Komako Sakai, The Snow Day

Some More Aesthetic Playlists for Writing

For when you’re running through the streets of a steampunk city

For when you’re gettin’ lit and plunderin’ ships with your rowdy pirate crew

For when you’re exploring the surface of a new planet

For when you’re in a southern, mystical Wuthering Heights™️ situation

For when you’re roaming the fog ridden streets of Victorian London

For when you’re traveling Europe by train with your college friends in the 1900s alternatively light academia

For when you’re on a space adventure with a fearless band of friends

For when you’re wandering through the palace gardens awaiting an arraigned marriage

For when you’re sailing on the high seas and your crew is singing some shanties to keep the spirits up

For when you’re walking through the streets of a big city and you can’t help feeling like there’s something magical running through your veins

For when you’re experiencing the Highs and lows of aristocratic life

For when you’re chilling with your cyborg friends at an android jazz club

For when you’re monster hunting in a small woodland town

For when you’re making your way through a bustling town and trying to take in the beauty and splendor

for all you literature babes, here is an open yale course which ive been listening to which includes lectures and course materials and is totally free. it’s v interesting enlightening etc, have fun!!

Also picking up new books you’ve never heard of before because the premise sounds neat or the cover is pretty or it’s on a themed library display or you’re just trying to read your library’s entire catalogue of 90s cyberpunk is just fun. Sometimes it’s not your thing but you get to mull over new ideas or the diversity of people and opinions and thoughts in the world. Sometimes you discover your new favorite book of all time

Hogwarts first year: PART 1

First semester, September to December

“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.”

— Julien Smith, The Flinch (via wnq-anonymous)

some of my favorite woven tapestries, by Cecilia Blomberg:

Point Defiance Steps

Mates

Rising Tides

Vashon Steps

Resources For Worldbuilding

Culture & Society

Creating Fictional Holidays

Music For Your Fantasy World

Creating Religions & Belief Systems

How to Design Your Diabolical Cult

Historically Accurate Sexism in Fantasy: Let’s Unpack That

Debate with the Squirrels: Sexism in Fantasy

Feudalism

Using Politics In Fantasy Fiction

Mythic Justice – Crime and Punishment in Your Fantasy World

Government Worldbuilding

Realistic Political Strife

A Politics Of Worldbuilding

Language

Creating a Language

The Language Construction Kit

The International Phonetic Alphabet – Audio Illustrations

Fantasy Name Generator

Geographic Names

Medieval Names Archive 

Squid Name Generator 

Model Languages

Xenolinguistics 

History

Prehistory

Mythos

History

Today

Myths, Creatures, and Folklore

Encyclopedia Mythica

The Ancient History Encyclopedia

Using History as Inspiration for Fantasy

Victorian Era Family Day Life in England

Peasant Life in the Middle Ages

Everyday Life in the Middle Ages

English Monarchs

Feudal Japan

The Story and Structure of the Iroquois Confederacy

Science + Geography

Dimensions

Solar Bodies

Climatology

Planetary Geography

Water Geography

Cartography, Maps, Star Charts, and Writing

Fundamentals of Physical Geography

Dating of Middle-earth events, using Precession of the Equinoxes and Tidal Friction

Orbital Operations in Science Fiction

Planet Designer

Artificial gravity calculator

Natural gravity calculator

Selden’s Catalogs of Objects for Celestia

Medieval Technology

Defining the Source, Effects, and Cost of Magic

How to Create a Rational Magic System

Miscellaneous

/r/worldbuilding

Fantasy World Generator

SciFi World Generator

Focused Ambiguity: Using Metaphor in Fantasy Writing

Space Engine

Terragen

The Five foundations of Worldbuilding

Setting the Fantastic in the Everyday World

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spotify users!!! tell me the most recent song that you liked

Any advice on back and forth dialogue? Like properly portraying an argument? I think all the spaces will get bothersome to the reader...

(Since arguments are the hardest type of back and forth dialogue to master, and other dialogue follows the same structure but in a more flexible manner, I’ll focus on arguments specifically…)

Writing an argument.

Everyone’s process for this is a little bit different, but here’s a look at mine, which has helped me reach the best end result (after many failed argument scenes in the past):

1. Dialogue. I like to write this as a script of sorts first, playing the scene in my head and only writing down the words and some vague comments regarding what the characters might be experiencing or doing. I leave breaks in the dialogue where the characters naturally pause from build ups of emotion, and add in all the em-dashes and ellipsis my heart desires (despite knowing a lot of them won’t make it through the reread, much less the final draft.)

2. Action. Not only does having your characters do things while they argue make the whole scene feel more realistic and plant it within the setting, but it also provides a great way for your characters to express things they don’t have the words to say. These “actions” can be facial expressions and body language, movement, or interaction with the objects in the setting, such as gripping a steering wheel too tightly or slamming a cupboard or tensely loading a gun.

3. Emotion. I save this for last because I find emotion very hard to write into narratives, but no matter when you write it or how you feel about it, feeling the pov character’s internal emotions is integral to the reader’s own emotional connection to the argument. Remember though, emotions should be shown and not told. Instead of saying the character is angry, describe what that anger is doing to them physically (how it makes them feel), and what desires it puts in them (how it makes them think.)

Other equally (if not more) important factors:

- Build tension slowly. Arguments will never be believable if the characters go from being calm and conversational to furious and biting in a single paragraph. The reader must feel the character’s anger build as their self-control dwindles, must hear the slight tension in their voice and the sharpness of their words as the scene leads up to the full blown argument.

- Vary sentence length. Arguments in which characters shoot single short sentences back and forth often feel just as stiff and unnatural as arguments where characters monologue their feelings for full paragraphs. If a character does need to say a lot of things in one go, break it up with short, emotional reactions from the other characters to keep the reader from losing the tension of the scene. Likewise, if characters don’t have bulk to their words, try including a few heavy segments of internal emotional turmoil from the pov character to make the argument hit harder instead of flying by without impact.

- Where did this argument start? Most arguments don’t really start the moment the words begin flying, but rather hours, days, weeks, even years before. If you as the author can’t pinpoint where the character’s emotions originated and what their primary target or release point is, then it’s unlikely the reader will accept that they exist in the first place.

- Characters want things, always. Sometimes arguments center around characters who vocally want opposing things, but often there are goals the characters hide or perhaps even from themselves. Think about what goals are influencing the characters in the argument while you’re writing it in order to make sure everything is consistent and focused.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to do all these things the very first draft. My arguments consistently have little emotion and even less build up until the second or third draft. As long as you return to these things as you continue to edit, the final result should feel like a fully fleshed out and emotional argument. 

For more writing tips from Bryn, view the archive catalog or the complete tag!

one of the many reasons Fleabag is so heartbreaking and relatable is because no one ever chose her. Not her family. Not her lovers. Not her supposed “soulmate”. The one person that picked her died. She was no one’s choice or option, not even to herself. The way we can feel her loneliness through the screen is enough to make me collapse into a mess of tears on the ground and shake uncontrollably