Yeah Write

remember that even if it’s bad, it’s still better than the draft you didn’t write.

You all need to hear this:

1. You probably dont suck at your craft as much as you think you do, I bet a lot of people are amazed at what you can make, and

2. If you actually are the Literal Worst In The Whole Wide World at your craft… who the fuck cares? What are they gonna do, call the police on you? Keep making your shitty little things, youre the boss of you, fuck the haters.

I’ve gotta be honest I hesitate to give writing advice anymore because whenever someone tells me your story needs to do xyz I immediately need to write a story breaking all of those rules they just spelled out because I’m just Like That and who am I to further enable other people who are also Like That

“Beginning writers should stick with a human point of view”

Not if you were the weird, biology obsessed kid.

The only writing advice that I think is evergreen is to just try stuff and see what works. Writing is such an personalized process, and the output is unique to the individual. It’s so hard to make general practices that won’t fall apart when applied to the reality of the diaspora of human experience and imagination.

Basically, first rule of writing is to be yourself and have fun. :>

I just saw a post on Tumblr asking if you’re “allowed” to do something in a story you’re writing. (In this case, a POV shift.)

I just want to sing to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, “THERE ARE NO RULES. THERE ARE NO RULES. There are no rules there are no rules there are no rules…”

if you’re a writer i wish u a very plot/story/character epiphany

Writer culture is that feeling of full-body exaltation that you get when you finally get to write the scene that you planned out five months and 40,000 words earlier.

yeah

if you want to create but feel intimidated and overwhelmed, you’re forgetting something: good art doesn’t exist. all art is terrible. every story and song and movie and picture is worse than the one before it and all artists should be in prisom

The eight stages of writing :

- this is awesome

- this is slightly less awesome

- this is shit

- I’m shit

-oh god oh fuck what the hell am I doing

-wait this might not be that bad actually

- How the fuck is this working

-This is awesome

I love getting comments on really old fics. It’s like a little tap on the shoulder that says, “hey the art you create is going to last forever even if you don’t think it matters anymore”

My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character’s mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it’ll feel in character.

Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that’s so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn’t cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?

What counts is often not so much ‘would the character do this?’ and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?’ If you get 'how’ part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn’t feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?

Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they’d sound while doing it.

I don’t remember where I saw this piece of advice so I can’t credit it, unfortunately

But it was along the lines of “instead of asking whether something is out of character, ask ’what would it take for this character to do this’”

Which I think fits really nicely with this advice of making the actual action itself also feel in character

hey so when ao3 is back you’re all gonna leave lots of kudos and nice comments on the fics you read right. even if you’re rereading. because you recognize the contributions of writers to fan communities. you understand fanfiction as one of the pillars of fandom and you feel lost without it right? so you’re gonna feed the writers? good job ❤️

if you’ve never engaged with a creative art on a regular basis you need to understand that it requires concerted effort to get into “the groove” to make something and every second that it takes to get into that groove causes physical pain, but the only thing worse than doing it is not doing it.

writing advice: get weird w it

It’s always

“When will fanfic writers update their stories?”

And never

“Does this fanfic writer have adequate enrichment to engage in writing behaviours?”

Fanfiction writers (Scriptor fictus) are intelligent animals who need plenty of enrichment as well as encouragement! If they’re stuck in poor conditions (e.g. have studies, work, have to actually write to have something written) then they require the proper enrichment to engage in more healthy behaviours, like writing. Remember, due to poor breeding and socialisation, over half of all fanfic writers suffer from low self confidence and executive dysfunction so take care of them!

Give your fanfic writers proper care. Fanfiction writers are a life long commitment.

When I mention I’m writing a novel and someone asks how far along I am but I haven’t actually written anything- just made my fun lil characters and made random plot points that don’t connect yet

sometimes it’s important to injure the character

maim them even

inspired by a post i read yesterday which contained the beautiful the words “Hanya Yanagihara’s The Long Game”……

pick an author and a title!

(no “idk” button! if you get a title or an author you don’t know enough about to make a judgement, keep rolling until you do!)

I don’t know who needs to hear this but it’s okay for writing to be a HOBBY that you do because you enjoy, and that you don’t want to do when you’re not enjoying it. No one’s up in the business of knitters telling them they have to be willing to SUFFER and SWEAT or they’ll NEVER FINISH THAT SWEATER and they can’t expect good things to come to them. I don’t know why our current culture around writing is so intense, but I’m here to support your casual, relaxing writing habit. If people can glue pompoms together or knit a scarf or watch hours of streaming shows with their spare time there’s absolutely no reason writers can’t waste time writing just for pleasure, without any expectation that they’re going to Achieve something Amazing and Important or make a bunch of money or whatever.

I stand corrected: According to a great many who have piped up in the comments, apparently people ARE up in the business of knitters. What the hell. Get out of the business of knitters, people. May we all enjoy our hobbies without pressure to professionalize.

Can’t be sincerely dark without being called edgy, can’t be sincerely emotional without being called melodramatic, can’t be sincerely silly without being called stupid. They’re gonna hate every emotion you put in your art no matter what so make it anyway and be as sincere as you can be

these are my mutuals. they know who they are

the issue with writing for yourself is that you will get sucked into rereading your own fic over and over and pretend it’s “editing,” but really you’re just reading because it’s exactly what you want to read. because you wrote it. for you.

and then you will be like why does this asshole never finish anything god

writing tip:

if you push buttons on a keyboard, letters will appear on the screen. and with that power you can do anything

 i think it was cruel to give lightning mcqueen a foot fetish, as he lives in a world where all feet are wheels. he has nothing.

sorry i wasnt talking to you i think

imo the best way to interpret those “real people don’t do x” writing advice posts is “most people don’t do x, so if a character does x, it should be a distinguishing trait.” human behavior is infinitely varied; for any x, there are real people who do x. we can’t make absolute statements. we can, however, make probabilistic ones.

for example, most people don’t address each other by name in the middle of a casual conversation. if all your characters do that, your dialogue will sound stilted and unnatural. but if just one character does that, then it tells us something about that character.