Salo out here playing checkers while Ambessa came straight from Game of Thrones LOL

she does look good in Lannister colors…

Just saw an ad for fucking Kellog's cornflakes wherein a shirtless blindfolded man tied to a bed is like "Wait.. are you... eating??" and it pans across the bed to reveal that his partner is, indeed, too distracted to have sex with him bc she is chowing down on corn flakes. Now I've been caught up in wondering whether:

a) John Harvey Kellog would despise this ad; the mere proximity of bondage-play to his brand name and beloved anti-porn flakes is unforgivable

b) John Harvey Kellog would enjoy this ad, because it shows a young woman forsaking the temptations of the flesh in favour of eating a wholesome and nourishing bowl of cornflakes

"Are you sure you want to post this without tags?" What, pray tell, tumblr, would I add to this post to help it reach its 'intended audience.' #cornflakes #bondage

developing your ocs is 50% waiting for bursts of divine inspiration like an oracle sleeping next the vapours seeping from fissures in the temple floor and 50% stalking them in your mind relentlessly like a persistence predator until they tire out enough for you to get close and scamper away with the bloody scraps of "eye colour: brown" and "dislikes: people who think they're funny" clutched in your mouth like a hunting trophy

scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

hope is a skill

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

favourite additions

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

Things Real People Do in Dialogue (For Your Next Story)

Okay, let’s be real—dialogue can make or break a scene. You want your characters to sound natural, like actual humans talking, not robots reading a script. So, how do you write dialogue that feels real without it turning into a mess of awkward pauses and “ums”? Here’s a little cheat sheet of what real people actually do when they talk (and you can totally steal these for your next story):

1. People Interrupt Each Other All the Time In real conversations, nobody waits for the perfect moment to speak. We interrupt, cut each other off, and finish each other's sentences. Throw in some overlaps or interruptions in your dialogue to make it feel more dynamic and less like a rehearsed play.

2. They Don’t Always Say What They Mean Real people are masters of dodging. They’ll say one thing but mean something totally different (hello, passive-aggressive banter). Or they’ll just avoid the question entirely. Let your characters be vague, sarcastic, or just plain evasive sometimes—it makes their conversations feel more layered.

3. People Trail Off... We don’t always finish our sentences. Sometimes we just... stop talking because we assume the other person gets what we’re trying to say. Use that in your dialogue! Let a sentence trail off into nothing. It adds realism and shows the comfort (or awkwardness) between characters.

4. Repeating Words Is Normal In real life, people repeat words when they’re excited, nervous, or trying to make a point. It’s not a sign of bad writing—it’s how we talk. Let your characters get a little repetitive now and then. It adds a rhythm to their speech that feels more genuine.

5. Fillers Are Your Friends People say "um," "uh," "like," "you know," all the time. Not every character needs to sound polished or poetic. Sprinkle in some filler words where it makes sense, especially if the character is nervous or thinking on their feet.

6. Not Everyone Speaks in Complete Sentences Sometimes, people just throw out fragments instead of complete sentences, especially when emotions are high. Short, choppy dialogue can convey tension or excitement. Instead of saying “I really think we need to talk about this,” try “We need to talk. Now.”

7. Body Language Is Part of the Conversation Real people don’t just communicate with words; they use facial expressions, gestures, and body language. When your characters are talking, think about what they’re doing—are they fidgeting? Smiling? Crossing their arms? Those little actions can add a lot of subtext to the dialogue without needing extra words.

8. Awkward Silences Are Golden People don’t talk non-stop. Sometimes, they stop mid-conversation to think, or because things just got weird. Don’t be afraid to add a beat of awkward silence, a long pause, or a meaningful look between characters. It can say more than words.

9. People Talk Over Themselves When They're Nervous When we’re anxious, we tend to talk too fast, go back to rephrase what we just said, or add unnecessary details. If your character’s nervous, let them ramble a bit or correct themselves. It’s a great way to show their internal state through dialogue.

10. Inside Jokes and Shared History Real people have history. Sometimes they reference something that happened off-page, or they share an inside joke only they get. This makes your dialogue feel lived-in and shows that your characters have a life beyond the scene. Throw in a callback to something earlier, or a joke only two characters understand.

11. No One Explains Everything People leave stuff out. We assume the person we’re talking to knows what we’re talking about, so we skip over background details. Instead of having your character explain everything for the reader’s benefit, let some things go unsaid. It’ll feel more natural—and trust your reader to keep up!

12. Characters Have Different Voices Real people don’t all talk the same way. Your characters shouldn’t either! Pay attention to their unique quirks—does one character use slang? Does another speak more formally? Maybe someone’s always cutting people off while another is super polite. Give them different voices and patterns of speech so their dialogue feels authentic to them.

13. People Change the Subject In real life, conversations don’t always stay on track. People get sidetracked, jump to random topics, or avoid certain subjects altogether. If your characters are uncomfortable or trying to dodge a question, let them awkwardly change the subject or ramble to fill the space.

14. Reactions Aren’t Always Immediate People don’t always respond right away. They pause, they think, they hesitate. Sometimes they don’t know what to say, and that delay can speak volumes. Give your characters a moment to process before they respond—it’ll make the conversation feel more natural.

Important note: Please don’t use all of these tips in one dialogue at once.

These are great tips about dialogue.

The note at the end is definitely very important as well. The thing about writing advice I'd like everyone to remember is that it's meant to be used alongside the learning process, not as hard and fast rules that will automatically turn you into one of the historical greats. Also, different things apply to different areas. Stories are, ideally, living things that breathe and move organically in ways which do NOT play well with rigid ideas like the template approach I see too many people try to use because they think there's some kind of algorithm or recipe for writing like it's a hard science when it really isn't.

These things are GUIDELINES. And unfortunately, the only way you'll get them to work properly for you is by treating them as such and applying them loosely so you can see the difference, understand why they're like that, and then adapt it properly into your lexicon so you can organically utilise them as developing skills on every new project exactly where and when and how they're needed.

If I can add on: I cannot recommend learning stagecraft enough. Go to your local drama class if there is one and hopefully they'll still remember all these things and with any luck it won't have been left to rot while they adopt the capitalist cookie-cutter spoon-feeding audiences-are-stupid-and-need-everything-spelled-out-for-them-because-we-killed-media-literacy bullcrap we see in too many shows and films nowadays. I'm still learning these skills myself though I personally didn't learn them from reading a post like this. I learned them through observing the dialogue in existing well-written shows, film, and printed scripts, alongside performing them on stage to be taught and experience how to get it all working smoothly.

Also, to expand upon points 2 and 11 from my perspective:

I like to imagine we are peeking through a window into the characters' worlds.

They won't and should never be saying anything for the audience's benefit because we don't exist.

Now obviously at the meta level the whole show is in fact for the audience, but the main point I'm getting at is that - in my very strong (very sure I'm objectively correct lol) opinion - your characters should never feel or look or otherwise come across like they're mouthpieces for the writers to tell you information. The characters shouldn't act like they're having a scene to tell you shit even when they literally are, because within the world of the story they aren't. So the dialogue should reflect that.

Ask yourself one simple question:

Would this character say this thing, to themselves or to another character or whatever, if we weren't here on the other side of the screen to hear it?

This is, in my opinion, the biggest and most painful mistake new/inexperienced/underpaid/rushed writers make.

If a character/group of characters wouldn't need to explain it for someone within the world of their story, then they wouldn't explain it. **

And in those situations, you as the writer just have to learn visual storytelling, good editing skills, other types of clue-leaving in how you write natural interactions which ignore the audience's presence, and expect/trust the audience to have enough media literacy skills to put it all together into understanding what's going on without being spoon-fed like they're too busy watching tiktok or something to pay attention to the story. (And if they are, then they can put the phone down and pay attention or put the story down and stop wasting their own time barely half-engaging with something they clearly don't care enough about to engage with properly anyway.* People don't learn if they're never expected to.)

But that's a very complex skill which takes a lot of time and experience to build. I'm aiming for it and I hope with time and practice and experience I can be half as good as the writers I admire like the ones who wrote the script for the first season of Arcane: League of Legends (which was RIFE with skills taken directly from stagecraft, intentional or not).

*(Because there's always someone nowadays weaponising disabled people to argue for pushing laziness/exploitation/whatever else in art creation: If you're someone who does care about watching/reading stories but who also does need to have multiple things happening to engage with things, that's valid. My point is that the story should never be written with a focus on explaining things to you. If you can't watch/read a story because it's too difficult to focus on, then complain that the writing was bad because it didn't explain everything to you, that is genuinely your own problem to sort out and I say this as a neurodivergent person who hasn't been able to read most books in over a decade because my attention span for reading is shot to hell. That's not the writer's problem; it's mine. I would much rather they write a good, living narrative (and make it so I need to hold a stim toy in my hand or take breaks from and come back or - in the case of film and TV - pause to process and take breaks from and come back later, or any other type of managing skill) than dumb everything down for me and treat me like I'm an idiot just because I was struggling to focus for longer periods of time.

'Accessible' doesn't mean throw all basic storytelling skills out the window. ADHD/Autistic and other types of neurodiverse people like us have been engaging in media without it being spoon-fed to them just fine for as long as storytelling has existed. It's far more ableist to argue that we should destroy every creative art and new creation in existence to talk down to the audience just in case they're neurodivergent or something than it is to just expect they're smart enough to keep up or at least figure out ways of managing their needs on their end so they can enjoy the story.

Things like proper captions and considering different mediums to bring the story to life in better ways for people with different needs are accessibility. Telling story writers to butcher the writing itself because you think the audience will be too stupid to understand otherwise because they're disabled/have accessibility needs is not and is just plain shitty of a position to have.)

** Remember how I said writing advice rules are actually guidelines and you have to play with them to learn where and when and how they actually apply? Well, there are genuine exceptions to this piece of advice as well. But you're going to have to understand why it's like this first to learn what those exceptions are and how/when/where to apply them.

(One quick example are stories which actively break the fourth wall. Kids plays/educational programs/etc for younger children do this all the time as a way to pull more engagement from the audience because the majority of younger children do need constant stimuli and usually haven't developed the ability to passively engage with something that doesn't directly talk to them/act like they're there in some way.

But there are other exceptions too in adults' media which aren't just lazy writing because they're intentional with a specific reason for doing it outside of "we need to force feed as much information to our audience as possible in as few minutes as possible because we expect every single one of them to only be looking at the screen every few minutes for a few minutes at a time and if we don't tell them everything they'll be confused; fuck, how do we- ooh ok, have the characters talk like they never would specifically so we can spoon-feed the info to the audience. Phew. Done. Ok. Next scene!! Speedrun music, let's go!!!!"

There's a difference between intentional, well thought out fourth wall breaking vs "we don't have time for basic visual storytelling or any other non-direct-expositional storytelling techniques and we're expecting every single one of our audience to have lost media literacy skills and we're not going to risk an easy several billion dollars in box-office and merch sales expecting them to just... get better at it again if they want to engage with and understand our stories properly."

But you'll need to go out and look for and analyse and understand all these different types of storytelling and explore a bit yourself to get a grasp of all the amazing directions you can go with storycraft.)

Basically, go have conversations, watch how people talk, go learn stagecraft in some hopefully-good drama classes, and above all else, KEEP WRITING. KEEP PRACTICING. KEEP MAKING MISTAKES AND LEARNING AND ALLOWING YOURSELF TO BE FLEXIBLE.

And one day, if you're really lucky, you'll hold the tiny little heartbeat of an organic, living story in your hands.

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

While lethal injuries often take center stage, non-lethal injuries can create lasting effects on characters, shaping their journeys in unique ways. If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain during a scene, here are some ideas: 

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors! Instagram Tiktok

TIL, the residents of Cheran, Mexico armed themselves and kicked out the ruling cartel as well as every politician and policeman. It now functions as a legal self-governing indigenous community with a crime rate near 0%

via reddit.com

👀

Specifically, it was indigenous women who freed their village from oppressive forces. From loggers to kidnappers to police, all of them were run out because these women armed (and masked) themselves, took hostages, and threatened to kill them.

Since this day, five years ago, they’ve begun to repair the forest that was destroyed by loggers over the decades. They’ve successfully revived 3000 acres! And because there is no more crime, all citizens feel save roaming the streets at night, and exploring the vast forest they’ve become responsible for.

I went looking for an update since it’s now 8 years from the uprising, and it appears things are still going very well for the community. In fact, they’ve been steadily improving: https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-cheran-mexico-indigenous-revolution

“They taught their neighbors to grind onions and guajillo chiles into thick, warming stews called atapakuas and young men to make tortillas by hand, a task historically seen as women’s work. The movement represented a return to certain traditions but, led by women and young people, also meant clearing space for new voices and attitudes.“  

~Michael Snyder  for the LA Times  Oct. 7, 2019

This is an EXCELLENT read! - go check it out.  I needed a happy ending.

This is wonderful. :)

Hey! I created a fun little notion template just to hold all your notes because I have ADHD and I need something like that. Get it here!

don't you just love when women

I don’t even know what to say about this, Ik she a freak.

summary of act 1

Oh no! Your homosexual situationship didn't work out! You have four options to proceed: