Going to attempt to write for an hour! 

here is a small shakelock drabble fic i mustered up.. eat up my little children. yum yum

If ads can know what I want as soon as I’ve thought about purchasing it, why can’t Word transcribe the fics I tell myself as bedtime stories so I don’t have to write them out?

Thinking of bringing one of my back-burner WIPs up to the front again for a while and maybe splitting it into three

I dunno how that’d work exactly? But hey, I don’t know how the current iteration would work either, so there’s no harm in trying something new

Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.

Norman Mailer, An American Dream

🖤~Song Of The Day~🖤

The song of the day is: Blindside -by- Icon For Hire

The challenge is to write something based off of this song, be it the name, the lyrics, or the tune itself. Let your imagination go wild and see where the music takes you.

Have at it Darlings!

Another poem just got accepted into a lit journal, and I’m actually getting paid for this one. I straight up cried when I saw the acceptance email.

So many people around me are seeing this windfall in my writing career, what with Enchanted letters taking off, and then all these lit journal acceptances, but no one saw the months/years I struggled not self doubt, the friends who laughed when I said I wanted to be a writer, or even me who wasn’t so sure I was cut out for this industry.

So if you’re a budding writer, if all you want to do is write- just start. Even if you’re not so sure, even if you can’t admit it out loud, even if people laugh at you, start- because I promise you’ll be so happy one day that you didn’t give up

La gente tranquila tiene todos sus hadices en sus ojos.

How much anger, hatred and all that is bad for us are there in us? a lot, but if we have a person we love next to us and let us be loved ... it all becomes unimportant and the world in which we were always afraid to survive each next day, this world becomes a bit more beautiful and heavenly

×moyatemryava

Another Sort of Drawing

An Asian woman stands behind her screen door Looking at a can of cat food upon her patio. I imagine she’s wondering if the cat came, And since I can’t see the food in the can From my lowly angle as I walk past, I suppose I will never know. But she does know.

I wish I could draw. This would make a fine picture. But a poem is the best I can do. I’m sure the screen door I’ve installed in your head Is more realistic than the image I would’ve sketched. It would have been so gray and ambiguous That you wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else: The cat food can of indeterminate reserve, The whereabouts of the implied cat, The pink rain boots beside the welcome mat, Nor the Asian woman, who would be blotted out By the steel smoke of my crude, flat-tipped crayon.

prompt #29

A: "What does this make us, B?"

B: "Enemies."

A: "We were already that before."

B: "Enemies... with benefits?"

from talking with @sbooksbowm

Prompt

A, a seasoned witch hunter, meets B, the love of their life, and retires to finally settle down and have a family. One night, after years of blissful married life, A wakes up and discovers their spouse missing from bed. A brief search of the house ends abruptly when A walks in on B mumbling incantations in the basement, forbidden books and rune-covered bones cluttering the floor.

- Mod Ashlee @arrvolux on Instagram

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

Send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you, and I’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it!

I'm not tagging anyone lmao but if anyone wants to feel free!!!!!!!

Tagged by @thegreatgherkin87 !!!!!!!

xxx

oh I've been WAITING for this one

ahem:

911 HG

911 hogwarts

911 hs au

911 [redacted]

Disney au (secret project)

911 rambles

911 SM 3

911 TW

911/CM

911x911 BBQ

homeless buck rambles

sad buck 1

TW time travel

911 dog tags

911 SN

911C

911PS

9112

bartender buck

bons request

Buck sad 2

exSEAL!Buck

Hm B

I'm obviously a very descriptive person 😅 this is only half of them. I could do a second post with the other half if anyone is interested? I might not be posting rn but I'm still grinding away 😬😭😎

Everything seems okay. And then: a word, a line, a picture, a song…

Thoughtkick

I pretend to ignore you, but I really just miss you.

How to: Chapters

Something I found myself wondering the other night, while trying to outline a story of mine, was;

How in the world am I even supposed to do this?

I'm sure many of you have asked yourself exactly the same question. So... what do I do when I feel a little out of my depth in a subject matter? I open yet another tab on my trusty google browser and I start researching the topic.

And that’s exactly what I did: A little discouraged, I started typing in some key words up, and soon, I found myself falling into a rabbit hole of articles discussing how lengthy you should write your chapters.

And, because I can; I wanted to share a little bit about what I learned from reading these articles with whomever may be reading.

I want to make it clear to all of you right now, that chapter length? It doesn't actually really matter that much.

Rather, I want to point out that the chapter breaks are the most important here, as they are one of the key rhythmical features of a novel; They give your story a beat, and like in a poem, it aids you in enhancing the experience you're trying to provide to the reader. I would even go as far as identifying them as a literary device.

A new chapter should be made when:

There is a change of point-of-view character

There is a major change of scene

There is a major jump in time

A major sequence of action has just been completed

Chapters are generally the major (and most common) subdivision you can find in a book or a novel. These are often marked by a page break, and may be numbered or titled, or both, in some occasions. Though, I don’t think that’s something necessary you have to think about from the very first moment you start planning your story.

Some books may also be divided into parts as well. These are put into use when you want to separate radically different sections in your novel. Note that the differences should be sudden, and only happen once or twice; when there’s a change in time, place or narrators.

Individual chapters may also have minor separation breaks indicated by, for example, an asterisk.

Now, say you still want to figure out what the perfect chapter length is for you. What do you do? As far as I can tell? You don’t actually choose your chapter lengths. Like I stated in the beginning, chapter lengths aren’t very important. It’s something that comes after you’ve finished writing your story anyway, as the story itself will insert its own natural breaks as you change scenes, viewpoint, etc.

The question you want to ask yourself is:

How much text should the reader be asked to read before you give them a break?

There are a few points you should consider however, when thinking about chapter length, if you wish to have your novel published:

Too short: 1000 words or under

Very short: 1000-1500 words

These types of chapters have a jump-cut, fast-edited quality to them, and works great for action fiction.

NB! If your average chapter length falls below 1000 words, you have to rethink and check if you have given enough weight and depth to the scenes you want to play out, because even if it’s action, it needs to have the space to make an impression.

Short: 1500-2000 words

Standard: 2000 to 4000 words

Long: 4000 to 5000 words

Very long: over 5000

These ‘rules’ are mostly used for adult novels, as kids’ books will have chapter lengths that vary by age range. Most books lie in the 2000-4000 word range for each chapter. The rules aren’t set in stone however, as you will note shortly in the list just down below; listing famous novels, along with word counts and chapter lengths:

Before we continue over to the next point I want to discuss, I just want to conclude this section by stating again that beats, similar to a punctuation mark, gives the reader a moment’s pause. Use this to your advantage: I would recommend experimenting with the chapter rhythms by mixing it up. Variate the chapter lengths!

‘But, Curiosity, how do I end the chapter?’

I’m glad you asked! There are several ways to end a chapter, and the ones I’ll be mentioning are only, but a few of them:

First of all we have to realize that a scene/chapter is there to tell its own little story;; with a beginning, middle and end. If it does not have that, you should scrap it. Stories are about change, so therefore scenes must be about change too, right? ‘Filler chapters’ is a grand pet peeve of mine that I absolutely abhor, and frankly, if they do not add anything extra to the story, they aren’t supposed to be there.

A scene is typically based around some kind of story question which is then resolved or changed by the end of the scene; a good way to end a chapter is to highlight or encapsulate the change that has just happened. We call this a symbolic reversal.

You can also have a closing paragraph that looks back to the past, or one that gives a hint of the future. I wouldn’t call this a cliffhanger, but it reminds the reader that there is more to come in the near future.

Then of course, last, but not least there’s the classic cliffhanger. This has been done a number of times, and it can be done in a very good way, if executed properly.

Then there’s the dreaded question of ‘Prologues and epilogues, or nah?’

The answer is simple, if you have no good reason for writing one, do yourself a favor and just don’t. The opening chapter is all about catching the reader’s attention and having them want to come back for more. We have to consider that the prologue - however crucial it may be - is still a barrier that the reader has to confront before the story-proper begins. It’s a good idea to keep it as brief as possible, if you’re going to include it anyway.

The prologue is a pre-story that informs the reader of some event from the past that is necessary, to understand the present.

You won’t face the same problem of keeping the readers interested when it comes to the epilogue. These are actually more rare in novels, and they give you a glimpse of the aftermath of the story (not the immediate one, but say, 5-10 years from where the story ended, or more). Only include the epilogue if you believe it adds something to the novel, and isn’t therefore anticlimactic.

In the end, you’re the writer, and it’s your story. There are no rules, just guidelines and trends used by those prior to you. You can do whatever you want to do, because you’re the one writing and creating this world, and these characters. I think that we, as writers, get so into our head sometimes about making our draft perfect on the first try, that we forget why we started writing in the first place. Remember, writing is supposed to be fun. That’s why we do it, no?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings. If this topic is something that interests you, I encourage you to do your own research. Consider this post a starting point for whatever else you may find on your own.

Articles for further reading:

How long should a chapter be? https://jerichowriters.com/hub/average-novel-wordcount/how-long-chapter/

How Many Words Are There In A Novel? https://jerichowriters.com/hub/average-novel-wordcount/

Anatomy of a Novel: Chapters and Parts https://www.novel-writing-help.com/novel-chapters.html

9 Book Design Tips that Authors Need to Know https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/09/9-book-design-tips-that-authors-need-to-know/

~Curiosity

so excited to announce my first post as a blogger for The Ascendance Collective just went up! i talk about body image + my experience with it, especially during the pandemic. please head over to the site and give it a read. looking forward to seeing the response to this and many more to come! 👙💖

FOR ANYONE WHO CARES (and if you don’t that’s cool too) I FINISHED CHAPTER 5 SDLFKJSLDKFJLSK

researching for a story is like i will never need to know the intricacies of the 70s for this character driven fic, but by god will i be able to write with confidence