What Emotion Do You Write From

What if instead of editing – and hear me out on this one – I lay facedown on the floor and do nothing

it's not a red string of fate those two are bound by dog collars and a steel chain

imagining a tender moment between your own ocs but you are the only person with any context

I love getting knives out of the dishwasher because I pull them out and for a few seconds I'm kind of an evil murderer who is a threat to everyone around me but then I'm normal again and put the knife up

Till death do us part? Yea no you’re not getting out of this that easily

Actually, can we talk about how Garbage a lot of ubiquitous writing advice in the late 2000's was?

Like "you have to begin in the middle of the action! your first line has to be a 'hook' that draws the reader further into the story!"

This is the bullshit responsible for the amount of books that begin in the middle of some sort of pointless fucking action scene that I care nothing about because I just got here.

Like I guess this makes books easier to "sell" or whatever on some level of the process, but it's garbage storytelling advice because setup and establishment of the Way Things Are is almost always necessary.

On some level I don't think it's actually possible to begin a story right on top of the "inciting incident" because...you don't have the raw materials to "incite" anything with. If you have to set up basic things about the characters and world after the "inciting incident," it's not really the inciting incident anymore, is it?

The event that "launches" a character into their plot line is something that follows from the character's established situation, desires, traits etc. It's a follow-up to a situation that makes a Story of some kind inevitable.

It is, by definition, an event that makes no sense and does not matter to the reader at all unless the "setup" already exists.

If you try to begin right in the middle of the event that "sparks" the plot, you're going to end up including a second, "real" event that actually does the job, because you can't do the job if the character, the stakes, the rules, etc. are not there yet.

Now the action scene you stuck to the beginning of your story is probably dead weight that is getting in the way of the setup.

“I’m glad you’re okay” but said by someone who has just had the shit beaten out of them, to someone who is not hurt at all, is a brilliant trope and I lose my mind every time.

when you finally realize why your wip is going nowhere:

Writers going psspsspssp to their brains trying to lure them into writing