Tips For Finishing A First Draft

“There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape.”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Art: Gust of Wind (La Bourrasque) Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer 1896

On Writer’s Block

I’ve been listening to another book on writing - Save The Cat! Writes A Novel - and while I greatly enjoyed almost all of it, and found it very helpful, at the very end there was a phrase that made me want to punch the wall. 

“There’s no such thing as writer’s block or plotter’s block. There’s only perfectionist’s block.”

The author, Jessica Brody, gave credit for this nonsense to another author, Emily Hainsworth, and I freely admit that I wished both of them great ill at this point in the book. 

I’ve made posts on this subject before… I think?… but never mind, I’m going to do it again. 

People who say ‘there’s no such thing as writer’s block’ or ‘just push through it’ are like people who say ‘there’s no such thing as PMS’ or ‘depressed people could cheer up if they wanted to’. Only someone who’s never experienced it would say something that stupid. And those of us who have tend to react something along the lines of ‘I HATE YOU, YOU SMUG BASTARD, I HOPE YOU DIE DIE DIE’. (One of my PMS symptoms is intensely homicidal thoughts! Fun!) 

But I think part of the problem is that ‘Writer’s Block’ is actually a blanket term, like ‘mental illness’ or ‘chronic pain’. There are multiple types, multiple causes, and multiple ways of handling them. No one approach will work for all of them, and what works great for one will actively worsen another

Here are the four kinds I know about. There may be more, but these are the ones I’ve experienced personally. 

Keep reading

Unpopular opinion: not everything that makes you uncomfortable is bad. Sometimes discomfort means your worldview is being challenged. It’s okay to sit with discomfort and think about where it’s coming from.

who is your favorite male protagonist and why is it Percy Jackson?

Character Mannerisms in Conversations

ends sentences with 'no?' (As far as I know, I think this is usually seen in non-native English speakers. Let me know if you'd like me to do a post about mannerisms in non-native English speakers, being one myself)

keeps clearing one's throat but doesn't say anything

begins sentences with 'so'

keeps referencing to films no one in the room has watched

quotes poetry in between conversations

speaks very fast without leaving breaks and so breaths heavily once finished

speaks so slow that no one's even listening most of the time

begings with a low volume but gradually increases one's volume. Up until it's almost like shouting.

moving hands while speaking but one's fingers are pointing to a four. Basically imagine someone pointing to a nearby building. Instead of pointing one finger/all the fingers, the person points 4 fingers. (need not be because of any ailment. Or could be)

moving hands while speaking but in a thumb's up sign. Imagine someone talking about wheels so they're moving their hands in circles. But they do the same with a thumb's up sign.

Let me know if you'd like a part 2!

Feel free to send an ask. I'm as lonely as you can imagine so I'll probably reply soon.

The “I’d rather have you hate me than lose you forever” trope will always hit hard

Hi! I missed seeing you around!

hi! yeah sorry i'm not really too active on tumblr these days. on a whim yesterday I just came back on and promptly spent like an hour liking every post on polls i could find 😅 i love this website

Hi, I’ve been considering starting a book in the fantasy genre. I really wanted to give some Native American representation in it, since it's something that I rarely see. However, this story wouldn't take place in America, it would be in a completely different world (though one loosely based off of earth in the 14 hundreds ish?) This is similar to your mixing cultures post, but I wanted to know: is there a good way to give Native American representation in stories that aren’t historical fiction?

Representing PoC in Fantasy When Their Country/Continent Doesn’t Exist

The core of this question is something we’ve gotten across a few different ethnicities, and it basically boils down to: “how can I let my readers know these people are from a certain place without calling them by this certain place?” Aka, how can I let people know somebody is Chinese if I can’t call them Chinese, or, in your case, some Native American nation without having a North America.

Notes on Language

As I have said multiple times, there is no such thing as “Native American culture”. It’s an umbrella term. Even if you are doing fantasy you need to pick a nation and/or confederacy.

Step One

How do you code somebody as European?

This sounds like a very silly question, but consider it seriously.

How do you?

They probably live in huts or castles; there are lords and kings and knights; they eat stew and bread and drumsticks; they celebrate the winter solstice as a major holiday/new year; women wear dresses while men wear pants; there are pubs and farms and lots of wheat; the weather is snowy in winter and warm in summer.

Now swap all those components out for whatever people you’re thinking about.

Iroquois? They live in longhouses; there is a confederacy and democracy and lots of warriors from multiple nations; they eat corn, beans, and squash (those three considered sacred and grown together), with fish and wild game; they wear mostly leather garments with furs in winter; there are nights by the fire and cities and the rituals will change by the nation (remember the Iroquois were a confederacy made up of five or six tribes, depending on period); the weather is again snowy in winter and warm in summer.

Chinese? They harvest rice; there is an emperor appointed by the gods and scholars everywhere; they use a lunar calendar and have a New Year in spring; their trade ships are huge and their resources are plenty; they live in wood structures with paper walls or mud brick; they use jade and ivory for talismans; their culture is hugely varied depending on the province; their weather is mostly tropical, with monsoons instead of snow on lowlands, but their mountains do get chilly.

You get the gist.

Break down what it is that makes a world read as European (let’s be honest, usually English and Germanic) to you, then swap out the parts with the appropriate places in another culture.

Step Two

Research, research, research. Google is your friend. Ask it the questions for “what did the Cree eat” and “how did Ottoman government work.” These are your basics. This is what you’ll use to figure out the building blocks of culture.

You’ll also want to research their climate. As I say in How To Blend Cultures, culture comes from climate. If you don’t have the climate, animals, plants, and weather down, it’ll ring false.

You can see more at So You Want To Save The World From Bad Representation.

Step Three

Start to build the humans and how they interact with others. How are the trade relations? What are the internal attitudes about the culture— how do they see outsiders? How do outsiders see them? Are there power imbalances? How about greed and desire to take over?

This is where you need to do even more research on how different groups interacted with others. Native American stories are oftentimes painful to read, and I would strongly suggest to not take a colonizer route for a fantasy novel.

This does, however, mean you might not be researching how Natives saw Europeans— you’ll be researching how they saw neighbours. 

You’ll also want to look up the social rules to get a sense for how they interacted with each other, just for character building purposes.

Step Four

Sensitivity readers everywhere! You’ll really want to get somebody from the nation to read over the story to make sure you’ve gotten things right— it’s probably preferable to get somebody when you’re still in the concept stage, because a lot of glaring errors can be missed and it’s best to catch them before you start writing them.

Making mistakes is 100% not a huge moral failing. Researching cultures without much information on them is hard. So long as you understand the corrections aren’t a reflection on your character, just chalk them up to ignorance (how often do most writers get basic medical, weapon, or animal knowledge wrong? Extremely often). 

Step Five

This is where you really get into the meat of creating people. You’ve built their culture and environment into your worldbuilding, so now you have the tools you need to create characters who feel like part of the culture.

You’ll really want to keep in mind that every culture has a variety of people. While your research will say people roughly behave in a certain way, people are people and break cultural rules all the time. Their background will influence what rules they break and how they relate to the world, but there will be no one person who follows every cultural rule down to the letter. 

Step Six

Write!

Step Seven

More sensitivity readers! See step 4 for notes.

Step Eight

Rewrite— and trust me, you will need to. Writing is rewriting.

Repeat steps seven and eight until story is done.

Extra Notes

I’ll be honest— you’re probably going to need a certain amount of either goodwill (if you’re lucky enough to make friends within the group you’re trying to represent— but seriously, please do not make friends with us for the sole purpose of using us as sensitivity readers. It’s not nice) and/or money to get to publishing level. 

The good part is the first three steps are free, and these first three steps are what will allow you to hurt others less when you approach. While you’ll still likely make mistakes, you’ll make a few less (and hopefully no glaring ones, but it can/does happen) so long as you do your due diligence in making sure you at least try to understand the basics.

And once you feel like you’ve understood the basics… dive down even deeper because chances are you’re about to reach a tipping point for realizing how little you know.

People will always find you did something wrong. You will never get culture 100% accurate— not even people who were born and raised in it will, because as I said in step five: cultures have a huge variety of people in them, so everyone will interact with it differently. But you can work your hardest to capture one experience, make it as accurate as possible, and learn more for next time.

~ Mod Lesya 

You know what’s adorable?  When people are reading and they smile or laugh out loud. It is so precious, protect these people.

hope ur ok - a poem

dedicated to all the online friends who have left online spaces or who are inactive more often than not. 

hey.

it’s been a while. i hope you’re well. i hope you’re safe and happy. i miss seeing you online, but i hope you’re doing better offline.

i miss seeing the active symbol next to your name. i miss talking to you. i miss the three different keysmashes you used depending on what felt right to you at the time. i miss spamming your question stickers. i miss congratulating you for every single milestone you reached. i miss competing for first on our friends’ posts and always being first on each other’s. i miss taking your friendship for granted.

days, weeks, and months later, i still remember the first time you dmed me. and the funny thing is, i remember saying hello but i don’t remember saying goodbye. i didn’t think i had to.

memory is strange. i can remember when we started talking, but i don’t remember when we stopped. maybe it didn’t happen all at once. maybe it was an hourglass, time running out, grain by grain, and I didn’t notice until there was nothing left. do you still remember me? i haven’t forgotten you.

hey.

maybe you won’t come online again. some selfish part of me wants you to return. but all i ever wanted was for you to be happy, and if this is what you want, then i will accept it. even if someday i look on our friendship as only a faint memory, i will remember it fondly. i can only hope you will do the same, wherever you are.

i just wanted to say: i miss you, and i hope you’re okay.