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muggle-writes · 2 years
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people with social anxiety hyping each other up like omg yes queen you’re looking very passive and unremarkable. i wouldnt spare you a second glance on the street
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muggle-writes · 2 years
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do you have any third person writing advice? for nano, im writing my book in third person however i have barely any experience with it. every sentence i seem to write is very repetitive as they all seem begin with the same “she, her, as, it” etc. it’s making it hard to write and i can’t seem to break out of it :( thank u
Third person is the most un-restricted point of view that you can use to tell your story. The trouble with getting hung up with little details like “oh, 3 consecutive sentences starting with ‘the’ is NOT allowed, which means it can NEVER happen” is that it makes you focus on the wrong thing. 
The main problem people have with writing in this point of view is that they focus on following conventional “rules”, rather than focusing on making their writing flow. This is not the same thing. It doesn’t matter if three consecutive sentences start with the word ‘the’ as long as your writing flows nicely and your sentence structure doesn’t distract the reader from clearly understanding the message. 
Improving Flow In Writing
In terms of actually writing the first draft, do not worry about sentence structure this early on in the drafting process. I assume you’re in the first or second draft because you describe that this problem is keeping you from continuing the telling of your story. Never forget that you can always come back later and fix the sentence structure or the descriptors or anything like that. Right now, worry about getting your vision out clearly rather than in a pleasing way. Each draft has a purpose, and sentence structure/flow is not apart of the very first or even second.
Editing: What To Change, Draft By Draft
If you’re really concerned with your weakness in writing this point of view, you might want to consider other ones that may be suited more to your story. Not all point of views convey stories equally, and I made a whole post on the pros and cons of points of view which I encourage you scan over if this is the case.
Pros and Cons of Different Points Of View
In general, the main thing to focus on with third person is not selecting diverse sentence starters, but creating variation in the structure to create a flow that is smooth enough to distract your reader from the repetition. 
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I’d also really appreciate it if you would check out my separate blog dedicated to my current work in progress, as well as my studyblr, which helps keep me motivated as a full time student.
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muggle-writes · 2 years
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no. 15
The gods seated on the semi-circle of thrones were all looking at each other, speculative and calculating.
Only one of them kept their eyes on the human thief who had brought forward the petition.
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muggle-writes · 3 years
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i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage. 
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muggle-writes · 3 years
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muggle-writes · 3 years
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how to make a story file
As I am preparing for Camp NaNo*, I have been working on my story file. It occurred to me this might not be common or popular practice. “Story File” is a name I gave it and maybe some of y’all have a different name with the same contents. 
*There’s still time to apply to join my Camp NaNo cabin!
My Story File contains everything about my story that doesn’t go in the outline.
It’s broken up into major categories and specific templates. So without further ado, here is how I structure my Story File. 
Intro
Title
Logline
Synopsis
Genre
Estimated Total Length (word count)
Draft Length Goal (word count)
Character Bank
Main characters and brief, one-sentence descriptions with ages
Themes and Character Development
Central Question
The Yes/No question that is being asked through the whole story
Should have objective qualities, rather than subjective
i.e. “Will they fall in love?” (subjective) vs. “Will they leave their partners and become a couple?” (objective)
Thematic Questions
These are the internal conflict questions that reside in your character(s) and your story
ex. “Can there really be a successful government?”
ex. “Does grief excuse bad actions?”
Themes at a Glance
Words or phrases that relate to the themes of the story
ex. person vs. nature
ex. isolation
ex. grief
ex. first love
Motivation / Stasis State / Final State
for each main character, you should write a sentence or two pertaining to these three things
Motivation: What is the drive behind this character and their past, present, and future actions? What part of their background makes them the way that they are? What are they looking for? What do they want out of this/a situation?
Stasis State: What are they like before the inciting incident? What problems and questions do they have?
Final State: What has changed about them and their outlook? What questions have they resolved? What has happened to their internal conflict?
Relationships
I usually make a little web of the MCs and their relationship to one another. One for the stasis and one for final.
Stasis: How do these characters see each other? How do they act toward the other? (All before the inciting incident)
Final: How do these characters see each other now? How has their idea of one another shifted? 
Even if a character dies before the end, include the most recent relationship status in the Final web.
ex. this is how I organize it, using the Draw feature of Google Docs
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Character Bank
This is just a very preliminary character bank. If you prefer a more in-depth one, check out my 6 Box Method.
Per (relevant/important) character:
Name
Nickname/preferred name
Age
Field/Occupation
Physical Description
Personality
Personal History
Education/Occupation History
Extra Notes:
Worldbuilding Bank
(Check out my worldbuilding posts on Categories Pt. 1 and 2 for better context)
Seasons and Climate
Languages
Other Cultural Pockets
Folklore and Legends
Fine Arts
Dress and Modesty
Classes
Jobs
Currency and Economics
Shopping
Agriculture and Livestock
Imports and Exports
Literature, Pop Culture, and Entertainment
Food and Water
Holidays and Festivals
Family and Parenting
Relationships
Housing
Religion and Beliefs
Government
Health and Medicine
Technology and Communication
Death
Transportation
Plants, Animals, and Human-environment Interaction
Education
Beauty Standards
Gender and Sexuality
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I hope this helps y’all and supplements what you’re probably already doing. I know it’s helped me tons to have everything in a central place.
Best of luck!
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muggle-writes · 3 years
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muggle-writes · 3 years
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Yo, did anyone ever figure out your EMPT puzzle, because I have a guess if not!
no one has figured it out yet. I’d love to hear your guess - but if you get it right, you may have to come off anon to dm me about the one shot I’ve promised in return
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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I know some fic writers get stressed about writing tropes they think are too popular or overdone, and I need you all to know that I just spent 4 hours reading every iteration of the same exact fic plot I could find, and they all brought me an indescribable amount of joy. Listen. Listen. Sometimes you want cakes of many flavours and sometimes you want Nine Carrot Cakes
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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Concept: combine the “you don’t know you live on a death world until you leave it” trope with the whole Cthulhu-in-space genre of weird fiction, except in reverse: humanity’s Special Thing™ is that humans (and, by extension, all terrestrial life-forms) are weirdly resistant to reality-bending bullshit, which is what lets us survive and build a relatively functional civilisation in spite of hailing from a world that plays host to multiple Other Gods – which is, of course, otherwise unheard of; having even one of those squamous bastards in the neighbourhood is generally enough to ruin a whole star system’s day.
Non-human vessels can’t approach within a dozen light years of Sol without their crews being driven mad by the corrosive psychic resonance emanating from Earth’s deepest oceans, and we’re wandering around living our lives and not noticing. Aliens can never travel on human ships because our FTL drives kind of maybe tunnel through Hell, a process that horribly warps non-terrestrial life, and we just think it looks pretty when the n-dimensional hellfire coruscates across the viewports.
This sort of thing kept humanity uncontacted for a long time, until the aliens’ observers eventually figured out that we weren’t a bunch of weirdly normal-looking elder thralls, we just straight up weren’t aware there was a problem. It’s only then that they arranged first contact – remotely, of course – to basically ask “dude, what the fuck?”
(Humans are reasonably well-integrated into the galactic community these days, though most worlds enforce strict screening and quarantine procedures before allowing a Terran traveller planetside; it’s just like a human to have a class 7 epistemivore hitchhiking in their brain, and when informed, go “you know, I have been getting these headaches lately”.)
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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“I don’t think that every villain in the world actually thinks they’re being a good guy, but I do think that everybody creates a value system that justifies the actions they’re taking, and and I think there’s a difference between those two things. Not everybody believes that they’re on the side of righteousness, but everybody has a way of justifying the actions they’re taking. Not every villain has to be a misunderstood hero, and in fact I think there are a lot of instances throughout history of people who were obviously doing the wrong thing and probably had an understanding of that on some level, but had some rationale or justification for it. A lot of villains in literature and media have these weird, Thanos-esque philosophies of what it is that they’re trying to do, and I think human motivation tends to come from more primal places than that. So a lot of the villains I write can be brilliant or clever (and, in fact, probably should be), but their motivation tends to be primal. They wanna be rich, they wanna have power, they wanna live forever. There’s something deep down that is, when you break it down, not too complex. Right? If you look at the real world, the people that are doing bad stuff don’t need complex motivations. They wanna rule the world! They wanna be rich! They wanna be unafraid that other people can ever screw them over, so they screw other people over. Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundanes of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard.”
Brennan Lee Mulligan, when asked how to create villains for ttrpgs
(I found this quote to be really meaningful in like…life in general which is why I posted it here. When he said “evil is boring”, it felt like something clicked in me that I had known deep down but hadn’t had the words for.)
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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ooh I haven’t been on tumblr regularly in too long but it seems I’m right on time for this
WELCOME TO SUMMERFEST 2020
Welcome to the 2nd Annual Writeblr Summerfest! This event spans all of August, and is open to everyone! Unless you’re taking part in one of the two official writing contests being hosted, there’s no deadline!
Answer and respond to prompts when you want, and feel free to pick and choose which prompts you answer!
The point of the Writeblr Summerfest is to have fun and share your works with people! 
Are you a writeblr? A roleplayer? Into DnD? If you have an OC or a fandom you’re involved in, then you can take part!
There will be daily posts! 
There will be merch available by the end of the day!
There will be prompts, playlists, and all kinds of fun games!
Stick around for one Groovy Summer!
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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Having Writer’s Block:
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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LISTEN UP, FOOLS
So get this: 
NO ONE IS NATURALLY PERFECT AT WRITING!
NO ONE JUST RANDOMLY PICKS A PEN UP ONE DAY AND CREATES THE NEXT NYT BESTSELLER!
NO ONE WRITES A PERFECT BOOK IN THE FIRST DRAFT!
Y’all need to stop being so damn hard on yourselves. Everyone has to start somewhere. Writing is the same as any other art. If you don’t practice and put yourself out there to receive feedback then you will never improve. End of story. I know it’s scary to put yourself out there, but it’s so crucial to take advice from others and see what you can improve on. 
The other thing? You have to read. Stories are your writing textbooks. Look at the way an author words something. Pick apart their sentences. Hell, take their sentences and see if you can rewrite them a different way just to practice your own skills! You won’t improve without time and effort!
I want to see every single one of you succeed. If I die without having my mutuals’ works on my shelves, I will be sad. Bite the bullet and take the leap or whatever metaphor you want. But do not ever quit! 
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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The spy chasing me throws a tracking device at my car. The throw is perfectly timed and the small, round device hits the bumper perfectly flush. However, since the tracker is magnetic and my shitty car is plastic, it bounces off
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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Amazing Superpower
Source: @catandcatcomics
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muggle-writes · 4 years
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For the “THAT SCENE” ask: Ace of Cups?
”that scene” ask prompt
Ace of Cups
Oh! This is hard for one-shots because arguably the entire one-scene fic is “that scene”. The driving image for this one was really the concept of introducing Astoria and Ginny to each other. And as they’re in different years and different houses, they won’t have classes or meals together, so the library is perfect. Both of them are insecure and feel like “bad friends” to the people around them, so I gave them a fresh start with each other.
If I expand this question to the whole “Star’s Journey” series, which was written as a unit, Ace of Cups was really the scene I had most strongly in mind before I started writing. The rest came from a premise of “cute inter-house queer romance using at least one minor character” -> Ginny and Astoria both have enough canon/fanon to have something to build from -> outline of “what are the most significant parts of their friendship-to-relationship progression”, cutting that down to three scenes for the three days of the purimgifts event, (and then receiving the extremely valid criticism that their “familiar interactions” fall flat without building up the in-between basis of their romance, telling myself I would write more of the in-between “soon”, and have still failed to post more over a year later 😅)
...but the image of lonely!Ginny studying at the beginning of her second year, and making a new friend (exact identity unspecified) has been in my head a long while.
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