idlestories

[idlestories]

What is the highest number of notes on a post you have made? What's your most "successful" post?

#like 85k on here. not worth the notifications

[idlestories]

and for my next trick i will pull comedy out of tragedy out of comedy out of tragedy out of comedy out of tragedy and name it bbc merlin

[idlestories]

5.13 ⋄ The Diamond of the Day

[idlestories]

#wildly dull and unimportant just. wondering #occurred to me i’ve never deleted anything from inbox but is that a thing anyone does?? #between replies and comments and whatever there’s 1111 things in there but 0 unread #poll

[idlestories]

incorrect merlin quotes #11

[idlestories]

just remembered arthur’s sword wrist roll thing. guys he was so bisexual im distraught

#real

[idlestories]

painted my beautiful wife Gwen BBC Merlin :)

[ID: a realistic digital painting of Gwen from BBC Merlin over an olive green background. Gwen is in 3/4 view, shown from the waist up. She has a soft, neutral expression on her face. She is wearing a purple linen dress with a natural linen apron and a natural linen corset embroidered with flowers and animals, and her hair is down.]

[idlestories]

You cannot do this alone. You are but one side of a coin. Arthur is the other. Merlin S1E03 “The Mark of Nimueh”

[idlestories]

No see results option, I'm forcing you to perceive yourself. rb for more results plus

#i don’t even seem cool on here and it’s still better than real life #i make the world’s coldest meanest first impressions and after that i just seem fucking weird 🤠

[idlestories]

if i ever get murdered PLEASE don’t tell people i “lit up the room”. promise me this. one it’s not true i have never lit up a room in my life and you know it, two it’s literally the most basic thing to say about someone who was murdered and if you really love me you’ll come up with something actually creative to say that honors me as an individual. just promise me ok

#i made every room awkward 🫡 #killed the vibe even

[idlestories]

Do other writers ever get this like, hyper-specific dialogue exchange drop into their brains and you know exactly where these character are standing and what they’re doing and how they’re saying these words but that’s all you get. You don’t have much other context and this specific moment that exists only at this time in your headspace??

#half of my ideas notes app is just. this

[idlestories]

[idlestories]

Secret to getting to know other fans on tumblr is reblogging. This sounds like a trap to get you guys to reblog art and fics and gifs which yes that’s an added benefit but also the way you get a feel of followers or mutuals is the little comments in the tags of a post like subtle little whispers and you start to recognise names like oh that’s the one who’s always nice to artists or that’s the funny one or maybe they have a funny queue pun tag or maybe there can be a little prev tags interaction like that’s how you start creating your own little likeminded souls club here. Also you get to put pretty art and fics and gifs on your blog

[idlestories]

Do you maybe have tips for editing? I never really know where to even start...

Hey nonnie, funny that you should ask because editing might just be the thing about the writing process I'm having the most thoughts on 😂 Mostly it's because I do write my first drafts pretty fast, and that means they tend to need a lot of polishing until I'm satisfied with them. I'm not saying this would work for anyone - it's simply what I've come up with for myself; feel free to adjust, restructure, ignore altogether or, most importantly, use only half of it because according to my friends, I'm insane. Anyway.

I basically do 6 editing rounds, not counting beta-edits. Bear with me. First of all, I never edit before I'm done - it's a matter of taste, but I don't post my long fics before they're fully written, partly so that I can change things when editing. It's mostly a result of being someone who doesn't outline, so again, feel free to adjust this as needed.

First editing round: colour-coding the shit out of the thing, as follows:

Purple: plot-things that need to be changed, foreshadowing to adjust, dialogue (both content and does it sound natural?), consistency of timeline, characterisation, places, etc. etc. Red: to be deleted or massively shortened (in my case, too many dialogue tags, characters getting stuck in their own head for too long, stuff like that) Dark blue: Repeated words and phrases, wording/phrasing in general, passive voice (is it needed?) Turquoise: fine-polishing of wording (i.e. I could leave it like this, but I could also still word it a little better, find a more fitting metaphor, stuff like that). Green: sentence structure and flow, meaning run on sentences, rhythm, anything that reads wonky not due to word-choice but beats Pink: Words that I tend to overuse, filler words ("really, only, just, though" etc.), as well as those that create unnecessary distance ("feel, think, wonder, remember," etc.) - not that you have to delete all of them, but it makes sense to check if they're needed. Yellow: maybe change. The stuff you're not sure about, that could work or maybe not. The cheating colour, basically. Orange: grammar, tense, spelling (I tend to correct a lot of that as I go, but as English isn't my native language, sometimes I have to look stuff up/want to check whether it's the British/US spelling).

Right, so that's a lot. I'm not going to try fixing all of it at once, so:

Second round: fix purple and red, it takes the most rewriting. Third round: dark blue and green. Fourth round: turquoise, pink, and yellow. Fifth round: orange Sixth round: one final read through as a whole, not with an intent of changing anything anymore. If anything still sticks out to you, fix it as you go.

This is mostly for longer fics - for one shots, I sometimes throw three and four together, or even two to four. Again, this is very in-depth, but I do hope it might help you/give you an idea where to start! ❤️

#lovely

[idlestories]

"gwaine hated arthur" common misconception, repressed emotional bastards actually wanted to get boned down by each other from day one

[idlestories]

sometimes i worry about all my writing sounding the same but then i remember how comforting it is to come home to the style of an author you love

#post sponsored by picking up a random stephen king book i haven’t read in like 12 years #that’s my good friend steve telling me a little story as he has been doing since i was about ten :) #mine

[idlestories]

reblog after voting!!

#i have 2 separate accounts like this and my main have different email addresses