#On writing

[the-bar-sinister]

✨ Write the stories you want to write.

✨ Don't let anyone shame you for the type of stories you write.

✨ Don't let anyone shame you for writing fanfiction, or for writing any other fiction that isn't seen as 'marketable'.

✨ Selling books is not everyone's reason and goal for writing stories.

✨ Write stories because you want to write them.

#on writing #writing advice #writeblr #writing inspiration #writblr #ao3 #archive of our own #fan fiction #fandom wank #fanfic #fanfiction #darkfic #writing positivity #dark fic #🔍⚔️

[writers-potion]

How do I accurately include diversity, and not make it look like I’m just putting it in there for the sake of it?

Writing Diverse Characters - Things to Remember

Honestly, there's no definitive answer to this.

Your characters are people with clear goals, desires and a role to play in the plot. As long as they aren't just sitting there with little else but their race/gender/disability, etc. as their ONLY personality trait, at least you're on the right path.

As for representing a diverse character realistically, here are some things you can consider to get started.

Do's

RESEARCH. There are plenty of blogs/YT vids/websites that exist to help you! Meet people!

Get beta readers.

It doesn't have to be explicit. Racial identities become quite clear early on through the setting, name, and initial description(hair, eye/skin color, body shape, etc) without having to drum it into the readers each time. Gender diversity can be conveyed through the use of certain pronouns without awkward declarations.

Character first, diversity second. Please don't intentionally create a diverse character and then think about how you can push them into the cast. Have a working character, who happens to belong to a particular group.

Read works that have represented a group well. There are plenty of non-fiction works, movies and documentaries that capture the lives of people around the world with a good eye.

Use the correct terms/language

Include different types of diversity

Don'ts

Race/gender/diability is NOT a personality trait. Please. Telling me that you have a Korean girl tells me next to nothing about the character herself.

Using sterotypes. Now, it's all right if your character has a few sterotypical traits, but definitely not if sterotypes are the only thing they have.

Diversity is not a "shock factor". Suddenly revealing that a character is actually gay and has been in the closet all this time as a refresher so that it draws readers' attention? Not a good idea.

One diverse character does all. This can often be seen in female characters of slightly dated works where one woman will play the role of supportive mother, sister, femme fetale and sexy Barbie at the same time. Don't write a diverse character who basically does everything a diverse character can possibly be. All that it proves is that the writer is lazy.

Things I personally hate seeing:

Weird pronunciation of languages. As a Korean person, I always get turned off by works (mostly badly written fanfics, yes, I read those...) that try to transfer Korean dialogue directly onto the page without even checking for the correct way to spell them out. A similar example would be pinyin for Mandarin. Please, this makes the character sound stupid throughout...

Character sticking out almost painfully. If your character isn't from the region but have lived in it for a long time, what reason do they have not to blend in?

Relying on variety shows/dramas as reference. Media representation of diverse characters that are meant for entertainment is not the best source for authentic research. I die every time someone lists a number of Korean rom-coms they've watched for "research". IT DOES NOT COUNT.

As a last note, remember that there's no limit to the kind of characters a writer can writer. Accept that our job as writers is to step into other people's heads, not seeing things from one (our) perspective - and it is not going to be easy.

Hope this helps :)

#writers block #writing #writers and poets #creative writing #writers on tumblr #helping writers #let's write #creative writers #poets and writers #resources for writers #writerscommunity #writeblr #short story #fiction #writing practice #writing prompt #writing inspiration #writing advice #on writing #writing tips #writing community #writer #writers of tumblr #writers community #writers life #writer things #writing problems #writing process #writing questions

[cy-cyborg]

The Untrustworthy Fake: Disability Tropes

[ID: A screenshot of Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as he limps towards a crowd using a cane. In the picture, he has a brown top hat in his hand, and he's wearing a suit with a purple jacket, multicoloured bow tie and cream coloured pants. Beside him is text that reads: "Disability Tropes, The untrustworthy Fake" /End ID]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new character is introduced into a story with some kind of disability - usually visible but not always. Maybe they're a seemingly harmless person in a wheelchair, maybe they're a one-legged beggar on the street, or maybe they're an elderly person with a cane and a slow, heavy limp. But at some point, it's revealed it's all a ruse! The old man with a cane "falls" forward and does a flawless summersault before energetically springing back up to his feet, the wheelchair user gets to their feet as soon as they think the other character's backs are turned, the one legged beggar's crutch is knocked out of his hand, only to have his other leg pop out of his loose-fitting tunic to catch him.

All of these are real examples. Maya and The Three introduces one of it's main protagonists, Ricco, by having him pretend to be missing a leg in order to con people (something that works on the protagonist, at least at first), Buffy The Vampire Slayer had the character Spike, pretend to be in a wheelchair, until the other characters leave and he gets up, revealing it's all a ruse and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory introduces Wonka by having him slowly limp out into the courtyard of the factory, only for his cane to get stuck, causing him to "fall" and jump back up, revealing that he's actually perfectly fine. Virtually every single major crime show in the past few decades has used this trope too, from CSI to The Mentalist, Castle, Law and Order and Monk all having at least one episode featuring it in some way. Even the kids media I grew up with isn't free from it; The Suite Life of Zack & Cody sees Zach faking being dyslexic after meeting someone who actually has the condition in the episode Smarter and Smarter and the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Krabs vs Plankton has Plankton fake needing a wheelchair (among other injuries) after falling in the Krusty Krab as a ploy to sue Mr Krabs and trick the court into giving him the Kraby Patty Formula.

No matter the genre or target audience though, one thing is consistent: this trope is used as a way to show someone is dishonest and not to be trusted. When the trope is used later in the story, it's often meant to be a big reveal, to shock the audience and make them mad that they've been duped, to show the characters and us what this person (usually a villain) is willing to stoop to. Revealing the ruse early on though is very often used to establish how sleazy or even how dangerous a character is and to tell the audience that they shouldn't trust them from the get go. Gene Wilde (The actor who first played Willy Wonka) even said in several interviews that this was his intent for Wonka's character. He even went so far as to tell the director of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that he wouldn't do the film without that scene because of how strongly he felt this trope was needed to lay the foundations for Wonka's questionable intentions and motivations. His exact words are: "...but I wouldn't have done the film if they didn't let me come out walking as a cripple and then getting my cane stuck into a cobble stone, doing a forward somersault and then bouncing up... the director said, well what do you want to do that for? and I said because from that point on, no one will know whether I'm telling the truth or lying."

There's... a lot of problems with this trope, but that quote encapsulates one of the biggest ones. whether intentionally or not, this trope ends up framing a lot of actual disabled people as deceitful, dishonest liars. Now I can already hear you all typing, What?! Cy that's ridiculous! No one is saying real disabled people are untrustworthy or lying about their disabilities, just people who are faking!

but the thing is, the things often used in this trope as "evidence" of someone faking a disability are things real disabled people do. A person standing up from their wheelchair or having scuff-marks on their shoes, like in the episode Miss Red  from The Mentalist isn't a sign they're faking, a lot of wheelchair users can stand and even walk! They're called ambulatory wheelchair users, and they might use a wheelchair because they can't walk far, they might not feel safe walking on all terrains, they might have unstable joints that makes standing for too long risky, they might have a heart condition like POTS that has a bigger impact when they stand up or any number of other reasons. Also even non-ambulatory wheelchair users will still have scuff marks from things like transferring and bumping into things (rather hilariously, even TV Tropes calls this episode out as being "BS" in it's listing for this trope, which it refers to as Obfuscating Disability). A blind beggar flinching or getting scared when you pull a gun on them isn't a sign they're faking their blindness like it is in Red Dead Redemption 2. Plenty of blind people can still see a little bit, it might only be a general sense of light and darkness, it might be exceptionally blurry or just the fuzzy outlines of shapes, or they might only be able to see something directly in front of them, all of which might still be enough to cue the person into what's happening in a situation like that. Even if it's not, the sound of you pulling your gun out or other people nearby freaking out and making noise probably would tip them off. A person needing a cane or similar mobility aid sometimes, but being able to go without briefly or do even "big movements" like Wonka's rolling somersault, doesn't mean they don't need it at all. Just like with wheelchairs, there's a lot of disabilities that require canes and similar aids some days, and not others. Some disabilities even allow people those big, often straining movements on occasion, or allow them to move without the aid for short periods of time, but not for long. Some people's disability's might even require a mobility aid like a cane as a backup, just in case something goes wrong, but that still means you need to carry it around with you, and unless it can fold down, it's easier to just use it.

Disability is a spectrum, and a lot of disabilities vary in severity and what is required of the people who have them day to day. This trope, however, helps to perpetuate the idea that someone who does any of these things (and many others) is faking, which can actively make the lives of disabled people harder and can even put them in very real danger, physically, mentally and even financially.

Just ask any ambulatory wheelchair user about how many times they've been yelled at for using accommodations they need, like disabled toilets or parking spaces. How many times they've been accused of faking and even filmed without their consent because they stood up in public, even if it was to do something like get their wheelchair unstuck or as simple as them standing to briefly reach something on a high shelf. I've caught multiple people filming me before, so have my friends and family, and it's honestly scary not knowing where those images have ended up. This doesn't just impact the person either, a friend of mine was filmed while standing up to get his daughter (who was about 4 at the time) out of the car. He was lucky to have stumbled across the video a few days later on facebook and contacted the group admins where it was posted to get it taken down, but had he not stumbled across it by chance, pictures with his home address and his car's number plate, his child's face and his face all visible would have just been floating around, all because a woman saw him stand briefly to pick up his daughter.

Many people don't stop at just saying a nasty comment or taking a photo though, a lot of people, when they suspect people are faking, will get violent. I have many friends who have been pushed, slapped in the face, spat on or had their mobility devices kicked out from under them. I've even been in a few situations myself where, had I not had people with me, I think the situation would have turned violent.

There's even been cases where those photos and videos I've mentioned before have been used against real disabled people and they've been reported to their country's welfare system as committing disability fraud. While cases like this are usually resolved *relatively* quickly, in many parts of the world, their payment will be halted while the investigation is in process, meaning they may be without any income at all because of someone else's ignorance. If you're already struggling to make ends meet (which, if you're only living off one of those payments, you probably will be), a few weeks without pay can mean the difference between having a home and being on the streets.

Not to mention that when there's so many stories about people faking a disability in the media, especially when the character is doing it to get some kind of "advantage", such as getting accommodations or some kind of disability benefit, it perpetuates the idea that people are rorting the systems put in place to help disabled people. If this idea becomes prevalent enough, the people in charge start making it harder for the people who need them to access those systems, which more often than not results in disabled people not even being able to access the very systems that are supposed to be helping them. A very, very common example of this is in education where accommodations for things like learning disabilities require you to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops, especially at higher levels, only to have some teachers and professors refuse to adhere to the adaptations anyway because they're convinced the student (and usually disabled students as a whole) is faking.

Yes, the "untrustworthy faker" is a fictional trope, and yes, it does occasionally happen in real life, but not as often as media (including things like news outlets) would have you believe. However, when the media we consume is priming people to look for signs that a disabled person is faking, it has a real impact on real disabled people's lives. "Fake-claiming" is a massive problem for people in pretty much all parts of the disabled community, and it ranges from being just annoying (e.g. such as people spamming and fake-claiming blind people online with "if you were really blind, how do you see the screen" comments) to the more serious cases I mentioned above. It's for this reason a lot of folks in the disabled community ask that people leave this trope out of their works.

#Writing disability with Cy Cyborg #Long Post #Disability #Disabled #Disability Representation #Writing Disability #Writing #Writeblr #Authors #Creators #Writing Advice #Disabled Characters #On Writing #Disability in Media #Tropes #Disability Tropes #faking disability trope

[novlr]

“Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.” — M. F. K. Fisher

#writers #mfk fisher #writer #creative writing #writing #writing community #writers of tumblr #creative writers #writing inspiration #writeblr #writerblr #writing tips #writing advice #writers on tumblr #authors #author #writers and poets #writer stuff #writers corner #poets and writers #writers life #on writing #writing motivation #writing stuff #author quotes #inspiring quotes

[goodluckclove]

book two is taking a very serious turn. i have to do real, literary research. i'm essentially a reporter now. my younger, far more pretentious self would be proud.

#writeblr #writing community #writers on tumblr #on writing #migration patterns #songbird elegies

[facewithoutheart]

#my intrusive thoughts tell me everyone thinks the last one #on writing #if you pick number 2 you have permission to slide into my DMs and be my friend #I vascillate between two and 4

[writeouswriter]

Isaac Asimov excerpt from the foreword to his short story "What If—," (first published 1952), personally collected in "Nightfall and Other Stories," (published 1969).

Reading both Asimov's writing and his behind the scenes thoughts on his own stories and the craft of writing always just has me going, this guy gets it, I get him and his popularity, because I've been asked the same question before, too. Where do you get your ideas...

From anything! if you are willing to think hard enough and long enough. Yes yes yes.

#isaac asimov #quotes #on writing #id in alt text #like yes man yes exactly #inspiration surrounds us everywhere i don't do anything to get inspiration i look at a puddle on the ground and #suddenly there is a portal to another world to fall through and then i look at the trees and am shaping that world in my mind and aah #it comes from anywhere everywhere the sky the bus the butterfly floating by but then you gotta work at it

[storytimewriting]

writing is what keeps me alive

#author #writing #poetry #poem #original poem #quote #quoteoftheday #life quote #quotes #beautiful quote #words #life quotes #love quote #original quote #original poetry #original writing #on writers #on writing #writeblr #writers #writers on tumblr #writers and poets #writerscommunity #poet #writer #creative writing #writer community #writblr #write #my poetry

[tsukimefuku]

Are female characters with only passive abilities "bad"?

This is written by a person who loves reading/telling stories and barely qualifies as an amateur writer, so it's basically just my opinion. Take it as you will.

So, my take on that trope is that a female character with only passive abilities (healing, shielding, etc.) is a trope beaten to death, but IT CAN be very good (and add a much-needed nuance to action stories like shōnen, for instance) when done RIGHT.

And WHEN is it done right?

When her abilities actually MATTER in order to move the other characters or the plot further, and that is made ABUNDANTLY clear for the audience.

Have the strongest character be UNDOUBTEDLY saved by her, because he wouldn’t be able to dodge an attack or block it by himself — he'd surely DIE; have everyone DEPEND on her healing abilities and make it RELEVANT, SHOW IT to the audience that if it weren’t for HER, they’d be as good as DEAD; have her be the catalyst for positive change and have characters actually acknowledge “if it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have gotten this far” — don't just say it, SHOW IT, MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Female characters shouldn’t only be given importance in shōnen when they have active fighting abilities — I mean, Winry Rockbell is such a PRIME AND BEAUTIFUL example of a GREAT female character that is LITERALLY denied the place of violence because that’s NOT who she is, and she’s still A MOVING FORCE all throughout FMA, just as much as Riza, who, on the other hand, is one of the “active fighting” female characters.

Anyway shōnen mangakas and male fiction writers, please stop shitting on your female characters, I’m BEGGING

#fuku writes #fuku thoughts #fuku rants #writeblr #writblr #on writing #writing advice #writing #creative writing #writers on tumblr #female writers #writerscommunity

[mightymizora]

Hello mighty mizora! Big fan here of your work the way you write is so mesmerizing honestly im always in awe!! I have a small question i hope its not annoying i've asked this question to another writer who i liked once but they were so mean to me back so i understand that maybe its not the best question to be asked but i have ADHD and i need alittle direction so i hope maybe you can give me some (its totally okay if you dont want to ! ) Do you have any pointers to someone who has never wrote anything past school essays and to do lists if they want to start writing fanfiction and have it be nice and expressive? I have so many ideas i write them down write 5 sentences thats like a summray maybe a few sentences of some scenes of romance sorta like a small outline it feels so dry... And i dont know what to do past that... Essays had structures and preferred starting intros and all that but i feel lost when i try and start a story, i know myself and i know once i start i will not shut up but starting feels like a wall and i dont know how to climb yk ?

Hey pal!

Firstly thank you so much and also I'm sorry you had a bad experience with another writer. You've asked this so nicely. And apologies for this being delayed I thought I had clicked post but I'd saved the draft again!

So I'm not going to claim to be an expert in this but the way I approach this is:

I start with what I want to say with a piece. What do I want to explore? What do I hope the reader will take away from it? I then jot those down for myself at the top of the document, just like you describe with your summary! If this changes as I discover things that's okay, but it's kind of my road map.

I usually also start in the middle of some action, or with a line of dialogue. Honestly you don't have to do this at all but the joy of fanfiction is you don't have to do loads of exposition! People know who the characters are and you can dive into things! It means you get stuck right in which I personally like.

I also don't write chronologically! I think we can get so stuck on things. I think of writing a story like pruning a garden, so I might write some "holding sentences" per scene and then work on scenes as they come to me. It's a good way to build up the bits as you are inspired. You can see this really clearly in a piece like Blood and Bone which is very sparse, some of the holding sentences in that fic are still in there.

When it comes to dialogue, I use the actioning method used in acting and I work out what people want to do by saying something. I like when characters don't say things outright, but say a hundred words by what they don't say. A character can say I love you, and it's good, but what if they say I don't want you to leave? What is left in the gaps?

When it comes to description I think I have a long way to go honestly but again. What are people seeing, smelling, tasting, seeing touching? What is their primary sense? Does it evoke anything else for them, or are they entirely in the moment? This can vary from character to character.

Another thing to think of is variant rhythm. Once you have a first draft down, go over it again and look at sentence structure. Can you add variation by changing the length of sentences? Can you tell a story in the rhythms you use? I'm a big fan of long run on sentences in romance showing a character losing control, for example.

And the big secret honestly is... you might well find your writing a bit dry! I find mine dry! I look at it squinting, asking whether the sex is sexy or if it's just way too out there or just completely misses the mark. We only really know when other eyes get to see it.

I hope that's helpful!

#on writing #anons are always open for writing chat honestly #so if you want clarity lmk!

[liesmyth]

#on writing #needed this on my blog

[writers-potion]

I was wondering if you had any tips for how to write scenes where a character is hearing gossip about them? Like an example is they're walking through the halls and they're hearing people whisper about them.

Gossiping Scene Idea Prompts

Hi :) Thanks for dropping by my little blog (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Here are some scene ideas when a character overhears others' gossip about them:

Standing at a crowded party when the character suddenly hears their own name in a group standing nearby

Character half-asleep in the backmost row of the library/classroom, unseen, when the gossipers enter the room

Character presenting in front of the classroom when they notice a few people snickering at the back

When a character walks up to a group, they suddenly fall silent

When a character walks up to a group, a few of them hurridly leave

They hear a second-hand account from their friend about this wierd gossip going around...and they realize it's actually about them

The character takes a video of themselves/their surroundings for a vlog/short flim/school project, etc. and when they re-watch the footage, they hear something they didn't expect

Overhearing conversation at one of the tables at their part-time job as a waitress, realizing that it's about them.

Character borrowing their friend's phone/tablet/laptop and suddenly...they see a chat popup about them

An anonymous school community where the character realizes that an anonymous post is actually about them

#writing #writers and poets #creative writing #writers on tumblr #creative writers #helping writers #let's write #poets and writers #writeblr #resources for writers #writers of tumblr #writers block #writers community #writers life #writerscommunity #writer things #writer on tumblr #writer stuff #writer problems #writer community #writblr #writing prompt #writing community #writing inspiration #writing tips #writing advice #on writing #writer

[novlr]

#writing prompt #story idea #writers #creative writing #writing #writing community #writers of tumblr #creative writers #writing inspiration #writeblr #writerblr #story prompts #fic prompt #story prompt #writing prompts #writing tips #writing idea #writing ideas #story ideas #let's write #story inspiration #creative inspiration #writer #writers on tumblr #beat writers block #writers block #writer's block #writers and poets #on writing #writing resources

[goodluckclove]

Various "Failures" From My Google Docs

Good morning! I'm at my usual coffee shop and got inspired by the troubles of a few friends to embarrass myself.

Sit down with me. I'm enjoying my usual blended chai. There's room on the couch if you'd like to join me.

So I've written thirteen novels. I think thirteen, I've actually lost count. Let's say, like, five full-length plays and twelve to fourteen finished novels. Impressive, right? Maybe. I'm realizing that I consider that not much of a brag, if only because I know the amount of trips and stumbles it took to get to one completed project.

I've ditched a lot of ideas. A lot. If I need to I can dig into my old hard drives to find all the doc files from my youth, but I also have the same Google Docs I've had since middle school.

It's mostly plays and ghostwriting assignments, but if you did you'll find some snippets from my constant attempts at growth.

Some stuff like this is okay. The line "hair slicked back/suit black silk" is pretty good, but a little too the writer thinks they're clever for me now. I don't really remember where I planned to go with this. I think the narrator was somehow going to be given the identity of Roy Fontaine. I was really fixated on the surname Fontaine at the time. I don't know why.

But then there's also a lot of stuff like this:

Hey look it's Fontaine again! I guess he's a doctor, too! Also I am astounded by how casually the main character just pulls out the Necronomicon. He pulls it out? From where? His pocket? Is it a zine?

I don't know why, but something about how suddenly this jumps in terms of dropping specifics makes me think that Sonic the Hedgehog is about to show up. I can't explain it.

This is the only thing in a Doc titled "Psychosis". I have zero memory of what I was planning on doing with this. What's kind of crazy though is that I wrote this in 2014, and six years later I'll use essentially this exact bit in a finished novel without even realizing it.

Another bit from 2014. No clue what I planned to do with this. It's hilarious to me that something stopped me from finishing the sentence. What am I, Franz Kafka writing The Tower? I didn't die. I wasn't raptured. I just apparently tried to think of something a large oak door would do and immediately gave up. It was 2014 I had finished, like, four novels. And this idea was fully stalled by what had to be a fucking huge oak door.

My favorite part of this radio play I tried to write is that somehow, believe it or not - when I wrote this I did not fully understand the Quantum Suicide thought experiment. And for along time I still kind of thought that this could be salvaged into a good idea, until last night when I asked my wife to put on a video describing the experiment and I immediately found it so dumb. Just ridiculously stupid. The only good thing about Quantum Mickey is that the title kicks ass and I'm definitely keeping it for something.

I've written a lot. A lot. I've earned the severity of carpal tunnel I currently have. If I had to put it into a statistic, I'd say maybe seventy percent ends up finished. fifty percent ends up polished to be read or published. Thirty percent actually ends up being read or published. I'm okay with this, because I enjoy the work. But for me, part of enjoying the work is not panicking when a project doing work.

If I need to end a project in the middle of a sentence, I do. I've clearly proven that I do. Sometimes I write for thirty pages and lose interest, other times I get a paragraph in and get distracted forever. That's okay.

That's okay. As long as you're doing something.

I could've included segments of Carnation, my first novella that was supposed to be a novel but I never finished it. But I fucking guess that's getting it's own post when I hit 150 followers so I hope you're prepared for what the type of stuff I enjoyed in middle school.

There's an Irish child that speaks exclusively in slang. You aren't ready.

#writeblr #writing community #on writing #writers on tumblr #authors of tumblr #writing #writing advice #writing tips #writing inspo #writing inspiration

[judas-redeemed]

yes yes characters doomed by the narrative always slap BUT what about characters saved by the narrative? characters who have already given up hope and don't know they have a happy ending? characters who believe they are a lost cause, characters who feel irredeemable, characters who think there's nothing left for them, but the narrative does provide a way out? what about the characters who don't expect anything good, who don't even remember how to wish for it anymore, who get the things they need anyway? what about the characters who actively run from being saved getting saved in a way they can't stop or control. what about being saved by the narrative!!!

#this is inspired by joy from eeaao #but feel free to blorbo it up #judas talks #doomed by the narrative #saved by the narrative #fate #narrative #on writing #on healing #on hope

[metamorphesque]

"Poems are not written...", Andrey Voznesensky (translated by metamorphesque)

#my translations #quotes #literature #poetry #poems #on writing #russian literature #russian poetry #translated literature #andrey voznesensky