paragon-arthur

[paragon-arthur]

Give yourself permission to write garbage.

This is the best writing advice I have ever received. Ever.

Anytime I either find myself intimidated by writing something or I simply can’t seem to get words moving, I use this. It’s great for the run of the mill perfectionist, as well.

Giving yourself permission to write garbage means letting yourself do something imperfectly. I always use this when I can’t seem to find a place to start, and I set out to write the “worst version” of whatever I’m writing. Not only do I give myself permission to write badly; I ask myself to. Instead of writing something eloquent like “the banisters were carved straight out of Queen Victoria’s past” I’ll write “the banisters were fancy-looking and stuff”. Or rather than coming up with the beautiful world building of the setting, I’ll just start with “they’re outside and it’s pretty” and move on.

Every time I do this, perhaps the first line or two will be a little worse for wear, but as a whole, never comes out “bad”. You’re just giving yourself the opportunity to write a “first coat”, if you will, and then add onto it when you edit later. And often I just need this advice to write the first sentence, and then I’m in the flow again. For me, at least, if I didn’t do this when I needed it, I’d just sit paralyzed at my computer staring at a blinking cursor. I’d rather just type some garbage that I can edit later than have nothing at all.

It’s simple and it’s silly (and sometimes cringe-worthy), but it gets you writing and that’s all that matters.

#writing tag #writing help

[paragon-arthur]

I'm not sure I can express this sentiment strongly enough, but I'm going to try via the medium of large bolded text.

Write what the fuck you want.

Write what makes you happy. Write what makes your soul sing. Write what fucks you up and makes you cry. Write what comforts you. Write what distracts you. Write what you want to read. Write what you want to watch.

Write what you want to dream about tonight.

Write what you can't get enough of. Write what you're completely obsessed with. Write what wakes you up at 4am and drags you out of bed because you can't stop thinking about what your characters are going to do next.

Write what turns you on, if that's your vibe. Write characters you're in love with and characters who inspire you and characters you want to be friends with and characters you fucking hate but oh my god they're so much fun.

Write about things you would sell your soul to do in real life and things you would never do in real life. Write about things that are happening right now and things that happened a thousand years ago and things that might happen in the future and things you wish could happen.

Write to get a publishing deal or to sell your books yourself or not to sell your books at all. Write for your friends or for strangers or for the people who reblog your posts on Tumblr and send you songs that remind them of your characters.

Write for yourself.

Fuck any system that tells you there's only one right way to create or one valid way to share your writing. Your story, the way you tell it, has so much value. Make people smile or piss people off or do both of those things because art is divisive and fascinating and beautiful.

Start writing. Keep writing. And write what the fuck you want.

#writing tag #writing help

[paragon-arthur]

get up and go write.

write for the people who will one day pore over the words you've chosen.

write for the people who think you could never have gotten so far.

write so you can bring words to life.

write so one day you can look back and see how far you've come.

write to inspire people who are too afraid, or who cannot, put words to paper.

write, because if you don't create this, who will?

and if anything, get up and go write for yourself. there's still so far to go. take a break, breathe, but go back. there's still so many things to share.

#writing tag #writing help

[paragon-arthur]

Some of my writer’s block cures:

Handwrite. (If you already are, write in a different coloured pen.)

Write outside or at a different location.

Read.

Look up some writing prompts.

Take a break. Do something different. Comeback to it later.

Write something else. (A different WIP, a poem, a quick short story, etc.)

Find inspiring writing music playlists on YouTube. (Themed music, POV playlists, ambient music, etc.)

Do some character or story prompts/questions to get a better idea of who or what you’re writing.

Word sprints. Set a timer and write as much as you can. Not a lot of time to overthink things.

Set your own goals and deadlines.

Write another scene from your WIP. (You don’t have to write in order.) Write a scene you want to write, or the ending. (You can change it or scrap it if it doesn’t fit into your story later.)

Write a scene for your WIP that you will never post/add to your story. A prologue, a different P.O.V., how your characters would react in a situation that’s not in your story, a flashback, etc.

Write down a bunch of ideas. Things that could happen, thing that will never happen, good things, bad things.

Change the weather (in the story of course.)

Feel free to add your own.

#writing tag #writing help

[paragon-arthur]

Aya's Journalist Drip

(Reddit request)

#touhou

[paragon-arthur]

Giorgio(ジョジョ) さん

#bocchi the rock!

[paragon-arthur]

I don’t know which author needs to hear this right now but even if you never update your wip i would never regret reading it a time of joy is never wasted

#writing tag

[paragon-arthur]

My secret to actually finishing publishing projects is that when I don't feel like working on them, I procrastinate by pissing around with the innumerable tiny housekeeping tasks associated with the project that would otherwise bring things to a crashing halt at the 99% mark, so that when I eventually do get to the 99% mark, they're already done.

Like, you don't feel like actually writing the thing?

Screw around with the layout and formatting of your credits and copyright notices page.

Put together a spec for an illustration you imagine you might one day commission, if you ever find yourself in possession of a budget.

Fire up your graphic design software and compose a completely unnecessary diagram or visual aid.

Tinker with the wording of the promotional blurb on the itch.io page you set up in a previous bout of procrastination even though the product doesn't actually exist yet.

Any non-trivial publishing project has a billion peripheral little tasks that need taking care of, most of them sufficiently small and sufficiently different from Writing The Thing that you can probably convince your brain that doing them when you "should" be writing counts as procrastinating – and that list may look a lot less intimidating when it's framed less as "a billion things I Have To Do" and more as "a billion things I can distract myself with to avoid actually writing".

#writing tag

[paragon-arthur]

Small artists you need to understand that when you see an artist who you think has 'made it' tells you not to worry about the numbers and to not fret about getting more likes than reblogs they are not telling you it because they think you are stupid for caring or because they dont need to network to survive they are very likely telling you that because they have witnessed first hand the way the numbers game tears people to shreds in terms of mental health and motivation

#creative tag

[paragon-arthur]

WRITE!! WHAT!! YOU!! WANT!!

If you don't love your writing, no one else will!

#writing tag

[paragon-arthur]

Link ~~~

#honkai star rail

[paragon-arthur]

Skeletor has forever destroyed our ability to come up with voices for skeleton characters.

#he man

[paragon-arthur]

10mo@_10mo オルタと空気読み

#fate grand order

[paragon-arthur]

please help me- i used to be pretty smart but i’m having so much trouble grasping the concept of diegetic vs non-diegetic bdsm!

gfkjldghfd okay first of all I'm sorry for the confusion, if you're not finding anything on the phrase it's because I made it up and absolutely nobody but me ever uses it, but I haven't found a better way to express what I'm trying to say so I keep using it. but now you've given me an excuse to ramble on about some shit that is only relevant to me and my deeply inefficient way of talking and by god I'm going to take it.

SO. the way diegetic and non-diegetic are normally used is to talk about music and sound design in movies/tv shows. in case you aren't familiar with that concept, here's a rundown:

diegetic sound is sound that happens within the world of the movie/show and can be acknowledged by the characters, like a song playing on the stereo during a driving scene, or sung on stage in Phantom of the Opera. it's also most other sounds that happen in a movie, like the sounds of traffic in a city scene, or a thunderclap, or a marching band passing by. or one of the three stock horse sounds they use in every movie with a horse in it even though horses don't really vocalize much in real life, but that's beside the point, the horse is supposed to be actually making that noise within the movie's world and the characters can hear it whinnying.

non-diegetic sound is any sound that doesn't exist in the world of the movie/show and can't be perceived by the characters. this includes things like laugh tracks and most soundtrack music. when Duel of Fates plays in Star Wars during the lightsaber fight for dramatic effect, that's non-diegetic. it exists to the audience, but the characters don't know their fight is being backed by sick ass music and, sadly, can't hear it.

the lines can get blurry between the two, you've probably seen the film trope where the clearly non-diegetic music in the title sequence fades out to the same music, now diegetic and playing from the character's car stereo. and then there are things like Phantom of the Opera as mentioned above, where the soundtrack is also part of the plot, but Phantom of the Opera does also have segments of non-diegetic music: the Phantom probably does not have an entire orchestra and some guy with an electric guitar hiding down in his sewer just waiting for someone to break into song, but both of those show up in the songs they sing down there.

now, on to how I apply this to bdsm in fiction.

if I'm referring to diegetic bdsm what I mean is that the bdsm is acknowledged for what it is in-world. the characters themselves are roleplaying whatever scenarios their scenes involve and are operating with knowledge of real life rules/safety practices. if there's cnc depicted, it will be apparent at some point, usually right away, that both characters actually are fully consenting and it's all just a planned scene, and you'll often see on-screen negotiation and aftercare, and elements of the story may involve the kink community wherever the characters are. Love and Leashes is a great example of this, 50 Shades and Bonding are terrible examples of this, but they all feature characters that know they're doing bdsm and are intentional about it.

if I'm talking about non-diegetic bdsm, I'm referring to a story that portrays certain kinks without the direct acknowledgement that the characters are doing bdsm. this would be something like Captive Prince, or Phantom of the Opera again, or the vast majority of bodice ripper type stories where an innocent woman is kidnapped by a pirate king or something and totally doesn't want to be ravished but then it turns out he's so cool and sexy and good at ravishing that she decides she's into it and becomes his pirate consort or whatever it is that happens at the end of those books. the characters don't know they're playing out a cnc or D/s fantasy, and in-universe it's often straight up noncon or dubcon rather than cnc at all. the thing about entirely non-diegetic bdsm is that it's almost always Problematic™ in some way if you're not willing to meet the story where it's at, but as long as you're not judging it by the standards of diegetic bdsm, it's just providing the reader the same thing that a partner in a scene would: the illusion of whatever risk or taboo floats your boat, sometimes to extremes that can't be replicated in real life due to safety, practicality, physics, the law, vampires not being real, etc. it's consensual by default because it's already pretend; the characters are vehicles for the story and not actually people who can be hurt, and the reader chose to pick up the book and is aware that nothing in it is real, so it's all good.

this difference is where people tend to get hung up in the discourse, from what I've observed. which is why I started using this phrasing, because I think it's very crucial to be able to differentiate which one you're talking about if you try to have a conversation with someone about the portrayal of bdsm in media. it would also, frankly, be useful for tagging, because sometimes when you're in the mood for non-diegetic bodice ripper shit you'd call the police over in real life, it can get really annoying to read paragraphs of negotiation and check-ins that break the illusion of the scene and so on, and the opposite can be jarring too.

it's very possible to blur these together the same way Phantom of the Opera blurs its diegetic and non-diegetic music as well. this leaves you even more open to being misunderstood by people reading in bad faith, but it can also be really fun to play with. @not-poignant writes fantastic fanfic, novels, and original serials on ao3 that pull this off really well, if you're okay with some dark shit in your fiction I would highly recommend their work. some of it does get really fucking dark in places though, just like. be advised. read the tags and all that.

but yeah, spontaneous writer plug aside, that's what I mean.

#writing tag

[paragon-arthur]

Hiya Neil! You seem to be the only author who gives actually good advice so do you mind if I ask for some? I’ve had severe writers block for almost a year now and I still don’t know what happens in chapter two and it’s seriously doing my head in. I’m writing a gothic mystery but I still don’t even know who my antagonist is! Not to be dramatic but my brain is collapsing I’ll take any advice you’ve got

Write an outline. Write down everything you know that happens in your book (it doesn't have to be complicated. Jack is turned into a ferret. The bank robbery is a disaster. The moon explodes. )

Then reread what you have written so far pretending you've never read it before. Add anything that occurs to you to your outline. Jack expects to be transformed into a ferret but instead becomes a wereferret, only transforming by moonlight.

Then push forward. If there's a bit you are stuck on then skip it for now and come back to it on your next draft.

Remember that you are telling yourself the story on your first draft. Later you can make it look like you knew what you were doing all along.

#writing tag

[paragon-arthur]

#writing tag

[paragon-arthur]

sometimes you spend a month not able to write your fic, sometimes you black out at 10pm and awaken at 5am with 50k in front of you

#writing tag