Writing Tip #218

“Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.”

— Emery Allen

“Sometimes it’s good to be scared. It means you still have something to lose…”

— Meredith Grey

“Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but ‘Mom’s’ probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.”

— Kalyn RoseAnne

hi! i hope you’re doing well do you have a list of words to describe facial expressions? also, words to describe laughter? thank you :))

Vocabulary & Description...

I’ve sort of taken this ask as an opportunity to make a “collection” of my resources for vocabulary, description, etc. Below is a list of articles that one would find helpful for writing description (of mostly anything).

The Vocabulary & Resources

All About Colors

A Writer’s Thesaurus

Words To Describe Body Types and How They Move

Words To Describe… (Face, Facial Expressions, and General Behavior)

Resources For Describing Characters

Resources For Describing Emotion

Describing Setting

Resources For Describing Physical Things

Describing Heartbreak

Utilizing The Vocabulary

Using Vocabulary

Expanding Your Vocabulary

Describing Where Your Characters Are

Balancing Detail & Development

When To Use “Felt”

Showing Vs Telling

How To Better Your Vocabulary & Description

Adding Description

Tips on Descriptions

Giving Characters Stage Business

Additionally:

How To Develop A Distinct Voice In Your Writing

Showing VS Telling in First Person POV

Writing In Third Person POV

Improving Flow In Writing

How To “Show Don’t Tell” More

What To Cut Out of Your Story

Editing & Proofreading Cheat Sheet

A Guide To Tension & Suspense

On Underwriting

Ultimate Guide To Symbolism

Expanding Scenes

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“It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski 

“Be thankful for all the difficult people in your life, and learn from them. They have shown you exactly who you do not want to be.”

— Unknown 

Time Travel Alternate Universe Prompts

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

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You time-travel back to 1348, accidentally bringing your phone. About to take a photo, you notice: “1 available wifi network”. (x)

In the near future, the secret to time travel has been discovered - in order to travel back into the past there needs to be a ‘receiving station’ at the other end - explaining why nobody from the future has been observed up 'til now. The first such 'station’ is about to be completed. (x)

You, a young scientist have discovered time travel. You think it would be a great idea to go to medieval times, share your knowledge and become king. On your first visit, you meet a king and he introduces himself with a polite fist bump and greets, “bro you discovered time traveling too?!” (x)

In the future time travel is finally achieved, but instead of being used by preventing disasters, time travelers are known as historians, who are trained since birth to blend into environments and answer history’s unanswered questions. Maybe we can see the universe’s creation. (x)

Time travel exists. By law, every citizen is given one day they may repeat on loop until they get it right. This morning, you found your spouse looking exhausted and crying. “I can’t save you. I’ve tried hundreds of times.” (x)

Since you were young, time travelers have visited you. One of them explained that, in the future, an algorithm determined that you were the only person in the past that it was safe to visit because no matter what you do it will not change the future. You are determined to prove them wrong. (x)

Having developed time travel in secret, you find yourself stranded alone in the 1800s following your test jump. Walking amongst the crowds on the cobbles of Victorian London years later, you pass someone humming a Beatles song. (x)

In an effort to prove to your friends that time travel is possible, you tell Siri to remind yourself to travel back in time to the present day, at your current location, in 1/1/2100, if time travel has been invented by then. Suddenly, a strange capsule materializes before your eyes. (x)

A time traveller attempts to explore the far future, only to be intercepted and trapped in a time prison. The rest of the prison happens to be populated by the countless recursive instances of a single time traveller’s attempts to break themself free. (x)

A friendship between a time traveler and an immortal. Wherever the time traveler ends up, the immortal is there to catch him up to speed. (x)

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“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

— Ambrose Bierce (via quotemadness)