced off it” is, usually, a much more constructive commentary than “the pacing is bad”. 

And when the pacing really is bad, you’ll be doing everyone a favor by being able to actually articulate why.

Show, Don’t Tell

This is a very specific rule that has been taken dramatically out of context and is almost always used incorrectly.

“Show, don’t tell” applies to character traits and worldbuilding, not information in the plot.

It may be easier to “get” this rule if you forget the specific phrasing for a minute. This is a mnemonic device to avoid Informed Attributes, nothing more and nothing less. 

Character traits like a character being funny, smart, kind, annoying, badass, etc, should be established by their behavior in-universe and the reactions of others to them–if you just SAY they’re X thing but never show it, then you’re just telling the audience these things. Similarly you can’t just tell the audience that a setting has brutal winters and expect to be believed, when the clothing, architecture, preparations, etc shown as common in that setting do not match those that brutal winters would necessitate. 

To recap:

Violations of Show Don’t Tell:

NOT Violations of Show Don’t Tell:

Keep in mind that “Show, don’t tell” is meant to be advice for beginning authors. Because “telling” is easier and requires less skill than “showing,” inexperienced authors need to focus on getting as much “show” in as possible. 

However, “telling” is also extremely important. Sometimes, especially in written formats, the most appropriate way to deliver information to the audience is to just say it and move on.

Keep in mind that a viewpoint character in anything but…a portal fantasy, essentially…is going to be familiar with the world they’re in. Not every protagonist needs to be a raw newcomer with zero knowledge of their new world! In most cases, a viewpoint character is going to know things that the audience doesn’t. Generally, the ONLY natural way to introduce worldbuilding in this situation is to just have the narration point them out. (It makes sense for Obi-Wan to have to explain the Force; it would make no sense for Han to explain the concept of space travel to Luke, who grew up in this universe and knows what the hell a starship is. So, if you’re writing the novelization of A New Hope, you need to just say “and so they jumped into hyperspace, the strange blue-white plane that allowed faster-than-light travel” and move the hell on.)

For that matter, in some media (ie, children’s cartoons) where teaching a moral lesson is the clear intent, a certain level of “telling” is not only appropriate but necessary!

The actual goal of “showing” and “telling” is to maintain a balance, and make sure everything feels natural. Show things that need to be shown, and…don’t waste everyone’s time showing things that would feel much more natural if they were just told.

But that’s not nearly as pithy a slogan.

(Reblog this version y’all I fixed some really serious typos)

Quick addition: When you Show, you Slow.

Taking the time to Show something rather than simply Telling it slows the moment down–and that can be a good thing! When you want a moment to have real emotional impact, when you want the audience to linger and really connect with the scene, use Show to slow them down and really make them live in it. Use descriptive language, engage the senses, and make your audience spend some time with it.

This is Not always desirable. If you’re heavily Showing in moments that aren’t truly important, your audience will disengage and get impatient and then bored. I always err on the side of over showing in a first draft, over trimming to lots of telling in a second draft, then marrying them together in a third once I’ve gotten a better understanding of the pacing with the second Telling draft.

basically I think that if your protagonist doesn’t want to fuck someone so bad it makes them look stupid, then there probably isn’t enough energy in your story. “Fuck someone” isn’t literal btw—they can want to uncover the secrets of their parent’s death, they can want to prove their worth, they can want a donut from one particular bakery—it can be anything so long as they want it so bad that they’ll make decisions that make any sane person go “are you a moron??”, with little to no forethought, or even tons of forethought and this is still the option they chose. Because they want to fuck that thing so bad.

also good life advice

Back when we started Ellipsus (it's been eighty-four years… or two, but it sure feels like forever), we encountered generative AI.

Immediately, we realized LLMs were the antithesis of creativity and community, and the threat they posed to genuine artistic expression and collaboration. (P.S.: we have a lot to say about it.)

Since then, writing tools—from big tech entities like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, to a host of smaller platforms and publishers—have rapidly integrated LLMs, looking to capitalize on the novelty of generative AI. Now, our tools are failing us, corrupted by data-scraping and hostile to users' consent and IP ownership.

The future of creative work requires a nuanced understanding of the challenges ahead, and a shared vision—writers for writers. We know we're stronger together. And in a rapidly changing world, we know that transparency is paramount.

So… some Ellipsus facts:

We believe in the strength of creative communities and the stories they tell—and we want to foster a space in which writers can connect and tell their stories in freedom and safety—without compromise.

Since the whole thing with NaNoWriMo has gone down, I've noticed that one of their former sponsors, Ellipsus, has cut contact with NaNoWriMo because they do not support their stance on AI; I didn't know what Ellipsus was, but upon further research I've found that they are a writing platform that works a lot like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, only with a heavier leaning on the story-writing aspect and connecting with other writers - and they also completely denounce any use of AI, both in the writing process itself and in the use of their platform. I really appreciate that.

Since this is the case (and since I've noticed Google has begun implementing more AI into their software), I've decided to give Ellipsus a try to see if it's a good alternative to Google Docs (my main writing platform). It's completely free and so far, I've found it simple to use (although it is pretty minimal in its features), and I really like the look of it.

I figured I'd spread the word about this platform in case any of you writers would want to give it a try, and if you do, let me know how you like it!

This sounds great, I’ll give a try tonight!!

i think they know their demographic to fr

@ellipsus-writes

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

And!

Reblog to save a writer’s life.

Thank you

Oh my god thank you. No wonder grammarly keeps complaining about my punctuation when I boot my writing up into word counter

The fastest way to shut down my "freelance life means I have to constantly be working" thoughts is to remind myself that if I was a boss holding a worker to the standards I hold myself to, their union would hunt me for sport and nobody would blame them.

Not me immediately screenshotting this and posting it to the OPP freelance writers chat I'm in

I tell myself: "I'm the owner of the company. But more importantly, I'm also the head of Scriveners Local 23, and I have some demands."

So what that means is that I have a four day work week. I work monday-tuesday and then Thursday-Friday. Fuck the boss if they don't like it.

I have a workplace wellness program that means I can take breaks for yoga, meditation, exercise, and naps.

I have unlimited paid personal days thanks to my project oriented work structure--I get to decide what's the best balance between production and restoration. Fuck the boss if they don't like it.

I have five days each quarter for vacation. attending a convention, conference, expo, bookstore event tour, or a writing workshop *is not a vacation.* that's business-related travel. taking a day or two for a weekend jaunt *is not a vacation.* that's unlimited paid personal days. Five working days. Each Quarter. Vacation. and since I always have wednesdays off, it doesn't count.

I know there's a piece of your brain saying "I have to hustle, I have to hustle"

I know

My brain does that too

And without the union boss in my head, I'll just work until I drop. That's what I did for years. And then I burnt out so bad that this is the first time I have actually made real, noticable progress(1.) similar to my pre-burnout rates in years.

Because the union boss went on strike, and the boss' bottom line was *destroyed.* If I have to crunch now, the union boss enforces recovery time. that's all overtime. but since I don't get paid a wage, I get all that back in time.

The boss never wants to see a strike like that again.

There is power in a union, even if it's only the union in your head.

(1.) only it's not similar. it's half the "speed" of pre-burnout. It's probably my actual true real speed and not my sweatshop labour hustle culture speed. FUCK THE BOSS IF THEY DON'T LIKE IT.

This is outstanding advice for all forms of freelancing.

One of the authors I follow "complained" about how she got so much more productive when she limited/structured her work time instead of working 14-18 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I really wish I could do this. Seriously.

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

Do you have any suggestions for letting go and improving WITH your weird shit? I'm in university for Creative Writing and I haven't been taught SHIT other than how to engage with a text and how to continue to write at my highschool base-line level. No teaching, no instruction, only critiques of mine and my peers work that doesn't inform us of much in the long run.

I'm desperate for help, if you have Anything it's much appreciated. I'm asking because I felt seen in this post

1. READ. Read widely, read deeply, read slowly when a text demands time. Seek out work that seems strange or challenging. If/when you need to pick up something that's deep in your comfort zone, read consciously. If a passage hits you as dense and difficult, ask yourself why: word choice? complex nesting of concepts? are you distracted, or did you misinterpret something a few lines back? If a passage feels easy and fun, ask yourself why: satisfying rhythm? clear set-up and follow-through? Look for experimental texts, read more poetry even if you don't want to write poetry. The more experienced you are with the vast flexibility of the written word, the more confident and natural your own experimentation will get.

2. Try things out. You don't have to show them to anyone. Sometimes a stylistic idea will get stuck in my head and I just have to write freeform for a couple of thousand words to see how it feels on the page. One time in college I was possessed by the urge to write the vilest, foulest, most unsympathetic and filthy first-person narrative just to figure out how it would actually read, so I scribbled out a couple of pages until it was out of my system. I never did anything with those passages, but they're in my repertoire now, I know how that material hits. I'm always comparing writing to chefing - not everything you cook is a restaurant meal. You can experiment with flavours in your own kitchen, where you are free to make something completely unpalatable and then toss it right out with a better understanding of the process.

3. Be less scared. This isn't just directed at you, it's directed at everyone, and at me. Someone I know once brought a personal piece of writing to a writer's group, about the way her mother's death affected her. Someone in the group was absolutely scathing about it, because they felt that the way she reacted to and wrote about the bereavement was inappropriate. What a horrible experience! What an awful, unhelpful critique. But it didn't shake her, because she knew what she had felt and was steadfast in her right to express it. Sometimes (often, even) criticism will come from angles that are literally just not relevant to what we've set out to do. Like I said in the original post, a lot of readers are kind of ambivalent or hostile to weirdness at the moment. But if weirdness is your goal, those people are simply not your audience. It's a lot easier said than done, but have faith in your own intentions and your own taste. Listen to criticism, but always ask yourself 'will this help me accomplish what I want this piece to accomplish?' It is not the end of the world to be temporarily misunderstood.

on worldbuilding, and what people think is going on

there is one facet of fantasy worldbuilding that is, to me, the most interesting and essential but i don't see it come up in worldbuilding guides or writing prompts or anything, and that is the question of:

what do the inhabitants of your world believe about how the world works, and how are they wrong? a lot of fantasy media will set up their cosmology, gods, magic systems, planar systems, concepts of the afterlife, &c., and proceed as though the inhabitants of the world know and understand them.

from someone whose entire academic career is focused on studying human culture in various regions and time periods, with a focus on belief systems (religion, occultism, mythology, folklore): that sort of worldbuilding is unrealistic and missing out on so much fun.

people are always seeking new understanding about how the world works, and they are mostly wrong. how many models of the solar system were proposed before we reached our current one? look at the long, turbulent history of medicine and our various bizarre models for understanding the human body and how to fix it. so many religions and occult/magical traditions arise from people disagreeing with or adapting various models of the world based on new ideas, methods, technologies. many of them are wrong, but all of them are interesting and reflect a lot about the culture, beliefs, values, and fears of the people creating/practising them.

there is so much more to the story of what people believe about the world than just what is true.

to be clear: i think it's fine and important for the author to have a coherent explanation for where magic comes from or who the gods are, so they can maintain consistency in their story. but they should also be asking what people in the world (especially different people, in different regions/nations and different times) think is happening when they do magic, or say a prayer, or practise medicine, or grieve their dead. it is a rich vein for conflict between individuals and nations alike when two models of the world disagree. it is fascinating how different magic systems might develop according to different underlying beliefs.

personally, i think it is the most fun to spawn many diverse models of the world, but give none of them the 'right' answer.

(bonus points if you also have a thriving academic system in the world with its own theory, research, and discourse between factions! as an academic, it is very fun to imagine fictional academic debate over the topics i'm worldbuilding. sometimes i will be working out details for some underlying mechanic of the world and start imagining the papers being written by scholars researching it)

someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!

me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???

I find there is a 50/50 chance of this situation being:

a) Wow, I'm really glad you noticed that! I spent ages considering the implications and how it ties into the themes. Please let me talk to you for three hours straight about my thought process.

or

b) Erm... that thing... yeah... that was definitely a deliberate thing... I absolutely meant for that thing to be there honest

PACING IS ABOUT LOAD BEARING WALLS.

*staples violently to my own forehead*

This is such good advice.

All I will add is: WRITE THOSE BREAKFAST SCENES if you want to, they can be absolutely critical in getting a handle on your characters. Or even on the setting. Write them all to fuck. Go hogwild.

Then cut them. They're for you, and for the characters. Not the readers.

Lo these many years ago, in an elevator at some convention or other, Larry Niven gave me some of the best writing advice ever:

"You can always burn it."

Go ahead and write that stuff. The breakfasts, the staring-into-empty-space scenes, whatever. Then pull them out of your work if they serve too little useful purpose. If you feel the need, shove such material into a separate folder to examine for possible usefulness later.

Even if you don't put it where other people can see it, no writing is ever wasted. Every sentence will teach you something. But if a passage or sequence doesn't help illuminate character, build the world, or advance the plot, get it the hell out of your narrative.

Your readers' time is precious. Do them the courtesy of not wasting it.

Source

teetotailer

first incidence of good writing advice i've seen in 10+ years on this platform and it's in the notes of a mustelid wreaking absolute havoc in a german grocery store

Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.

Editor here. Can confirm.

"Two centuries later" just triggers a mental note to check if timing is consistent throughout the book, because it may mean more time jumps are ahead. "200 years later", or heaven forbid, "201 years later" will have me draw up a time line. The more specific the number, the more critical people become.

Strange phenomenon. Well spotted, OP.

actually i think i might have an explanation for this from linguistics? i think folks get more nitpicky if you have specific numbers because of gricean maxims, specifically the maxims of quality and quantity

basically gricean maxims are a set of guidelines that we all carry in our heads that we expect other people to follow when having a conversation in good faith - i’m copying and pasting definitions from someone else because my attempts at summing up quality and quantity weren’t going so hot

so basically, when you put a rough number in a text, people think subconsciously ‘oh, the exact number isn’t important, because if it was they would tell me an exact number, so i don’t need to worry about this’, whereas if you put something precise in, people’s brains go ‘wait, they think i need to know this information so i’ll remember it, but now it’s later and they’ve said something that contradicts it, so at least one of those times they were lying and i must figure out which time it was’

Also: don't specify data storage sizes. Just, you know, don't.

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously 🥺❤ (you can watch it here in US or with US vpn :) <3) (or just this bit on youtube here :))

Neil Gaiman: I miss him most when I get stuck. You know, I'll just be working on something and I'll go, "Oh, this isn't quite it," and all I want to do is just call Terry, tell him what's going on and have him say, "Ah, grasshopper, the answer is there in the question." And I'd go, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Terry, just tell me."

[Terry Pratchett laughing]

I know the beginning of the story, I know the end of it.

BUT THE MIDDLE

OMG WHY DOES THE MIDDLE HAVE TO BE SO SO HARD TO WRITE!?!!??!?!!?!?!?

-a writer

Middles are hard, not least because there is so much of the darn thing compared to beginnings and ends. Here are a few things that help me (but obviously different things works for different people).

Method 1 - the planner

Method 2 - the explorer

At no point should you see the middle as a gulf you have to fill. It's a slot you can fill with whatever needs to go there. As you plan/explore you will find more and more things to be there.

Terry Pratchett about fantasy ❤

Terry Pratchett interview in The Onion, 1995 (x)

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Terry: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

Terry: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

Terry: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus.

Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

can someone elaborate on the “make hoax” and “post angry tweet about “leak”“ part. i’m stupid and don’t understand things

sure!

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

and now you know!

if your audience guesses the ending of your story

don’t:

do: