I Personally Love The Pumpkin Orange One. And I Would Look Good In It With Blonde Hair And Honey Eyes. 

I feel like I should just add on to this with a not-really-related fact that someone is going to have to clarify. I read a long time ago(during a time when I had the want to actually do stuff instead of just sleep, blow off online school, almost ignore my homework, eat ice cream and watch tele while saying “fuck you” to the world) that, somewhere not in the states, they stopped treating addiction like a crime and more like something that needed to be helped, like a mental disorder or something. If you had a certain amount, then you would meet with two people, I don’t remember what they were. A social worker and a lawyer, maybe. This is why I need someone to fill in the ever present blanks. The drug rate or whatever dropped astoundingly.

Introducing: #BusinessForBC

Right now, a growing number of businesses are pledging to guarantee birth control coverage for their workers. Why? Because it’s essential health care that helps workers thrive, and because access to birth control fosters more equitable, inclusive working environments. 

Business for Birth Control’s call to action is so important right now, because sexual and reproductive health care is under threat in the U.S. and around the world. Any day now, the Supreme Court will make a decision on two dangerous Trump administration rules that would allow employers and universities — based on their personal objections — to deny birth control coverage to employees and students. And the Trump administration has tried to bully the United Nations to eliminate references to sexual and reproductive health as part of their global COVID-19 plans, ignoring the essential nature of reproductive health care during a pandemic and always. 

Businesses that pledge to be a #BusinessforBC are helping to educate and inspire others in the business community to show their support for accessible birth control for all people. These companies know that access to birth control improves economic and health outcomes. Nearly 90% of women of reproductive age have used contraception in their lifetimes, and access to birth control has been proven to increase education level and wage earning. 

Pledging to guarantee birth control access is part of a larger commitment to racial and gender equity, too: Women of color, especially Black and Indigenous women, face disproportionate barriers to accessing affordable health care. Access to a full range of sexual and reproductive health services is key to addressing historical disparities in unintended pregnancy, maternal mortality rates, and higher rates of breast and cervical cancer. 

Women of color also face greater institutional barriers to promotion in the workplace. Black women and Latinas in the U.S. today earn just over half of what their white male counterparts earn. We have a long way to go, but committing to birth control coverage is one step toward greater racial equity in the workforce and more inclusive economic growth. 

Businesses that have pledged to be a #BusinessforBC include:

Amalgamated Bank

Argent

Bad Robot Productions

CREDO Mobile

Female Quotient

Hims & Hers

Jaya Apparel Group, parent company to Cinq à Sept and Likely

Postmates 

The Helm

The Lede Company

Trillium Asset Management

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Learn more about #BusinessForBC at BusinessForBirthControl.org.

I’m curious...

reblog if what jkr says is no longer canon to you 

I post a lot more drawings to my ig but I’ll try to post more here as well

“like blowing bubbles”

That’s gay. 

do magical kids get yearbooks??? this was such a great excuse to draw 16 portraits

DON’T FORGET THIS APPLIES TO PEOPLE!!!!

❤ Give love! Spread love!  ❤

Go and tell your favorite artist something nice about their art! Go-go-go!

This has made me think so much…and not entirely about my characters.

Writing Grief

I’ve heard from many places - and wholeheartedly stand by - the idea that the larger the scope you’re trying to portray, the smaller your focus should be. For example, if you’re writing about a village that’s been destroyed, you don’t focus on the destruction everywhere, you focus on a little child’s doll lying half-scorched in the street. The idea is to channel as much of the emotion as possible into the smallest details. That’s how it’s the most potent.

Grief is one of these big things. Grief rocks your world, and it’s grip doesn’t go away as soon as the next thing comes around. It strikes at odd moments.

The thing with grief is that everyone experiences it differently, and everyone’s got different memories surrounding it. Given this fact, I’m going to describe questions who’s answers you may incorporate into your narrative, but I cannot give you a “this is how to write your character’s grieving.” The questions I’ve listed below are likely going to be most relevant at or just after another character’s died, when things are freshest and at their most raw.

(note: “or” questions do not necessarily mean you have to choose one or the other. You can, but it’s also saying, “is at least one of these the case?”)

How does it feel externally?

Do things feel too rough, or too soft? Too squishy or too unyielding?

Are yoru character’s sleeves damp or wet from wiping away tears? are there balls of tissues held tight in your character’s fists?

Is the air too cold or too warm?

Is the space too tight, or too open?

How does it feel physically internally?

Is your character’s jaw clenched or their muscles tightened?

Do their eyes sting or feel puffy from tears?

Are they dehydrated and/or hungry?

Does their skin feel cold to the touch?

Do they crave physical contact such as hugs, or do they not want to be touched?

How does your character feel emotionally?

Are they angry, scared, sad, or unsure?

Do they feel emotionally empty like there is nothing inside of them (do they feel cold but aren’t physically cold)?

Are their thoughts coherant, or are they scattered?

What do they notice? Colors, shapes, patterns, sounds, movement, tactile sensations, smells?

Is your character craving a sense or normalcy, or a sense of difference that reflects the difference of someone dying?

How does your character physically react?

Do they start crying or showing other intense emotions?

Do they try to hold everything inside and/or not show other people?

Does their movement style change (they’re jerkier, slower, etc)?

Do they not seem to hear anything anyone else is saying?

Do they try to overcompensate and/or pretend that what happened didn’t really matter (showing intense emotions seemingly unrelated to grief)?

I would love that! Even if I don’t write straight romance, it’s always there.  Edit: I mean totally romance, as in that’s the main genre. Though I don’t really write hetero couples except for parents… Tender Tuesday seems great and would totally check in for that. Though my WIP right now is about scandals and and bunch of shit(see the debutante series which is what inspired me, though it has a darker feel) so it does include more sexual stuff. They are hormonal teenagers by the way.    Wedding Wednesday might be good for those of us who have wedding scenes in our romance. For example, my WIP(Historical romance ) that I haven’t touched in years it feels like, the ending scene was a wedding scene the last words being “i do”. 

Romance writing

I’ve been wondering for a while that I could make an event for romance writers (that includes of course every other genre you have a WIP with a major romance line in) because I mainly see fantasy stories getting attention and maybe it would be nice to gather with like minded people. (I’m thinking something like World Building Wednesday or maybe Flash Fic Friday or possibly both, except these would be romance related) On the other hand maybe there are mainly only fantasy writers on Tumblr and that’s the reason for the lack of visibility of romance WIPs.

Either way, please reblog this if you’re a romance writer/other genre writer but would be interested in a specific romance ask game/flash fic prompts event and yeah, I will try to come up with something if there’s interest.

P.S.: Boost this, please, even if you aren’t interested, someone might be xx

I didn’t even realise I did this. Almost subconsciously, it’s just the way my writing is. I thought it was normal…? Okay. 

Hi, I'm rereading some of my work and I notice that most of the sentences start with a subject and it tends to get really annoying after a while. Any tips on other ways I could start my sentences?

How to Diversify Your Sentence Structure

This is a really common problem that I think a lot of writers have! Having a repetitive sentence structure without variation can make your prose really choppy, boring and difficult to read, while overall weakening your voice.

Here are some techniques to help you change things up a bit!

Switch around your subject

Very basic grammar: Every sentence has a subject and a predicate. I think when we think of subject in a sentence, we often think of person. This might be especially true in creative writing because we deal with characters.

For example:

Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. She felt a cold breeze blow through her. She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.

In this example, Amelia is the subject of every single sentence, and a verb is followed immediately afterward. Because every sentence begins with ‘Amelia’ or ‘she’, there’s no variety and it’s a little bit boring to read. 

Here’s what it could look like if I switched the subject around somewhere.

She felt a cold breeze blow through her.

A cold breeze blew through her.

The difference is subtle, but now the subject of the sentence is the breeze, not Amelia. The sentence structure is still the same: The subject is followed by a verb. However, because the subject is different from Amelia, it still brings variety to how your sentences read. 

Here’s what it looks like now:

Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. A cold breeze blew through her. She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.

Now that every sentence doesn’t begin with “Amelia” or “she” it seems a little bit more interesting.

Put dependent clause before subject 

So we changed one subject in a sentence, but we still have multiple sentences that have Amelia as the subject. It still doesn’t have too much variety in sentence structure, and as a result, it can be stilted.

So let’s try bringing a dependent clause before the subject.

She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.

Realizing that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather, Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.

By bringing ‘realizing’ before the subject, I created a dependent clause and succeeded making the first word something other than the subject. 

However, because it’s a dependent clause, ‘realizing that she wasn’t dressed appropriately’ is a sentence fragment — it’s an incomplete thought. So I combined it with the last sentence to make it complete.

So after those two techniques, let’s compare the original with the rewrite.

Original

Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. She felt a cold breeze blow through her. She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket. 

Rewrite

Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. A cold breeze blew through her. Realizing that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather, Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.

Now because there’s a variety in sentence structure and subject, the paragraph  is not only more interesting to read, it also flows better and more smoothly. It also has the added bonus of diverse sentence lengths which was lacking before, and it helps make the writing more engaging.

I just wanted to note: there is nothing bad about having your subject as the first word in a sentence. I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to change every single sentence they ever wrote. Like in my example, the first sentence starts with Amelia. That’s fine.

The problem is that when every single sentence starts that way, it becomes repetitive. You can still have some sentences that start with your character, just make sure to throw in some other sentence structures, and your writing will be more engaging!

Outside of this specific example, you can also try playing around with dependent clauses in your existing sentences as well.

Jamie walked into the haunted house, despite her reluctance.

Despite her reluctance, Jamie walked into the haunted house.

The sentence is the exact same, but I just switched around where the dependent clause ‘despite her reluctance’ is placed. Even though it has the same meaning, it can provide a different feel or at the very least, switch up having your subject as the first word of every sentence.

I also talk about this in my guide about how to make your writing flow better. Sentence structure has a lot to do with making your writing sound cohesive and eloquent, so I would definitely recommend checking that out as well!

Thanks so much for asking Anon, I definitely struggled with this too when I was just starting out. I remember seeing how every single paragraph started with a name, and that was really annoying me, but I had trouble figuring out how to fix it. I hope this helped!

#writinganactionscenewhenyousuckatwritingaction

Advice for people who are better at writing dialogue than action

As someone who has always been able to spit out witty quotes but couldn’t write a fight scene to save my life, here are some tips that have helped me that I would like to share.

1.) Go bit by bit.

Let’s get the hard one out of the way first. I’m going to use ‘fight scene’ for this example, but it can apply to just about any action scene. Have a starting point and an ending point, then just start writing. So let’s say two characters threaten each other. Okay. One takes a swing. Alright. What next? Maybe another one swings back. What next? First one kicks. Is it appropriate for character 1 to stab character 2 yet? Probably not. What can I do instead? Just work it out one action at a time. If it doesn’t come out the best on paper, who cares? You have a baseline. This isn’t easy and maybe not the best way to do it, but it’s a method I’ve used and it’s better than just saying “They fought until character 2 was stabbed.”

2.) Mix in Dialogue

Just use what you’re good at, fam’. Direct the action with dialogue. If you’re like me and your characters have an affinity for arguing with each other, sometimes their conversation will give you a better idea of what’s going on anyway. I mean, I essentially have a chase scene where one character gets shot and the conversation goes as follows.

*H shoots D*

C: Ooh, bad shot.

J: that’s what you have to say to that?

That’s not a great example, but this is also from a scene I’ve rewritten like ten times.

I mean, also, what about the “turn around slowly” scenes in horror movies?

I also use this sometimes to informally describe how a rock looks like the middle finger or something because the characters think it’s funny. It helps me, at the very least.

Point being, use your characters’ thoughts to give the reader a deeper idea of what’s going on if it’s hard for you to explain it outright.

3.) Write Dialogue First

First go in and write whatever the characters are discussing before going in and filling in the action. Do what you like and feel comfortable doing first, then perfect it later on. If it’s a fight scene, maybe the characters are sharing insults. Write the insults and then conduct the action to fit the rising tension accompanying the verbal insults. Don’t get writers block over the action; save it for when you have the energy.

4.) Just Keep It Simple

As a perfectionist with anxiety, I try to make my first drafts perfect. Spoiler alert: YOUR FIRST DRAFT WILL NEVER BE PERFECT. Life is too short to get upset over your weak action scenes. Write simple sentences and get the basis down. Who cares? Certainly not me at this point. When you go back and edit, then you can flip them around, add color and flavor, and make them come to life. But in the first draft? It’s perfectly okay if your action scene is “He ran towards her. He hugged her. She hugged him. They went home.” Later, you can go in and add things like “They embraced each other, tears in their eyes, never expecting to let go.” It’s okay if you’re not there. One step at a time, fam’.

If anyone else has any suggestions or tips for people who struggle with dialogue, feel free to add! These are just what has helped me through the years.