Jumping on the Sanders Sides fanfiction
train. I'm working one big project but if anyone feels like submitting prompts, I'll give it a shot! [Writing Masterpost]
It feels like such an unpopular opinion these days but I'd much rather a story take a big swing and miss than just be a tepid, lightly-tread path. I'd much rather writers take big risks, play with expectations, subvert tropes and ultimately maybe fail a little bit than have this constant stream of content that can be summed up in trite soundbites or carved up into 30 second clips.
Honestly? My main piece of advice for writing well-rounded characters is to make them a little bit lame. No real living person is 100% cool and suave 100% of the time. Everyone's a little awkward sometimes, or gets too excited about something goofy, or has a silly fear, or laughs about stupid things. Being a bit of a loser is an incurable part of the human condition. Utilize that in your writing.
Working on my novel and couldn’t figure out why it felt so empty. I didn’t have any filler. It was all 100% plot. The characters only interacted when necessary. I didn’t prattle on about the scenery or how the birds sounded. I had all my fuller stuff that I loved saved in another file because I “didn’t need it”.
Y’all, I knew this existed in TV shows but it didn’t hit me until this that everything is being whittled down. We are so starving for filler that we snap up anything. I unload all mine on Tumblr or keep it in a massive Google Docs. It SUCKS.
Honestly? Death to plot necessity. Revive filler. Revive unnecessary interactions. Revive just vibing with characters sometimes. I don’t want to just consume the plot and I don’t want to just create the plot either.
But consider--a healthy version of anxiety that has realized that having plants around helps. He received a plant as a gift one time and he was so worried he might kill it that he spent days researching the plant's needs and getting the environment just right.
Even then, the plant occasionally wilts and he ends up overcorrecting by watering too much or not enough. But it's a hardy plant and even when he gets it wrong or has a bad day, the plant somehow manages to survive.
And slowly, he learns to spot the signs of over/underwatering earlier and learns not to overreact at the first sign of trouble.
One day, he realizes he hasn't fertilized it since he got it, so he gets some cheap fertilizer, and suddenly the plant explodes. It's not just surviving, suddenly it's thriving.
It's growing big and strong and he feels good. His room now has more natural sunlight. His sleep is more regular because he's getting better at keeping a routine. And he's proud of this little thing he's managed to keep alive.
So, he thinks about it, and he gets another plant. And another, and another, and another...
Now, he has plants on every surface. Basic plants, colorful plants, exotic plants, tall plants, plants hanging from the ceiling, plants hanging from the walls--
Part of his room has shifted into a sun room, where he can grow outdoor plants year round. There's so many plants he's lost count. But still, he knows all their specific needs and feels confident now in knowing how to treat them if something goes wrong.
He feels better. Thomas feels better. And life is good.
...
And Logan’s just been there, taking rampant notes on Virgil’s progress. Because yes, he'd read somewhere that plants can help ease anxiety but he'd never expected for Virgil to take it so far when he'd given him the original plant in the first place.
Once upon a time, you might have been human, but that time had long since passed, nothing more than a distant and fading dream in the recesses of your mind. Now, you were something so much…. more.
You weren’t certain there was even a name for what you were, not when you were something that had been created by another, and yet entirely self made at the same time. You were unique, something new and yet ageless, a complete anomaly that stood outside the grasp of time.
Everything else had laws that they had to follow, rules that could be bent, but never broken entirely. Even the gods and their creators, had rules they were bound by.
But you didn’t.
You could make rules, break rules, or even just bend and warp them to suit your desires. But none of them bound you.
Should you choose to erase the gods and their creators, and put new ones in their place, or rewrite the fabric of reality completely, warping it into something unknown….