one of my favorite things to do in limited perspective is write sentences about the things someone doesn't do. he doesn't open his eyes. he doesn't reach out. i LOVE sentences like that. if it's describing the narrator, it's a reflection of their desires, something they're holding themselves back from. there's a tension between urge and action. it makes you ask why they wanted or felt compelled to do that, and also why they ultimately didn't. and if it's describing someone else, it tells you about the narrator's expectations. how they perceive that other person or their relationship. what they thought the other person was going to do, or thought the other person should have done, but failed to. negative action sentences are everything.

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

trope: 1) the use of figurative language for artistic effect; includes allegories, analogies, hyperbole, & metaphors, among others. 2) commonly reoccurring literary devices, motifs, or clichés. Includes things like the medieval fantasy setting, the Dark Lord, enemies-to-lovers, and the Chosen One.

theme: the reoccurring idea or subject in a work of art. Death, life, rebirth, change, love, what it means to be human, the definition of family, the effects of war, etc.

cliché: an element of an artistic work that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even becoming annoying or irritating. (Most clichés are tropes but not all tropes are clichés.)

motif: a distinctive repeating feature or idea, such as the green light in The Great Gatsby. May overlap with tropes and is often used to further explore the theme.

archetype: a constantly-recurring symbol or motif; it refers to the recurrence of characters or ideas sharing similar traits throughout various, seemingly unrelated cases in classic storytelling. E.g. rags to riches, the wise old mentor. Again may overlap with tropes, clichés, and motifs, but they're not the exact same thing.

Victoria Schwab Tweets:

“This just in: you can love writing and also find it hard.

“I was once on a panel and another author essentially said, ‘if you don't enjoy every moment, then why are you here?’ and I was...exasperated. Creativity is a complicated beast. You don't have to love every second to be a valid participant.

“I love the ideas. I love brainstorming, and problem-solving, and I love making this better, fine-tuning language.

“I also hate drafting, claw my way through self-doubt, crawl on my hands and knees through the frustration of the unrealized.

“I'm not here because I love every second.

“I'm here because the parts I love are worth the rest.”

hey did you know that uhh

oh shit i didn't expect this to actually get notes lmao

these are all direct quotes from jeffrey jerome cohen's "monster culture (seven theses)" (full pdf linked) i highly encourage you to read it yourself!

that said, while i think cohen's writing is evocative, it can be a little dense, so while i'm here, here's my capsule summary (you can also hear me talk about this in the first episode of my podcast) (listen to @ghostswerepeopletoo)

Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

It’s a chair. With wheels.

If you have chairs (Do people sit on chairs to eat dinner? Write letters? Rest their aching feet?), and you have wheels (Carriages? Chariots? Oxcarts?), then you have zero reasons they can’t be put together.

Also:

[Image description: black and white image [against a red background] of Hephaestus from an archaic, 6th century B.C.E., Greek drinking bowl, sitting in a winged, wheelchair-like chariot, with his smith’s hammer over his shoulder. The image is surrounded by gold dots, and framed in gold, black and white. Description ends]

In case you missed it, that image was originally painted in the 6th Century B.C.E. (That’s 200 years before Alexander the Great).

Sure, that image was painted on the inside bottom of a drinking bowl, and was probably meant .as a joke against one of the Olympian gods (you’d only dare do that if you were drunk), and not a depiction of a mobility aid actually in use. But if some ancient Greek dudebro could imagine a wheelchair, so the physically disabled god can get around, you have no excuse.

— Rabbi Julia Watts Besser, “God On Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology” (Tikkun Magazine) 

Which anyone who can get access to the full article should read in its entirety, it is beautiful and amazing.

A slight tangent, but:

^^^So much this!^^^

I am convinced, down to the level of my bones – down, even, to the level of my mitochondria – that I became a writer in general, and that my chosen genres are wonder tales and poetry in particular, because I have cerebral palsy. 

Ever since I was a toddler (as soon as I was old enough to not always be carried around), I’ve need to be aware of the spaces between things.

“Can I fit through there?” “Is there anything on the floor that would cause my wheels to get bogged down, or crutch tips to slip?” “If I enter this room, will I have space to turn around and leave?” etc..

All these questions deal with concrete, everyday, manifestations of “The Liminal.” I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the fantasy genres, to both write, and read, as my favorite genre. Because so-called “realistic” fiction completely ignores these borderlines, and therefore feels empty and fake to me.

So it’s especially ironic, from my POV, that my favorite genre so often erases people like me from its universes.

Oh, look ye, here! One of my posts from days of yore (Two user name changes ago).

I’d almost forgotten that I wrote this. I still agree with it. So there.

Happy Disability Pride Month!

Have fun finding the in-between spaces (both physical and social).

I'd rather have a thousand "OHMIGOD WE WERE RIGHT!!!" theory confirmed moments where due to good storytelling and foreshadowing the audience was able to figure out parts of the future plot than just one more stupid twist that makes no narrative sense to avoid being "predictable".

If people knowing anything about your plot spoils the show entirely maybe it's just no good lmao.

It's not worth ruining your narrative themes and character integrity just so everyone is shocked. Sometimes twists that have been guessed .... Are better.

Honestly there's something to be said about the sheer DELIGHT you feel when you figure out a particularly thorny plot twist before the characters do. It reminds me of that quote about charm being making the other person feel like they're the smartest person in the room vs. making them feel like YOU'RE the smartest person in the room.

And there's something to be said about the amount of artistry needed to make sure that the twist can be figured out soon enough for the reader to feel clever and satisfied, but not too soon to the point the characters come off as stupid for not having figured it out already.

And the best kind of plot twist is the kind where you can go back to the story and see how it always made sense from the start, which you can't if the twist came out of left field.

I'm a long time volunteer at a theatre that focuses on Shakespeare:; I've seen the entire canon twice, so I often pay more attention to the audience and how they react. It is so much fun when first timers catch a plot twist a couple of beats before the rest of the house.

One night there was a family with teens, who'd obviously been dragged there by the mother, who had That Look on her face, "These kids will get some culture if I have to stuff it down their throats". And they caught something first, and the look on their faces! They came back several more times, too.

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

reading this post be like

Keep seeing posts in solidarity with the WGA strike that say things like “no one cares about your favorite shows” and “fuck your tv show. I hope it gets canceled” and while I understand and agree with the underlying sentiment, which is clearly “Real people are more important than fictional ones, you dipshit” I don’t like the framing because, well, it feels shitty to dismiss the importance of the work made by the workers we’re trying to defend.

No one cares about your favorite shows more than the writers do.

No one understands the power and importance of tv and film more than the writers who created them.

No one loves tv, movies, games, and stories more than the people who fought tooth and nail in an incredibly competitive and underpaid profession for the chance to be part of it.

They know it’s important. They know it changes lives. They know it can be more than just a story, more than just a bit of entertainment. They’ve loved and respected this medium, continue to love and respect this medium, more than you ever will.

The person who wants a show to get canceled the least is the writer who poured their everything into making it good.

TV and movies are great, actually, and you are not wrong to be invested and care about them. That’s what the writers gave you. That’s what the writers wanted when they wrote it. That’s why they wrote it.

Which is why we respect them when they make the call that this strike and its demands are worth risking it.

The people on that picket line do not want their shows canceled. They want to keep writing them. They can’t, not under the current conditions.

So we accept the risk with them and support them.

But I don’t want to berate the power and importance of their work, the value they put into it and the love they have for it, in the same breath that I am defending their strike. Worthy shows will likely get canceled or derailed and that will be a tragedy worth mourning. The writers know that better than anyone.

So when they say something else is even more important, we listen. And when your favorite show gets ruined, you make sure your fully justified anger and grief is pointed in the right direction - at the CEOs who killed it.

the ocean as a metaphor ALWAYS slaps. the ocean as a hungry force that wants to consume you? the ocean as something vast and unknowable, like a god itself? the ocean as freedom and liberation? the ocean as the mysteries of the self? the ocean as love? never fails to get me

i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways

a) i forgot how fun this is

b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!

c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"

d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot

there's a board filled with dozens and dozens of little construction paper thought bubbles that have some pretty generic plot points in them (what if there were aliens? what if you time travelled? what is true love? what if you could talk to animals? kinda stuff) and we encouraged them to write at least a paragraph for each one and not just pick the one that sounded coolest, just to see what sparks inspiration.

EVERY single little girl took the 'fall in love one' and did something unconventional with it.

some of them were stories about self-empowerment and falling in love with yourself, or falling in love with the mundane, life itself, a pet, a garden, a hobby, just loving being alive! (😭🥺🥰)

but a lot of them were deeply fucked up stories about like "what if you fall in love with a guy but he doesn't like you the same amount back, so you biopsy his liver (??) because you found an old polish love potion/spell, but it backfires like some kinda djinn wish and you actually mind control him and it takes you years to notice that you're whole love life has been a deception bc you accidentally turned on god mode without realizing it, and now you're questioning if you're even lovable at all bc this is the only person you've ever allowed to love you, and it wasn't even real, so now you're spiralling into a breakdown, but that old polish spell book you buried under a tree is whispering your name so you try to fix it and make everything worse?"

me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?

teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.

me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.

Characters being compared to dogs always use terriers or pitbulls or something for their metaphors. “They grab on and they don’t let go” “They keep worrying at it until it’s dead” etc.

Anyway, I want to see collies used as metaphors. Albert Payson Terhune style. “He was like an attack dog–making slash-and-run attacks, cutting them up worse every time, never staying in range long enough to get hurt but circling back over and over.”

@animatedamerican yes EXCELLENT.

“He was like a bloodhound–not actually that violent at all, but his reputation did the work for him.”

“He was like a corgi: by all signs unaware that a fight was even happening, just enthusiastic and delighted to be involved.”

“He was like a labrador– so known for being friendly and having a soft mouth that everyone forgot that he was actually quite large and had teeth.”

“He was like a poodle - much smarter than you’d expect for someone with such flamboyant hair ”

“He was like an Irish Wolfhound - he could do more damage being friendly than most people could do in a blind rage.”

He was like a beagle - AAAUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *breath* AUUUUUUUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"He was like a greyhound: you always expected him to be running, but instead he spent 90% of his time napping"

Ok so the thing about reading like books which are "predictable" is that I, a story enjoyer, go completely bonkers about it bc its like Enrichment in my Enclosure. A scene parallels another earlier scene between different characters thus serving to highlight the differences in their views and priorities???? A line makes me think "hmmm I bet that's gonna be relevant later" ends up being relevant later????? I am a tiger chewing ice cubes out of a pumpkin. I'm so so happy. Please foreshadow more things. Throw the completely anticipateable plot beats at me like catnip mousies!!!!!

I love playing author tag, as both a reader and a writer. I love hooting like a gibbon when I see the author doing Thematic Parallels or Blatant Foreshadowing. I love writing that shit. I love reading someone in the comments of my work going "ITS THE THIIIIIING!!" I go feral "YES ITS THE THING!! THANK YOU FOR SEEING THAT!!! I WORKED VERY HARD ON IT!!"

It's the writing version of picking up on how a movie special effect was done and going Oooooh because it still works, and if anything it works even more and looks even cooler now that you know its Playtex and wires. Its Playtex and wires AND a dinosaur! It's a flagrant waving around of a prop we will use later, and a suspense builder! It's good!!!

I love reading/watching something and coming up with theories and speculation, and then finding out that *I was right* cause I picked up on a thing.

I also love watching other people do it too, either as the author of the thing or as another fan who’s already read/watched the thing and they’re experiencing it for the first time.

How often have y'all restarted a book w/o finishing the first draft ? Cause I'm thinking about restarting mine for the second/third time & it's only three chapters but ://

I'm a big advocate for starting over if the story doesn't feel right-- whether you're on chapter 3 or chapter 30.

Just remember, don't trash what you have! Start a new doc or move the old stuff to your story notes. I guarantee something in there will pop up later on in your rewrite and you'll want those receipts close at hand when it does

my folder for my latest WIP looks like this so far

I often don't start over, I may simply continue from the point I'm at and pretend I already made the changes I'm thinking of and worry about smoothing it out in revisions. but if something feels fundamentally broken or it's not working for some reason, I start over in a new doc (seconding last poster that I d o n o t trash what I already have, I save literally everything, I didn't even overwrite when all I was doing was changing tenses).

anyway tl;dr start over as many times as you need to until it feels like it's working, don't worry about it, but save every version just in case