I always found the 7 act structure helped me a lot more than the 3 acts.

Link right here

me: *writes fic*

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

me:

Ooh, this is actually kinda a neat thing, because you can think of it as a checklist:

For example:

Thus, in less than 100 words:

~~~~

The Anatomy of Story by John Truby is a really good book by the by, if anyone’s interested in this sort of thing.

This is super helpful!’

The best character flaws are just their normal traits taken to an extreme!

Thanks for posting this :)

I think we could add more feelings:

Jealousy

Envy 

Compassion (not quite the same thing as love as it means to share in another’s suffering, or to feel their suffering)

Nostalgia might be interesting to cover, whether it’s nostalgia for another place, time, maybe even a feeling.

Oh, I can help with this!

Writers: Bad people are still people with their own problems and emotions, even when they cause problems and distress and hurt other people.

Tumblr Gremlins: Problematic. Blocked.

If you portray bad people as good people, then you’re normalizing abuse. Of course that’s fucking problematic.

Newsflash: people and good people are not synonymous.

If you portray a villain, that villain has thoughts, emotions, desires. Maybe even loved ones. They have things they want. They have reasons for what they do. And none of this excuses their villainous acts.

If you portray a good person, all of the same things apply. Thoughts, emotions, desires, loved ones, things they want, reasons, etc. And when you look at the acts they commit, you think to yourself, “That is a good person. I consider this person heroic, someone worth emulating.” Whereas when you see what the villain does, you think, “Man, that is fucked up.”

The entire difference between a good person and a bad person is not whether or not they are people, but whether the things they do and their reasons for doing them are good or bad. So you can portray a bad person, who abuses people, as having emotions, and desires, and thoughts, and they can still be a bad person. 

So yeah. The OP says “bad people should be written as if they are people.” This is true. “Normalizing abuse” is what happens when you write bad people as if they are incomprehensible evil monsters with no common humanity with the rest of us, because this tells abuse victims, most of whom love their abusers, “You’re not really being abused because the person you love is not a bad person! Bad people are 100% evil monsters and the person who is hurting you obviously has feelings!” No. Bad people are people. When you write an abuser, write them as a person, with thoughts and feelings, because real abuse victims know that their abusers are people, and you don’t want to convince them that their abusers can’t be abusers because only monsters are abusers. You want them to understand that abusers are human too, because they already know the person abusing them is human. What they don’t know is whether or not they can consider what’s happening to them to be abuse. 

^^^

Antis: “Only good people are actually fully human beings! This totally isn’t fascist or anything!”

“If you write well-rounded, deep, believable characters you’re a fucking abuse apologist!”

This is way too similar to that god damn “if you write characters being traumatized/in traumatizing situations then you are fetishizing abuse and you’re bad!” Like stories need conflict and sometimes being involved in conflict can be traumatizing, do you really want to consume only media that is entirely Good People Doing Good Things, Everyone Is Happy And Nothing Bad Ever Happens?? Because that’s sounds like a whole lot of boring to me

Given the alternative that we’ve had forever now, where characters go through intensely traumatic shit but have absolutely no trauma whatsoever - thus conveying the message that the problem is YOU, YOU’RE the only one who breaks like that - I’m gonna have to say I’ll take the realistic portrayals of trauma.

There is something, I think, to us as a whole, as humans, that is INSANELY disturbing and difficult about viewing irredeemable, evil people as PEOPLE. Like, we cannot accept that people who do things like commit genocide or murder people or abuse people are, in a lot of ways, just like us. That they have families and feelings and complex inner lives. And my gf just summed up why the portrayal of evil people as something apart from human is such a problem:

Because it keeps us from confronting evil when it DOES actually show up. It keeps us from confronting other people, who we know, who espouse hatred. Because how can this person, whom we know , who maybe we are even friends or family with, be an empty evil husk? It’s what keeps us from addressing things like racism, fascism, white supremacy- you name it. 

When we dress up evil people as something apart from us, when we act like humans are inherently better than the evil people we see in media, it means that come being faced with a person who is doing abhorrent things, we are unable to process that. Because we feel like humanity and evil are incompatible. 

You know it’s funny but we really need more bad people depicted as real people because it’s meant to be a warning to what you can become if you aren’t careful. Antis are good examples of that because they genuinely don’t realize how evil their behavior is because they think they are doing it for the greater good or with the best intentions justifies it. People are always the hero of their own story and if you can’t recognize that you are capable of being a monster then you will become a monster because you see everything that you do as good. It takes any complex thinking about morals out of the picture because you aren’t a laughing disney villain so why should you be concerned if your decisions hurt people if it wasn’t apart of the big picture or plan you have.

Think the Original The Lorax where the bad guy was viewed as complex and had good points even though he still was the bad guy. He was complicated and Kids could understand it through Seuss’s writing that he was just a person. Then look at say Ursula or Makeficent who had the complexity of a wet napkin and few kids could imagine themselves becoming. Obviously some kids can imagine themselves as them but which story really teaches you that good people do bad things or bad people don’t always realize they are bad.

It’s not some evil pro villain thing to make bad guys real. It’s a warning that you need to be careful because you could easily become the bad guy even if you have the best intentions.

good thread about bad people.

The narrative of ‘this person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their story’ is ableist

The narrative of ‘this person is disabled but “overcame” disability in order for them to be a hero’ (e.g. a paralysed person finding a way to walk) is ableist

And just for clarification for the non-disabled, using adaptive technologies, like prostheses or whatever, is not ableist as long as you never forget. Ask yourself questions about the benefits but also the limitations of whatever adaptive thing you’re giving the character.

Other questions to ask that go for all kinds of things:

Basically, think about what it adds to the story to have your character disabled. If you were just going to completely cure it with no ongoing repercussions or adaptations, why did you bother making them disabled in the first place? What story were you telling?

really good addition

Welcome to Horror Movie Content Warnings!

Who are you? Call me skeletoma (he/him pronouns). I’m a lover of all things horror, whether it’s movies, books, or art.

What’s this? It’s a database of content warnings for horror movies. The warnings cover both kinds of violence and potentially upsetting topics like sexual assault or physical abuse.

Where can I find the database? Right here.

Why horror? I’m glad you asked! Horror, by its very definition, contains things that are designed to be disturbing whether it’s on a physical or psychological level (or both). It’s like how an action movie is supposed to be exciting or a comedy is supposed to be funny. However, someone may go into a horror movie not expecting or wanting to see certain things and may not think to look it up beforehand.

Doesn’t giving content warnings just spoil the movies? While plot points or twists may be revealed if you look up a movie’s entry, I won’t be giving a detailed summary. If you want to avoid spoiling yourself while still checking to see if, say, Final Destination has a plane crash in it but you don’t want to know anything else about it, you can shoot me an ask and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. For more info about why content warnings are good things, check out @scriptshrink’s excellent post about them.

How can I request a movie or content warning? Just send me an ask!

What movies have you done already? Here’s a link to an alphabetized list!

Is there anything you won’t do? Yep. I won’t do: Non-horror movies TV shows or miniseries (because of the time commitment involved, I would not be able to guarantee that I’d finish them) The Human Centipede movies The Chucky movies A Serbian Film (do not look up the plot summary if you are sensitive to child sexual abuse or sexual assault)

Anything else? I’m still working on polishing the spreadsheet, so it may be a little rough in places.

What an awesome project! Shrinky-dinks, check out this cool resource!

BIOFEEDBACK AND EMDR!

I’ve been lowkey annoyed, as a therapist, with all this “Booker should go to therapy” comments because if he can’t tell the truth, psychotherapy won’t be any fucking good for him.

A huge part of talk therapy’s effectiveness is having an experience of being truly seen, of being able to be authentic and real with another human being and feeling their honest empathy and acceptance. If Booker has to lie and hide 90% of his life, the benefit is very limited.

So I’ve been thinking about what’s actually his issue, what’s actually wrong with him, what could be treated.

There’s a little bit of a gimme the Old Guard get, where if a normal human being encountered that much pain and stress—I’m talking physical pain and physiological stress—they would be a burned-out wreck. Their nervous system would just spend all its time pumping out pain signals. So already, their neural healing is as advanced as their other healing.

But if we’re assuming Booker’s incredible history of trauma and years of nihilism has still managed to etch itself onto his brain the way it might a mortal’s... I mean, one therapy is medication, and beyond your usual antidepressants there are experimental PTSD medications with promise, like MDMA (yes, the party drug). He could also try transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is administered over 20-30 treatments over a year (every two or three weeks).

But as for things Booker would consciously work at, there are two well-proven process therapies that don’t rely on talk because they target the physiological and emotional mechanisms of PTSD more than the cognitive ones.

One is biofeedback—here’s an informative video and an informative article. It basically means training your brain and body to react in a different and more controlled way, so that, for example, you’re able to calm down in response to an incipient panic attack, or able to focus on the positive in a stressful situation.

The other is EMDR—here’s an informative video and an informative article. In EMDR the therapist provides sensory stimuli that basically puts your brain into “debug” mode, and you practice going from a feeling of peace and stability, to accessing your traumatic memories, to finding new ways to deal with them, to going back to being okay enough to go back to your life. EMDR is rather unique because the client needs to talk very little; most of the work is done internally.

So those might be of use to Booker. And Quỳnh, if she ends up going too.

This is a great example of how to use psychology with your fictional characters! 

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.

This is weird bevause ive had this exact thought before

Actually it really does help to paint the picture

COVID

Or, How to Abandon Pants & Save the World at the Same Time

Hey all. Seems like it’s getting tough out there. 

Seems like shit is getting really real, really fast. 

I’m here in New York, doing ICU transfers for one of the hospital systems, and I can’t lie to you… it’s bad. 

We’re storing bodies in refrigerated trailers because the morgues are full. 

The City is reopening potter’s fields and digging mass graves. 

Hundreds of people a day are dying. Soon, thousands.

Mostly older. Some previously-healthy adults. Mercifully, not many kids. 

It’s real, and it’s bad. 

But I promise you, the world is not ending. 

And I also promise you this post will end with HOPE, even if it’s hard to read. 

But I want to talk about something… a misconception I’ve been seeing over and over again. 

Keep reading

How to Write During a Pandemic

Hi all, Normally I keep this blog focused on writing advice and steer away from politics, but with the COVID-19 pandemic raging and all the accompanying uncertainty about our future post-climate change, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a writer on a rapidly changing planet. What’s our responsibility in a time like this? What kind of stories do we need right now? Is it even possible—or desirable—for our individual creativity flourish when we’re scared for our very lives? With that in mind, I wanted to offer my thoughts on how to renegotiate your relationship with your writing during this crisis, as well as some proposals for how to navigate the changes to come.

WHY IT’S HARD TO WRITE RIGHT NOW

Did you think being stuck at home, underemployed, and/or socially isolated would translate to more time spent on your writing… Only to discover, um, it didn’t? You’re not alone. While shutdowns, quarantine, and self isolation may be theoretically creating conditions that give you lots of time to write, many writers are more blocked than ever right now. Here’s why.

You’re Terrified. Even in the best of circumstances, writers under capitalism are regularly paralyzed by the fear that spending time on their writing is “unproductive” (read: non-income producing), frivolous, or even reckless. So it makes sense that it would be difficult to put time into a purely recreational creative activity given the heightened survival fears arising from these extreme circumstances.

Your Stories Suddenly Seem Irrelevant. Even if you can get yourself to sit down and write right now, crisis conditions can create an existential angst that causes you to question whether what you’re writing is still relevant, important, or helpful to others. Personally, I haven’t been able to write in days. Prior to this outbreak I was working on a darkly whimsical fairy tale about a monkey and a bear that escape from the circus. I thought it was relevant and deep—the story deals with themes of feminism, transformation, and survival under capitalism. But under the bright light of a viral pandemic, stories that once seemed deeply significant can suddenly feel like irrelevant fluff.

You Don’t Know How to Do Anything Different. Let’s face it—your pre-pandemic writing life was created to work well with your pre-pandemic life life. Now that your life has changed, you need to change your writing habits, too… But you don’t know how to do anything different. So you either freeze up and get nothing done, or try to ignore what’s happening and charge ahead like nothing has changed. Neither of these techniques work well, though. Now that your life is different, you need to do something different with your writing.

HOW TO KEEP WRITING DURING A PANDEMIC

Warning: I’m not going to urge you to stay the course and push ahead with your normal writing life against all odds. I don’t think that advice is realistic, and frankly it’s not responsible, either. Creative people are the vanguards of social change. If shit is going down, it’s our job to innovate and pivot, not to cling like barnacles to the status quo.

How to Write… When You’re Scared You’re Going to Die

First thing’s first: Lower your expectations. You might need to throw all your old plans (“I’m going to finish my novel next month!”) out the window. You might not be able to write as much, or as often, or about the same things you used to. That’s okay. Be gentle with yourself. See if you can write for ten minutes a day. Use an internet blocker to give yourself a break from the constant, anxiety-producing COVID-19 updates you’ve been reading since you woke up. Turn off your phone. If you can’t make any progress on your WIP, write something else.

There’s going to be a lot of pressure from the mainstream to keep things “business-as-usual” during this time. Fuck that. You’re not a robot. Write in a journal, or on social media, or don’t write at all, really, it’s fine. Lay down and cry. Let what’s happening touch you. As a creative person, we need you to absorb and process this crisis so you can write something that gives insight into our present and creates a vision for our future. If you need to take a break, change course, or give up for a while, do it.

What to Write… When You’re Drowning in Existential Angst

If your WIP suddenly feels irrelevant to your life and the world around you, write something else! Try a new story, new characters, new themes. If you usually write fiction, try nonfiction. If you’re anxious about our future, imagine a new one. If you’re angry about losing your job, write about that. And if all you can think about is the Coronavirus, for god’s sake write about the fucking Coronavirus. Remember: Our old stories got us here. If they feel stupid now there’s a good reason. Things are changing. In order to co-create a better future we’re going to need new stories, new art, new creative work that deals with our current reality and shows us how to make a better one. Let me repeat that:

We need new stories. The lone wolf hero who conquers all odds; the hetero-normative romance that results in an isolated nuclear family unit; the super special person who alienates themselves with a droney inner monologue of me me me wah wah wah but never has their come-to-jesus moment; the capitalist success stories and pessimistic dystopias… these old, status quo, individualist narratives will no longer serve us as our environment becomes increasingly inhospitable and industrial capitalism disintegrates.

The Coronavirus is not a fluke. The world is changing, fast, and we need writers like YOU to step up their game. The stories we tell each other matter. We need writing that teaches us how to take care of each other. How to trust each other, come together, and heal the wounds of fear and distrust that this brutal, competitive economic system has left behind. Writing is a powerful medium for change and we’re in a unique position right now (lots of time on our hands, very little left to lose) to take advantage of that.

It’s not going to be easy. Toeing the line is often highly rewarded. To make matters worse, in the short run, as people are quarantined in their homes with only online interactions and books to keep them company, there will be an increased demand for mindless, comforting, status quo media—movies, TV shows, fiction, etc.—that perpetuates old ways of thinking and does nothing to hearken the change we need right now.

Some people would argue that brainless entertainment and comforting fluff has its place, too, and overall I agree with that. It’s true we need distraction, entertainment, humor, and beauty in times like these. Every piece of creative work doesn’t have to scream out an Important Message. (It’s also true that there are already lots of awesome, relevant stories being told. It’s not all shit out there.)

But if you, like me, feel the tug to create work right now that feels more significant, while at the same time struggling with the pressure to conform to the status quo, I urge you to be courageous enough not to take the bait.

How to Do Something Different… When You Don’t Know How To Do Anything Different

In times of insecurity and flux, it’s common to default to familiar behaviors and narratives. How can we do something different when we’re so freaked out? How do we discover and create stories that feel connected to our new reality… when we don’t even know what that reality is yet? How do we establish new writing habits when things are changing on a daily basis?

This is important. Take care of yourselves.

The Shrink needs your help.

CW: Politics, insurance / money issues

You may have noticed how I recently had a burst of activity on this blog, after a year+ of hiatus. The Shrink is chronically ill with an invisible disability. I’ve been having a really bad flair-up of symptoms, and the medications I was on previously were no longer working for me. Recently, however, a new drug came out that treats my specific condition. I was given the opportunity to try it, and it is a godsend, and doesn’t even seem to have any side effects. The doctor increased my dosage to the max recommended amount, because we were going to see if I could be weaned off the other drugs I’m taking.

Y’all, at this level of the medication, I was finally functional again. I was going out for evening events, I joined an aerial gym (and actually ENJOYED exercising, what the actual fuck), I started updating the blog again… my life was finally back on track after almost two years of being stalled out.

And then my insurance company noticed just how much this drug was costing them, and now refuse to cover it entirely. You see, my condition is considered a rare disease. And this new miracle drug is considered an orphan drug – there are so few people that this medication will benefit that the company charges out the ass for it. If I were to pay out of pocket for this medication, it would cost me about $12,000 USD a month. That’s $144,000 USD a year.

I am not asking for donations. While I do have a significant amount of followers, unless I’ve got a billionaire secretly following me, I do not have any illusions about being able to get that kind of money on a regular basis from the kindness of strangers alone.

But there is one thing you can do for me, Shrinky-dinks. If you are in the US and able to vote, I am begging you to please consider voting for Bernie Sanders. With universal healthcare, I would actually be able to get the medications that make me functional.

Some states (including my own) have already had their primaries, but many states have not voted yet. Check this list to see if you can still vote in your state, and find all the info on what you need: https://wtfisgoingonews.tumblr.com/post/611649194542956544/if-you-want-bernie-to-get-the-nomination-over

Note - if you are currently 17, but will be 18 by the time of the presidential elections, you may still be eligible to vote in the primaries in certain states!

Thanks for listening, guys. I appreciate it. My life is literally depending on this.

I saw Crissy Milazzo post this on Twitter and just had to spread this!

AFFORDABLE THERAPY IN YOUR STATE

This isn’t writing advice, but I think it’s an incredibly valuable resource for my followers to see.

Writing Tip June 4th

A list of body language phrases.

I’ve included a very comprehensive list, organized by the type of body movement, hand and arm movements, facial expressions etc. In some cases, a phrase fits more than one heading, so it may appear twice. Possible emotions are given after each BL phrase unless the emotion is indicated within the phrase. (They are underlined for emphasis, not due to a hyperlink.)

Note: I’ve included a few body postures and body conditions as they are non-verbal testimony to the character’s physical condition.

Have fun and generate your own ideas.:-)

Eyes, Brows and Forehead

Place To Place, Stationary Or Posture

Head Movement

Mouth And Jaw

Nose

Face in General

Arm and Hand

Sitting or Rising

Recline

Entire body and General

-Sharla Rae

A chart from thoughtcatalog.org titled “Like vs. Love + Lust & Obsess”, comparing the differences between them.

Full image transcription after the jump, since it’s quite lengthy!

someone in a fanfic: s-stutters in embarrassment

me, closing the tab: sorry I must go

When people stutter, they usually reword what they’re saying as they speak, and subconsciously insert “filler words” such as “uh, like, you know,” and etc.

*puts on speech therapist hat*

ACTUALLY! It depends on why they are stuttering. 

A Nervous Stutter results in what is called Mazing, or rewording the sentence. That is the classic “I, um… well I… look it’s just that… so we…” that @hellishhues is talking about. When someone is mazing their words you’re seeing a form of Speech Apraxia where the brain is having trouble forming verbal speech. This can be brought on by brain damage, memory loss, anxiety, nerves, and several other things. 

The root cause of a nervous stutter is a disconnect between the mouth and the brain. 

With this you will also sometimes see the classic “S-s-s-sorry…” especially if the person has been training to speak clearly and is now at a point of fatigue or stress where they are not mentally capable of forming the words.

The other kind of stutter is a Physical Stutter, sometimes referred to as slurring, and another facet of Speech Apraxia. This stutter is caused when the muscles of the mouth, tongue, and throat are physically unable to form certain sounds. This is most often seen in the very young and victims of brain trauma. 

Sounds are acquired at different ages, so a 2-year-old will probably not be able to clearly pronounce certain words (which is why toddler sound so off when they’re written with developed dialogue). These mis-pronunciations are sometimes referred to as lisping, but only if the sounds are run together. If the person starts and restarts the sound because they got it wrong, it can also sound like the classic sound stutter. 

But it all depends on why the character is stuttering!

Do they have Speech Apraxia, Audio Processing Disorder, muscle dysfunction, or another medical reason to stutter? (1)

Are they stuttering because of anxiety, stress, or fatigue? (2)

Does the stutter stem from intoxication or blood loss? (3)

All of those will sound different! 

1 - Will have mazing, repeated sound stutters, and be the classic stutter that annoys OP.

2 - This is where you’ll see the repetition stutter, mazing, rephrasing, and filler words.

3 - This is where you are more likely to see starts and stops and slurring of words. 

My mum has apraxia and I just wanted to say that’s one of the most concise and clear ways I’ve seen it explained, thank you!