#let me chuck an adverb in there or something

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

my assessment: write 350-600 words

me: [sitting here with 349 words] it’s probably fine

#let me chuck an adverb in there or something #no wait i was thinking of adjective #i had to google that #hi I’m an English Major #ahahgskagkk #oh man #i forgot that other thing I had to do #w e l l #no worries #im already going in a downhill trajectory in this class I’m sure it’s fine

[jackson--t]

Short Fun One.

"Hello, Officer!"

Hvitserk and Ivar are carrying something forbidden with them, when they happen to meet an acquaintance of Ivar's in the parking lot.

Words: ~ 980.

Have fun, it's just a small piece I wrote while I was hungry.🙃

"Where did you get this?" Ivar's hands ran almost reverently over the small, transparent baggie that contained the white substance: Cocaine. He had never had any in his hands before and had always joked with Hvitserk that one night they would get some, just for fun. That it would be so early, and completely unprepared in a parking lot at McDonalds, was not something he had expected.

Hvitserk sucked on his milkshake in amusement and took the sachet from Ivar again with a broad grin; he had his knees braced against the steering wheel and was looking at the small sachet in the warm evening light.

"I know somebody who knows somebody, you know. I got it cheaper. It's enough for both of us," he said, and Ivar snorted in amusement. He sipped his Coke briefly, his brother still in view.

"Is that really enough? You've got a giant nose, you'll probably take it all away from me."

"It's enough Ivar, besides we don't want to overdo it the first time."

Ivar laughed roughly. "That's right. Oh man, if Ubbe knew, he'd storm out into the parking lot in his white nightgown and beat us with a rolling pin."

"Original Italian style since he's been banging that girl."

"Hmm, I don't like her," Ivar grumbled; his eyes swept over the parking lot, which was only half-full at this hour. Nothing was noticeable. How many evenings had he and his brother spent here, endlessly eating burgers and ice cream, bitching about their other brothers?

"You don't like women in general. You're into guys, so that's no surprise. But she's nice." Hvitserk replied with his mouth full; he was still holding the little bag, almost like a little trophy; Ivar knew he was proud that he had gotten it himself. Ivar had wanted to do it too - but somehow, he had always secretly lacked the courage to do so. He'd already screwed up enough in the last few years.

"If nice is the adverb to crappy, then yes. She's stupid."

"Just because she spelled your name wrong?"

"Huh, yeah?"

"Oh sorry, king grammar rodeo. You got -"

"Fuck, Hvitty - put that cocaine away!" Ivar hissed all of a sudden; he suddenly sat sensibly in his seat and nearly spilled his Coke, while Hvitserk just let out an annoyed snort.

"What, why?" he murmured, as Ivar gave him a soft smack on the back of the head.

"Over there - cop."

"Where?"

"He's in civilian clothes, you have to... Ah, fuck, he's coming over here," Ivar muttered; he could see Hvitserk eyeing the milkshake and the sachet in his hands, apparently overwhelmed with which was now the forbidden thing.

"You shall....! --" with a panicked groan, Ivar smacked Hvitserk in the lap as he lowered the window with his right hand and gave a wide, charming grin. "Hiiiii, Heahmund."

Hvitserk wiped the remains of his milkshake off his jeans and grunted softly; his Chucks lightly pushed down the small bag of cocaine that had fallen into the footwell, and he put on a bemused smile because he had never seen his brother so fucking friendly before. In fact, Hvitserk raised an eyebrow when he saw Ivar put on his best smile, playing lightly in the ends of his own hair with his left hand.

Only then did his eyes fall on the tall man in front of Ivar's window side, smiling kindly and nodding to the two of them. "Hello, good evening! I knew it was you. Your hair is recognizable from afar." the man said, and Ivar emitted such a friendly laugh that Hvitserk wondered for a moment if he hadn't already sniffed a little of the cocaine.

"Yeah, they're a little... wild today, haha. What are you doing here, are you off work?" he said emphatically softly; Hvitserk opened his lips slightly and exhaled, but Ivar hit him between the ribs so fast that he just coughed. The man didn't seem to notice, however, or he was just being extremely discreet.

"I'm off work, and I'm going to treat myself to some burgers. I'm so tired, I'll probably fall asleep on the sofa again. If you want, you can come around tomorrow." the man said, whose name was Heahmund; Ivar and he smiled at each other, and Ivar nodded softly.

"I'd love to. Me and my brother are just here for dinner too, then we're going home. We'll write, okay?" Ivar hummed charmingly, and Heahmund nodded goodbye to both of them.

"Have a good evening, you two!"

"Thank you!" Hvitserk and Ivar said as if from the same mouth, and watched together as the man disappeared into his car and drove away.

Only then did Hvitserk's eyes turn to Ivar, who was biting hard on his lower lip and wearing faint traces of red on his cheek. When the brothers looked at each other, Ivar rolled his eyes. "What?" he nagged, and Hvitserk grinned broadly.

"You're serious? What was that all about? Did you suddenly turn into a fairy? The fact that you didn't throw fucking glitter around is everything!" he joked, and Ivar gave him a firm shove in the ribs.

"No, idiot... that was just because..." He turned red as a tomato, and Hvitserk started laughing.

"Please don't tell me you're fucking a cop. Oh my God, Sigurd would kill you!"

Ivar frowned; he slid deeper into his seat and didn't dignify Hvitserk with a glance. "Shut up."

"You're really fucking him?"

"It's always good to know someone like that, okay? Now drive before I tell on you to Ubbe," Ivar grunted, so offended that Hvitserk couldn't stop laughing for the next two kilometers.

"Are you going to get a card like in Monopoly? You get out of jail?"

At these words, Ivar had to grin slightly, despite the red color still on his cheeks, and he gave Hvitserk an amused look. "If I suck well enough, then yes."

#vikings #ivar the boneless #heavar #modern hvitserk #modern ivar #funnyshit #short one today #one shot #brotherly love

[bathtubdefenseattorney]

I am curious about 13 and 14 🌸

🌸 🌸 🌸 my love these are good questions 🌸 🌸 🌸 13. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?I really embrace the idea of just sitting in front of the blank doc on the computer. It builds stamina. Patience. That said, walking away (for days or, more severely, months at a time) is also a very good thing.And journaling ideas and carrying the journal always is something I don’t seem to practice anymore, but it really culminated in a lot more ideas.14. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?I probably just chucked it lol. But let me think. Stephen King HATING adverbs is pretty dumb. Write what you know is kinda dumb (see the Nightvale post I reblogged a moment ago: “so know interesting things”...brilliant). I don’t like the idea that novels sell better than short stories. I don’t like my one writing teacher refusing to workshop my friend’s fanfic because it was fanfic. I don’t like the idea that bad writing or writing that doesn’t work out is worthless...there’s a post going around about that: we never say the scales musicians have practiced are wasted effort. I like writing very badly, not being able to come up with the right words. It’s an exercise in humility, maybe, that makes the brilliant stuff feel better.Forty questions for writers here

#thank you Orphy!! <3 #I'm more than happy to answer more #much more please #orphy-convallaria

[wrex-writes]

“Rules for writers”

If you have just started writing, you may have seen blog posts listing “rules for writers,” often written by literary agents who are tired of seeing their pet peeves in submitted manuscripts. You may also have seen other blog posts explaining why you shouldn’t pay attention to the first kind of blog post. You may be confused. Here’s my perspective on the matter.

The Problem With Writing Rules

These lists of “rules” usually contain the same basic ones. Caveat: I do not endorse these rules. In fact, skip this part if you don’t want to hear them. But just so you know the kind of list I’m talking about, they often go like this:

Avoid adverbs (and sometimes adjectives)

Avoid the verb “to be”

Avoid the passive voice

When you need a dialogue tag, only use “said”

Avoid verbs of thinking and feeling

Keep your sentences no longer than they need to be

Show, don’t tell

Write what you know

Etc.

These lists appeal to beginning writers because they offer a shortcut: they tell you how to write so you don't have to figure it out yourself. The problem with these rules is that you can’t apply them until you’ve had some experience. They’re very vague; they don’t mean anything substantive if you look at them closely. Okay, you’re supposed to avoid adverbs, but all writers will admit that sometimes you need one—so how do you recognize that situation when you encounter it? Ditto the passive voice, which can be powerful and downright necessary. Again, how will you know when you need it? As for “no sentences longer than they need to be”—a sentence may need to be long! How do you know how long is too long? And the worst one, “show, don’t tell,” is virtually useless, because “showing” often requires you to tell us something. You simply have no context for these rules if you haven’t written and read a lot already.

If you read your favorite authors, you’ll see them breaking these rules all the time. They developed their own taste and sense of good prose as they wrote more and looked closely at what other writers did, assembling their “rules” retrospectively. So if you’re starting out, it’s way more useful to ask, what do the writers you admire consistently do?

When writers make these lists of rules, they often apply them not as “rules,” per se, but as habits of thought that guide them. Rules can’t be followed in advance; writers just use them as psychological tools to keep them on track.

(Also, lists of rules by published authors are usually ironic. They know they’re only telling you how they write and what they like. You have to be a little bit arrogant to be a writer, honestly. Everyone thinks their taste is the best.)

How To Use Writing Rules Safely

For the writer who wants to grow, there is one way these rules can help:

Often, art students do exercises in which they must avoid one or several of the technical resources they rely on. For instance, they might be asked to draw without lifting their pencil from the page, or without looking at the page. They don’t have to follow this rule forever—it’s just an exercise. Writers can do similar exercises. You impose a restriction on yourself just to see what happens, to discover and strengthen writing muscles you didn’t know you had.

For instance, see this essay about V. S. Naipaul. Here’s a quote from Naipaul that the author of the essay seized upon:

...[W]hat had really helped was Naipaul’s telling an interviewer that in an effort to write clearly he had turned himself into a beginner: “It took a lot of work to do it. In the beginning I had to forget everything I had written by the age of 22. I abandoned everything and began to write like a child at school. Almost writing ‘the cat sat on the mat.’ I almost began like that.”

Naipaul didn’t establish a “rule,” he created an exercise that imposed an uncomfortable restriction on him. Also, he only followed one rule: write like a child. As his style evolved, he got away from “the cat sat on the mat,” but he kept that original guideline in mind. Eventually, he does offer a list of rules—use short sentences, avoid big words, keep your language concrete, etc.—but the last is the most important:

Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; clear, concrete sentences. It may be awkward, but it’s training you in the use of language. It may even be getting rid of the bad language habits you picked up at the university. You may go beyond these rules after you have thoroughly understood and mastered them.

(You can ignore the “every day for six months” part. That’s just Naipaul being an obsessive asshole. He does think he’s the world’s greatest writer, after all.)

Chuck Palahniuk offers a similar example. He begins thus:

In six seconds, you’ll hate me.

But in six months, you’ll be a better writer.

From this point forward—at least for the next half year—you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.

The list should also include: Loves and Hates.

And it should include: Is and Has, but we’ll get to those, later.

These look like rules. But notice he frames them not as rules but as an exercise. Just try not to use these kinds of verbs for a while and see what else you do instead, he’s saying. Writers often rely on certain kinds of words, so what if they took those away and forced themselves to find other solutions? He’s not saying you have to do this forever. It’s a strength-training exercise, like doing squats at the gym. If you read his writing, he does use thought verbs. Sparingly, maybe—that’s his idea of good writing, which is why he’s suggesting it to us—but certainly not as a rule.

Not all of these exercises will appeal to you. But if one does, you can try it in two different ways:

When you write your draft, don’t even think about this stuff. Just download your thoughts onto the page. Only apply the restriction when you rewrite. You can go one sentence a time, rewriting each one with your chosen restriction in mind.

You can try doing it straight out of the gate. This is a lot harder, and it won’t work for some people. You might try it briefly, and if it makes you clench up creatively, stop and try option #1 instead.

(Personally, I’ve found the “write like a child” guideline much easier to apply in a first draft than the “avoid thought verbs” one. Palahniuk’s exercise involves suppressing your initial thoughts and mentally translating your ideas into prose before you fully know what they are. That makes me seize up, so I only do it when I’m revising.)

So that’s my hot take on rules for writers. Don’t read these lists, read writers you like. And if you do try a rule, don’t treat it as a rule that can’t be broken, but as an experiment. Don’t let it limit you. Instead, see if it pushes you into new territory.

#wrex writes original posts

[temotekado]

Lưu

Tips to learn a new language

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences
The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences
The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences
The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences
The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences
The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences
The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences
The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

(Source: 5 Steps to Speak a New Language by Hung Quang Pham)

This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.

We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that Derek Roger suggested! :)

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)

‘Yes’ and ‘no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.

Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?

Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.

Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.

Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.

NOUNS (about 120 words)

Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn, winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month, year.

People: family, relative, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman, boy, girl, child.

Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key, letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil, picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.

Places: place, world, country, town, street, road, school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.

Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color, damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page, pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather, work.

Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread, food, paper, noise.

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)

General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.

Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.

Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from, behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below, under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.

Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)

Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.

Demonstrative: this, that.

Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.

Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.

Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)

Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.

Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.

General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot, cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful, funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty, wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new, old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.

Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful, dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid, surprised, tired, well, worried, young.

VERBS (about 100 words)

arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow, bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop, eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to, hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know, laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open, ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should, show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk, teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk, want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.

Demonstrative: this, that.

Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.

Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.

Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind, nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.

Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally, again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always, often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.

Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.

Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course, only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.

Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.

Manner & Logic: how, why, because, since (=because), although, if; what, who, whom, whose, which, that.

#Suutam

[not-poignant]

Tumblr is full of writing tips posts. What is the most stupid and horribly wrong writing tip you've seen here? That possibly made you go 'ffc no, you should never do THAT'

Honestly I see so many horrible fucking writing tips that I often don’t know where to start.

But there’s one I see a lot which has persisted over the years on Tumblr, and would have like...genuine writing teachers responding like this:

And that’s any writing advice that suggests about four million other words you should use in place of the miraculous word said.

There was this trend (it’s thankfully on its way out) of posts that got absurdly Thesaurus happy to suggest a billion other words you could use in place of ‘said’ as though you were in a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story where characters would ‘ejaculate’ instead of speaking (yes really: ‘I can’t believe it!’ he ejaculated.)

Said is a marvellous word. It’s really an incredible, wonderful word.

The rule for using words like ‘whispered’ or ‘taunted’ or whatever is (and this is not universal): if you can tell what the character is doing from the dialogue alone - use said. If there is no way you can tell tone from the dialogue, consider using something other than said to indicate tone. If you always have to use something else, your dialogue is probably not very good. And if you constantly use a word other than said because of I don’t know...personal vanity or whatever - that’s awesome man I can be guilty of it too, but sometimes it really means that you’re telling your reader the same thing multiple times in different ways and it can get jarring.

Said is a nice, invisible word. It’s mostly just letting people know who is character A and who is character B and who is speaking when. That’s all its for. Invisible words are great in writing! Why? Because they aid reading flow. The invisible words get your reader’s eye to the most important parts of your story.

Dean Koontz used to do this thing where he did great streams of dialogue and omitted all markers of who was speaking. Almost no one liked it, and almost everyone got confused by it. But it was a personal habit of his and he did it for about a decade before he was like ‘wait people really don’t like this‘ (to be fair he could do it for like three solid pages, like seriously imagine this:)

‘I don’t know’‘What don’t you know’ ‘I’m just saying this horrible thing we’re dealing with...’‘Yeah maybe we could do this to fight it’

FOR THREE PAGES IT GETS CONFUSING. (In short sections it can work). Sometimes how your character talks is not enough to get you through that clusterfuck. Enter the miraculous word ‘said,’ with a name or pronoun in front of it, that just acts as a gentle map for the reader, that goes ‘hey maybe you’re not reading this like it’s an examination for university, and to help you not get lost, here are some words you hardly have to notice to make sure you’re still involved in this story.’

Dean Koontz doesn’t really do this anymore, lol.

Anyway, honestly, I am kind of...against universal writing tips anyway, so any time I see a writing tip post on Tumblr, 9/10 I am usually doing this in response:

And it’s sort of... it’s a few things:

- I think a lot of these posts are written by highschoolers or first year university students who are sort of processing some basic writing rules (that in no way apply universally, culturally or even geographically to all - seriously if an American incorrectly ‘corrects’ my Australian grammar one more time I will reach through the internet and throttle them, we don’t use double quotation marks for our dialogue!) and do that by sort of regurgitating them with their own take and applying them to everyone. It’s awesome they’re learning, but you’re not in their class, and they are not your teacher. A lot of these articles are like post-educational-processing and not actually genuinely helpful writing advice.

- The universality of these tips tends to annoy me. It’s one thing to suggest that most fics on AO3 should have paragraph breaks - that’s basic functionality and accessibility, in the same way that it’s basic to put spaces between words. But it’s quite another to suggest that passive tense is always evil or adverbs are the devil. It’s simply not true. Fucking Pulitzer Prize winners have used both, lol. And they didn’t win in spite of doing these things. It’s one thing to say ‘it can be lazy to rely on this too much’ it’s another thing to say ‘no adverbs! Ever!’

- Sometimes it’s really really really easy to tell when someone has picked up Stephen King’s writing book. Also that book is super fucking ableist. Like most writing books, it’s centred in a whole lot of privilege. Also Chuck Palahniuk’s writing manifesto doesn’t apply to 98% of writers but thumbs up if you’re in the two percent.

- ‘How to write’ is an intensely personal process. Writing tips are like...idk, good to read, but in a light-hearted way. Sample often, discard just as often. Try before you buy (into it). Always think ‘do I know authors who have broken this rule and did I still find them entertaining?’ Almost always the answer is ‘yes.’

- I know a lot of professional writers and editors. Like, that’s my main ‘crew’ online (and in real life, even though I hardly ever see them, but if I see more than four people at once, it’s generally some of the big writing names in Perth and we’re usually bitching about something like how many small publishers can’t stand up to Amazon and not how that one author always uses ‘said’ too much pfft). On Twitter. On Facebook. On Dreamwidth. All I hear about every day is people dropping new books, getting nominated for awards etc. and here’s the thing about professional writers - they rarely share the same kind of writing tips you find on Tumblr, because they’ve learned that a lot of that stuff isn’t universal. 

Most of us are tired of Tumblr articles on how to write (don’t get me wrong, some of them are very very good, and Neil Gaiman has given lovely advice on Tumblr repeatedly - I don’t actually love his writing, but good god, I love him as a giver of writing advice lol since he’s not a homogenising dickbrain about it), most of us are tired of the grammar police, etc.

Anyway I do get impatient about it and it’s one of the few areas - there’s a reason why my ‘on writing’ / ‘pia on writing’ tag tends to feature very specific sorts of writing advice - i.e. focused on encouragement and motivation, over people saying ‘this thing should be universal’ when no, actually, it shouldn’t be.

And my way isn’t the right way either? And that’s why I don’t often share writing tips (though I think I could stand to do it more sometimes, maybe some people want to actually learn to write like me; I don’t recommend it personally lol). Like I break rules because I like the outcome, especially around length and passive tense and long scenes without ‘scene breaks’ and so on. But theoretically Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s The Bitterbynde Trilogy would be trash by some of these writing articles standards and it’s honestly one of the most sumptuous epic fantasy trilogies of all time and the purple prose works and it deserved the awards it won.

So imho, honestly, a lot of those articles can bite me, lol. But especially the ones where people are like ‘hey, have you considered not using ‘said’ and making everything 400 times harder for your reader, just to prove you can use a thesaurus???’

(PS: I talked to Glen about this, who is also a writer (and scriptwriter) and the thing he says he hates the most is: ‘write what you know.’ Totally feel that too.)

#asks and answers #pia on writing #on writing #gif post #mostly i think 'don't be a homogenising dickbrain' about writing #you see a lot of newbie 'editors' on tumblr #trying this out via writing tips #but what they're really trying to do #is make people write in a way *they like to read* #and it's one of the 101 failings of newbie editors #and all of us newbie editors have been there at some point #okay not all of us #just some of us #also i know a lot of writers #we bitch about bad writing advice #way more than we actually bitch about the things #these writing advice articles cover lol #sometimes we mockingly say #'oh such and such don't know you passive tense is *evil*??' #followed by laughter #which doesn't prove anything #except that we're dorks #also please don't judge these people by my writing #they are all way better and way more successful than i am #lol i'm mostly highly regarded there because of my art go figure #Anonymous