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ziracona · 4 years

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Do you have any tips for people who want to start writing? Specifically dialogue or how to research thoroughly?

Sure! For starting writing in general, the best advice to start with is look at the stories you yourself love, and identify what you love most in them. Relationships of a certain kind, high-stakes fight scenes, murder mysteries and scenes where people have to choose under pressure who they’re going to trust, redemption arcs, someone ending up adopting a child more or less because the kid has no one else to look after them? If there are scenarios you daydream about writing stories in your head, what are the common themes? No matter how oddly specific that gets or how often or scarcely you see it in fiction, I garuntee you you’re not the only one who likes it, and it’s good to base writing ideas around whatever you want to see more of yourself. You’ll be happy writing it, and the other people who yearn for it too, once they find you, will be very happy to see some as well! For me, I’ve always really enjoyed stories where someone who has no connection to the action ends up choosing to do the right thing and gets pulled into dangerous scenarios, found family, hope punk, and scenes where someone is injured/sick/drugged/unconscious/trapped and ends up at the mercy of someone they expect to hurt them, but who chooses to do absolutely nothing bad to them and saves/helps/looks after them instead (to name a few of many, many faves, haha). Some of those are pretty broad and some are wildly specific, but I love writing them all, and I’m not the only person who enjoys reading them either, so it’s a great kind of springboard to work with. : ) —Ok, for the specific questions though—I’ll do them in two parts to go with the two questions.

For writing dialogue, the biggest thing is to establish distinctive voices for all your cast. That sounds a lot harder than it is. The first real step is just to have some idea who they are as a person. Now, I know you probably don’t have time to be Bleach and have a sidebar backstory that goes for eleven pages about every guard who gets knocked out (and tbh I wouldn’t recommend it either haha), but don’t worry—you don’t need to. A lot of the time, I know very little about characters who aren’t primary cast when I write them first, and only during writing really get to know them either. Think of it a little as improv acting. If you ever have like, done bits with your friends, you actually know how to do this whether you’ve acted a day in your life or not. Friend greeting you on the phone with a fake accent & pretending to be an interviewer & you responding in kind & being like “Well yes, in my best selling novel How to Kill your Ex-Boss” and just running with it totally counts. You have no idea who the person you’re pretending to be is. You don’t know their favorite food or where they went to school. But you do know what they’re going to say next, because you’ve tapped into the person you’re running, and that’s the only thing you need to know. Same if you have ever given yourself fake interviews in your head. You’re playing both interviewer, fiction self (for whom you are for SURE making up details on the fly) & anyone else involved in that scene simultaneously. Writing can be pretty similar. Now, I do this to a bigger extent then most people, because I method-write (which uhhhh, I cant completely recommend, as it is devestating on the emotions :’-] ), but it works used less extremely too.

The idea, really, is to give characters a voice in your head, and have that voice not be the same for any two characters. And I mean voice literally. What do they sound like. Do they talk fast, get excited & into topics easily? Always sound mildly done with everyone else? If it helps, pick the voice of an actor or a friend or different tones you can use yourself speaking outloud—just give them voices. A lot of it will start flowing pretty naturally once the character is created. Writing has a lot of overlap with acting, in that you really need to grasp and be able to kind of jump around in a lot of different types of peoples’ heads. Most people have significantly different ways of speaking, even if they don’t have different accents than your other characters. Some people cuss more, some never do, you get varried vocabulary sizes, and just word choice and tone. I’m probably making this sound a little hard and overwhelming, but trust me, it’s not so bad. Mostly it will come naturally once you get a mental idea of what your character is like, sounds like, and the vibes they give off.

From a more technical standpoint, a couple of really good suggestions are to run dialogue in your head before writing it, and to read your written dialogue out loud. No matter how well you write, you will think dialogue better most of the time. This is just how it goes, because writing is a different process. So something that helps is to mentally “play” a scene out, and jot down some of the dialogue as you hear it, or to pause in writing to run some of the scene mentally, then pick back up again. Another big one is that almost all people, when writing dialogue, will start out writing too formally. Now, that’s totally fine if your character actually just speaks very formally, but most people 80% of the time speak using contractions. Like, you’d probably say, “Hey! How’re you doing? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” and not “Hey! How are you doing? It has been a while, has it not?” (And obviously, most people aren’t going to actually write out “has it not,” but simpler ones like “How are” vs “How’re” or “It is” vs “It’s” are super common to write. Try to keep that in mind writing dialogue, and also try reading your dialogue out loud verbatim. A lot of the time, something will read totally normal to you, but the second you hear it out loud, you’ll go “Oh. Oh, no. No one speaks like this.” It is SUPER helpful, and kind of funny too. Also, don’t be afraid to use verbal interrupters like “Uh” or “Uhm” or substitues for them like “Well” and “Like” —people use ‘em when they speak. We also tend to interrupt our friends to agree when talking about stuff, because the way language is set up a lot of the time you know the end of a sentence before it is said.

Other things that govern how characters speak a lot are their comfort level in a scene and what they want, how open or closed off they are about themselves in general, and their personal ways of thinking in general. For example, Joey Harmin and Quentin Smith are extremely fun to write in scenes together for me, because they both follow fairly understandable and clear logical thought paths, but those paths are completely different. Like they could not be operating on less similar wavelengths half the time, which is hilarious. There’s an exchange I haven’t uploaded for New Dawn Fades where they’re talking for the first time, and Joey is operating nearly 100% on small-picture context (But since you woke up, I have been very nice to you. Why don’t you trust me?) and Quentin is operating at nearly 100% big-picture context (You have killed me before—I have literally no reason to think you won’t any second now once again. I have no idea why you have not already). And both thought lines make total sense for the character to be following, but they could not be more confused by each others’ response. People think super weirdly and super different from each other, and that’s amazing, and some times you legit wont totally get what wild shit your own character is on, but that’s fine. You don’t need to—you just need to know it makes sense to them, and be able to understand it on some logic level, even if you could never really get it emotionally or more really than ‘in theory’ on a personal level. Also, side note—sometimes people speak super differently when in a professional setting vs relaxed, or with different friends, and that’s totally fine. Also-also, you might notice that if some characters spend a lot of time together, they start to speak similarly—that’s super normal too—don’t worry. It’s not you doing a bad job. Friends tend to pick up each others’ mannerisms and speech to some extent, and this is wildly more apparent when they hang out together.

This was a very long and in-depth answer to writing dialogue, but really, don’t let it overwhelm you. The TLDR is more or less just give them different voices in your head, and listen to them, then write down what you hear. Read it out loud to make sure it sounds like them if you feel unsure about it. I personally get into character and try to really think as/become them a bit at least when writing, because I approach writing from a very acting-based standpoint becuase that’s just how I am wired, but even if that’s not how you vibe, just know them a little. Know once you’ve talked to someone for like, three minutes, you have some idea how they talk. The synonym they’d chose, if they’d agree, or disagree, or just give a judgy look, or stay quiet. Know them that well, and try to hear them in your head. Read everything you write for them in that voice, thinking that voice well you write, and it’ll do wonders.

Now, for research.

First up, research is FUN! It’s amazing. It’s so wild to learn things and dip into thousands of parts of human existence you had no idea about at all. Try to think of it as a plus, not a pain, because really, it should be. Now, to be fair, I lean heavy into research—I’ll do days of research to try to find something out if I have to, and I have. I’m learning some of how to write and conjugate an extremely dead language right now for a fanfic, I’ve done massive deep dives from everything to ancient cultures and religions, screen shotting films to zoom in on set detail to learn what artist or band a character is into, what they drink, what they own, to the appproximate timing from specific streets in New York I’ve never seen to each other by specific subway line, to a myriad of wounds and diseases, to mental illness, to historical events as insignificant as marsh draining in specific cities. But bro? It was fun. Sometimes it’s a lot, but the thrill of finding what you were looking for? It’s great.

Now, I’m not saying you need to be me if you don’t want to haha. But when it comes to researching whatever you want to research, here’s some tips: First up, if what you are researching has anything to do with a human experience? (Mental illness, physical illness or injury, sex, birthing, death, how it feels to shoot a gun, or fall from a great height, or have a PTSD episode, anything like that?) You really need to hear it from people, if at all possible. The good news? In this day and age? It super is, almost always! Even with death. You can find people describing death (body death, not complete brain death) experiences they went through, and it’s very cool. I definitely recommend discussion threads, like Reddit, and YouTube videos of people giving their personal accounts for this kind of thing. They’re amazing resources, and also usually surprisingly fast! This is especially important for stuff like neurodivergence, disorders, mental illness, drug experiences, or anything else that’s on a cognitive more than physical level, because if you look at just textbook explanations, they’re not only usually very incomplete, but sometimes even inaccurate. Listening to people can give the truth if it’s missing, and the majority of the time while that’s not the biggest issue—especially concerning like, wounds or freezing or a near drowning experience, etc—it gives it a completeness a medical account just can’t. Also, if you have got any personal experience to lean on? Go for it! I’ve never been electrocuted horribly really, but when researching for the torture sequence in Proven, I both looked up a ton of first-hand accounts and some science to better understand what was going on, and took my own experience of the electric shocks I have gotten as the first building block in making a mental picture of what it would feel like to go through that. Obviously, being shocked hard enough to be flung backwards from a cattle fence (my history) is a far cry from being subjected to parrilla torture, but having a small amount of basic knowledge of the kind of pain electricity causes was useful as a first block in translating the information I was reading into something I understood better.

For non human-experience based research, a lot of it is pretty easy to look up, even if you wouldn’t think so. For example, guessing at the time period for cars in Autohaven and searching different years + truck + brand names for American cars was actually a really short process for finding a match—same with the make of the metal gas cans, back when I was trying to determine when, exactly, Philip was from. Visual image searches are great when applicable, especially if you’re trying to figure out what something is, because chances are if you describe a plant you saw once as ‘Tall lake reed plant with hotdog bun looking top,’ someone else will have once used some of those words when searching for a cattail as well. Also, for non-human research, books and academic papers are great, but so are non-academic sources like videos and photos for locations or objects. Sometimes again though, human info will honestly be where it is at, like reading firsthand descriptions of specific places. For most things, just type what you’re looking for into a search engine honestly and start there. You can totally start on the Wikipedia page for a city or a Greek god or a type of bomb, and move on from there—people put references in wiki articles, and you can check the bottom of the page for the specific source too. You can go on from basic knowledge to add or subtract keywords and refine your search. It’s pretty simple once you get going. If you’re getting extraneous results because a film title shares the name of what you are looking for, or a song or whatever, try quotation marks for an exact match, or - and then quotation marks around what you see that you want gone from results. Pretty basic stuff. Tbh, a lot of the time, it’s all you’re gonna need. Want to write a Stranger Things fic, but you have no idea what movies or shows were popular in the US at the time and need to know what they’d be watching in a scene? Honestly, searching “1980s (or 1980whatever-more-specific year) popular shows” will probably get you what you need in like 4 minutes. Also, if you’ve got a parent who was alive at the time and lived in the place, or older friend (or younger, I don’t know you, maybe this one doesn’t apply to you because YOU were there, but you’d have to ask a teenager irl now what the kids are into for a 20teens story, haha), utilize that resource and just ask them. Discussion spaces again, a massively useful resource. You can find people talking about their shared experiences with almost anything, and hear it more or less first-hand.

If you’re trying to learn about culture or history, again, first-person accounts are where it’s at. If you can’t find any, go for the next best thing, which is descendants or historians with a personal connection/interest. If you really, really can’t find much of that (as sadly has been the case for some cultures or religions I’ve researched in past, considering the lack of documentation period and/or intentional culture erasure going on), then read what you do find on it with a grain of salt. Who wrote it, and when? What biases did they bring? Also, often an old document like that might be the only first source you can find, but taking whatever badly documented info they have and trying new searches with the specific language you learned from them can yield new and much better results. Just do your level best. ^u^ Really, that’s all anyone can do. Sometimes there will be things without much out there period, and you don’t have to like, put 97 hours of research in combing your local library for any thing you may have missed for the fic you’re on right now or something. Just do your best, do what you can, and care, and you’ll be okay. It can seem daunting, but doing your sincere best is what anyone who does know the answer—living or dead—would care about, and it’s an important thing /to/ do, and also a pretty informative and fun one. Also, I swear it’s not as intimidating as I might make it seem. Pretty much always you’ll be able to find some decent chunks of solid and very useful information eventually, on anything. And most things actually do not at all take that long to research. I’m a monster, who likes to down research more and more each morning like I’m building up a resistance to iocaine powder to someday win a battle of wits, but you really don’t have to be me, and if you want to be, chances are that means you also just really heckin love learning new facts, so you’re gonna love the wild deep insanity of creating It’s Always Sunny Meme level conspiracy walls trying to track down ancient evil trees in mythology to figure out what in the goddamn the Entity really IS and you’ll adore it all. If you’re not, trust me—that’s completely fine. Most research is gonna take between 20 minutes and a few hours, depending on the level of complexity, and once you learn it, you have all this cool new knowledge! Like that you can fake a death with tetrodotoxin so well someone with a high but not fatal does in them could die undergoing an autopsy! Or how much opium kills someone, how it actually feels to black out, how hard it actually is to chloroform someone, or that wolves have been known to hold funerals for loved ones, or how to stitch a wound. It’s like, amazing. Join me, and become that thing from Adventure Time going “I have approximate knowledge of many things” while rubbing its grimy hands together with glee.

Uhhh haha, I made this one more concise wildly, but the TLDR version is just ask people or read or watch what people who have undergone X thing say it is like (oh, and make sure to read more than one account—big one with accuracy). For non-human research, start with just a basic search. If you’re a student and have access to academic searches more easily, totally use that. If not, don’t worry. Lots of academic search compilation sites are still open to you, and honestly, you’re only going to need to turn academic for highly specific and wildly rare information period. Most of the time, hear it from people who know the answer. Discussion forums and YouTube journal-type videos are fantastic resources. For what living in rural Wisconsin in the early 1980s was like for Philip, I searched about living in the early 1980s in rurual Wisconsin, found specific names in an article for the kinds of cheap apartments common, adjusted my search, and found a ton of good resources by people documenting the struggles and mistreatment of life there at the time, and also found out Milwaukee is surprisingly one of the most dangerous and racist cities in America, then and now, on the way. For Kate experiencing being forced to drink bleach, I watched seven different people on YouTube talk about their experiences drinking bleach, and read up on the medical side to understand the science of what happens to you, plus a few text descriptions as well. But really, both of those were pretty fun and fascinating and quick research stints. Most are. I super recommend trying some deepish dives out, even just for fun and not with writing planned in mind at all!

Anyway, I hope this helps! I wrote it at one in the morning & didn’t proof because I feel very bad and need to pass out to try and heal, so sorry if there are any errors that make this hard to read. Thanks for asking! This was fun to answer. Please feel free to ask any follow-ups if there’s something I didn’t seem to cover, or you want to know more about either of these or something else. I’m certainly not the world’s leading expert or something, but I got some fun methods and tips I’ve developed over the years I’m happy to share with a fellow writer (or bored or curious person just interested in the process, haha). Again, I gave long answers because I wanted to be thorough, but I promise neither dialogue nor research is a difficulty level reflected in the length of those answers—that’s just me being me. Don’t let it intimidate you! They’re both fun and actually not so hard things to do. You just kind of need to learn your starting off points and get your sea legs, and the rest mostly comes naturally and easily and is very fun. It’s super satisfying to read a line and be like “Only you, my dumb child” seeing the stupid crap they say, or “You’ve come so far” watching how they’re choosing to reach out to someone now vs as the story’s start; or to have needed a way to have a character pry open a wedged car door and find just exactly the perfect tool you could even have a logical reason for them to easily find in the scene and be able to sit back down thinking YES!!! I got it!! —it’s a rush, and very, very satisfying. I’m sure you can do it!! And I wish you the best of luck. I sadly made this on mobile because I forgot tumblr sucks and won’t let me retroactively add read mores on mobile now and it’s too late for me to change that, and I’m so sorry this is so long 😭😭😭, but I’m tagging it “long post” so hopefully tag blocks can still save people :’-] — anyway! Hope this helps and best of luck. Night! 💙

#ask #anonymous #writing #writing advice #long post

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 6 years

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Planet With 6 - 8 | Cells at Work! 6 - 8 | Phantom in the Twilight 6 - 8 | BnHA 57 - 58 | Angolmois 6 - 7

Planet With 6

“Are you a monster?” - Who’s the real monster in this show, though?

A Clog Punch is even more hilarious than a standard Giga Cat Hammer, haha.

The bad guy died! What the heck’s going to happen from here???

Cells at Work! 6

Smol RBC-senpai is so cute! Not as much as smol RBC herself, but…yeah. I wonder if smol WBC is around as well…?

This story’s a lil’ hackneyed, but nothing that doesn’t twang the heartstrings a little…

I love how the sensei WBC still has blood on his arm as he walks away.

The banter between the NK and the Killer T cells really gets to me. It’s so good!

Angolmois 6

Dang, I liked Yajirou. Now he’s dead…

Where did Teruhi get the cloth for Yajirou’s (I presume) head…?

I find it interesting how he (Onitakemaru) dragged the old man merchant with him and yet went to the extent of plundering the treasure without the intent of keeping it. It’s like he did the plundering as a show of strength…

I’ve realised that even though Planet With’s been getting better and better, this show’s starting to sink. Sure, the staff on this show are giving me everything I asked for, but the shine of a new anime is starting to wear off…That montage just proved why it sunk – it’s more willing to go for a quality drop in the middle of the plot.

It was way too dark in the scene that revealed Teruhi’s face being up against Kuchii’s. It took me a bit to realise that was happening…

The water in that river looks a bit odd.

“Akimado firefly” gets me zero relevant Google results.

Now that I think of it, Nagamine’s kinda hot, LOL.

Come to think of it, I still haven’t got a bead on whether Teruhi has the hots for Kuchii or not. If it’s the former, then this show would be quite disappointing. Plus, are these invaders all Mongols from China, Mongols from Mongolia (duh) or Mongols from Europe? They did have gunpowder, which is from China, but they also said the Mongolians had invaded Europe at this point…

Phantom in the Twilight 6

*sees ep 7 title* - “Awakening of the Century”? Not on my watch, no. Probably not.

Why are they only progressing the plot now? Not that I didn’t like the Roland story, but…c’mon, if your friend is in danger, you shouldn’t derail from that. Right?

Notably, the group is called “midnight sun” (katakana), but the episode is called mayonaka no taiyou (kanji/hiragana).

Karandi mentioned how she loved how faithful this show was to the past folklore of supernatural creatures and now they’re using that to the show’s advantage…huh.

Oh, hey. Next episode preview gave spoilers…that’s just like a next-ep preview, actually.

BnHA 57

Noticeably, Yoarashi is pretty obvious with his giant whirlwind…

Haha, Deku is quoting All Might verbatim from the video!

Welp, there wasn’t much to say this episode…

Cells at Work! 7

This cancer cell looks like Ken Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul)…interesting choice.

They decided to deviate from the serious plot for the platelets. I give it 10 out of 10!...Nah, just kidding.

*Killer T helps NK get up* - I can see why Negative Primes ships NK and Killer T Cells together now…

I forgot what the cryptic-speaking green-covered cell (not a dendrite, but the other guy) was called…I think he might’ve been a B cell, but that’s all I remember. Sorry.

I can’t believe I’m feeling sympathetic for a cancer cell…

Planet With 7

I like how even Ginko still has secrets up her sleeve right now.

Hmm…it seems the hypnosis didn’t work because Nozo-san is wearing glasses.

Benika and Yousuke seem to have been hypnotised, this isn’t like them!!!

Phantom in the Twilight 7

I find it interesting Vlad chose to use Chinse martial arts. Either Toryu taught him, he learnt how to do them from Rijan or he learnt from Chinese people over many, many years. I think the second option is the most probable.

Why can’t the underlings see Kabocha-kun (Kabocha-kun = the jack o’ lantern)?

Toryu does the Naruto run. He’s not even a ninja!

The OS kind of looks like Windows, but with the taskbar being a colour of a Mac…plus the top bar of a Mac.

The green lines of text that appear on the screen are just gibberish, by the way. They’re not code…

*Chris punches Luke to get him out of the way of the falling debris* - I laughed a lot harder than I should have at that…because that shows they’re concerned for each other…in a very roundabout sort of way.

Oh no, Kabocha-kun!

What?! Van Helsing’s hair wiggles of its own accord! It’s basically alive!

Eyy! Extra info! That’s what I watch these after-episode segments for!

“You’re giving away the second half of the season!” – Hmm…

*after the next-ep segment is completely over* - Hmm…so Ton has her hair change colour and lose her memories. The Price of Power = The Price of Loss. Hmm indeed.

Angolmois 7

Ho-Holy mackerel! My knowledge of Touken Ranbu swords is coming in handy! Imanotsurugi is the lil’ grey-haired shota (tantou) who dresses like a tengu. That means this Kurou man is more simply known as Minamoto no Yoshitsune!

Seriously, this emperor looks like an alien! An alien, I tell you!

At first I didn’t recognise the guys with the facial marking were Toibarai, but then I saw Nagamine and I was like, “Oh. Okay then.” Come to think of it, these Mongolians look like the Earth guys from Avatar…

I find it interesting the Toibarai – or at the very least, Nagamine – are literate. You’d think in a time like 1274 there’d be a lot more illiteracy…or maybe I’m just thinking about Western civilisation…

“The abalones are a tougher opponent.” – I like these ladies already. Not only because that’s such a funny line, but because tough lady fisherwomen with tans is probably more representation than an entire genre of ecchi anime can do for women.

Apparently a porgy is a type of fish…hmm. It sounds silly.

Come to think of it, Jinzaburou was right once bfore when everyone else stood against him and that was when he got thrown out of Sou Sukekuni’s meeting…which doesn’t spell good things for Kanatanoki, y’know.

Cells at Work! 8

Man, I had to memorise the circulation path years ago! Too bad I don’t remember how it goes anymore…

I like how the blood cell mascot is actually shaped like an RBC.

I only just noticed, but female RBCs in this show have booty shorts and male ones have pants. Why can’t it ever be the other way around…?

Hmm…the tricuspid valve is shown as a torii gate. Interesting choice.

*platelets try to put up posters while talking to WBC* - Excellent usage of platelets. 10/10!

I was wondering what the cell’s seal said…close inspection reveals it just says “cell” on it. I guess I should’ve figured that out without having to zoom in on the image, eh?

“…you spineless candy-ass!” – That’s a hilarious insult! Who the heck thought of it and what’s the Japanese equivalent of it???

BnHA 58

A special…? This is almost as bad as a recap episode if it’s all recycled…

…uh, wow. That All Might was more meta than I was expecting.

Oh, I get it now. Movie promo episode. So that’s what this is.

For some reason, I find Toshinori going “Dave” hilarious. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s because he looks American.

“Save the World With Love!” brings to mind Boueibu, y’know? Good times…

*All Might comes in through the back door, flexing* - Muscle muscle, hustle hustle!

Oh my gosh, they went Detective Conan on us!

Suicide out of grief for what he’d (All Might had) done, maybe?

Oh yeah. Midoriya overlooked why the three potential culprits were separated and left in different parts of the store. Update: Nope, right thinking, wrong lead.

Planet With 8

Notably, 10 = to in some cases, hence Torai being 10.

Souya’s gone all Shinji Ikari on us! Not that I mind, but…Shinji is a polarising character for a reason, y’know!

Why does this story, with a potential final confrontation on the moon, remind me of Busou Renkin so much?

Phantom in the Twilight 8

“Why Shinyao specifically?” is the question I’m asking here. Why did Shinyao need to be kidnapped?

Has Ton even gone to school yet? Or rather, is it summer break in London and we were never told that?

“She entered forbidden territory.” – Says a worker at Café Forbidden!

I’ve never heard “stole a march on me” before…apparently it means “to gain an advantage over someone else”.

He uses a cat pickup line! He’s a werewolf! That’s…hilarious!

I’m still wondering if Shinyao has Stockholm syndrome to any degree…

The line about the abyss is Niestche (sp???). I’ve seen it quoted enough times to know.

Did they ever mention the fact Ton’s hair went back to normal? Or was all that hair-tossing meant to imply it was back to normal without saying anything? You’re trying so hard, show, but you’re not quite hitting the mark…

#simulcast commentary #planet with #phantom in the twilight #boku no hero academia #Angolmois #cells at work #hataraku saibou #Angolmois: Genkou Kassenki #Chesarka watches BnHA #Chesarka watches Angolmois #Chesarka watches PitW #Chesarka watches Hataraku Saibou #Chesarka watches Planet With #my hero academia

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vthiker09 · 6 years

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How Much?!?

At some points, it seemed easier to wallow in self pity. When a string of what you perceive as “bad things” just keep happening, it’s easier to believe your situation is an anomaly and perhaps you are a victim of a string of bad luck. When it’s luck, there’s nothing to change. It’s just bad juju and maybe next time you should stay away from the black cat and avoid breaking the mirror.

On top of what I perceive as abysmal healthcare, I also struggled with my health insurance. When it was happening, there were many tears and I felt like I just had the world’s worst luck. I am smart enough though and am connected enough with current events, that I know my experience is not uncommon. On what seems like a daily basis, I see reports of Americans who delay or don’t seek care because of the cost. I see reports of people who in one town live longer because they have better access to healthcare and just across the street, people are dying because they can’t afford to be seen. If you’re interested - google “Texarkana and healthcare.”

When you realize your situation is part of a greater crisis in America - which is we are failing to save lives because people can’t afford it, it becomes more important. It becomes more important because insurance companies are monsters and they bank on people who can’t understand their overly complicated systems or don’t have the ability to advocate for themselves. The fact they are monsters means we need to band together, share our stores, and make it known it’s not acceptable. It’s time to put away the “I’m just one person - what can I do,” pull your pants up and make sure a) they don’t screw you over and b) people know if they do or try to. They won’t stop if no one knows it happened.

In honor of my stump speech - here are my trial and tribulations with Aetna:

When I started working for a technology company in Manhattan, things were a-okay. Benefits are administered through a third party and the third party seems pretty competent. I had zero problems signing up for insurance and for the first year and half of my employment, everything was good. I had a reasonable plan: $1,000 deductible, 80% 20% cost-sharing (Aetna pays 80% of the of bill and I pay 20%) up to $4,000, and then Aetna paid 100%. My company paid 100% of my monthly premium mostly because the plan was cheap and I have good benefits.

Sometimes, it’s almost funny to look at insurance claims. It’s funny because healthcare in America is beyond expensive. There is no way anyone but the rich of the richest could have paid for my medical bills out of pocket. What this means is a) if I didn’t have insurance I wouldn’t be able to walk right now and b) I suppose this is why we have insurance. At the same time, America is failing at providing widely available coverage and many of the plans available are awful. I remember the days of $4000 deductibles and $9,500 out of pocket maxes when I was only making $30,000 a year. Please explain to me how that makes any level of sense?

In December of 2016, my employer let me know Aetna was changing my plan effective 4/1/17. They let me know because the monthly premium was going to go up significantly. They were very reasonable about the cost hike and both my employer and the company who administers my benefits told me the only difference between the two plans was I didn’t have a network. I could go to any healthcare provider I wanted and Aetna would cover it. This seemed pretty great since networks can be innately limiting and limiting the already limited options you have in a rural state can lead to a whole host of problems. They provided me with a description of my new plan and everything looked good to me.

After my second surgery on May 5th 2017, I did one of my routine “let’s look at the crazy bill I only have to pay a piece of and a) be thankful I have insurance b) be thankful I can pay my piece and c) be mad we live in a country where a and b exists.” This time though, I was in for an shock. I opened the claims section of my account and instead of the 80% 20% I was used to seeing, I saw Aetna paid about 3% and I was responsible for the other 97%. When you’re talking about surgery, this meant I owed close to $20,000 and Aetna paid a few hundred. When I looked, in a panic, at my explanation of benefits, it said the hospital I went to was out of network and the provider could balance bill. Balance billing is this awful concept where the hospital can bill you whatever the insurance company doesn’t cover. Consequently, it also means you have no out-of-pocket max. The hospital can continue to balance bill you until you are living in a card board box. I found out later "out of network," actually meant the hospital didn't accept the plan I had at all. To some extent this was semantics. Either way I owed the hospital a large amount of money.

Given the information I was provided, this was alarming for two reasons 1) I wasn’t supposed to have networks and 2) I went to the largest hospital in the state. If they weren’t covered, who was? I promptly called Aetna and asked them what was going on. I was told the claim was correct and I would be responsible for the amount listed in my bill - 20K. Now if we remember the whole picture of what was going on, my second surgery was when they took the screws out. I was quite far from being healed and I knew I had some major costs coming my way, including my first MRI. Fun fact - an MRI will cost about $3,000 to $5,000. My first MRI was much closer to the $5,000 mark.

I emailed my employer in hysterics and used this line verbatim “I do not want to have to chose between my employment and being able to walk.” They promptly responded, said this wasn’t okay, and they would make sure it was fixed. They connected me with their rep at the third party benefits administrator and they started to look into what was happening. Over the next month or so, I called Aetna, every Monday at 11 am, with the benefits rep, to ask them what was going on. After hearing “yes, this is correct,” “no, this can’t be right,” “no, this isn’t right,” “yes it is,” Aetna finally decided, after reprocessing my claims a few times, the hospital was not covered under my new plan and I was in fact responsible for the 20K bill and all the bills which would follow.

Shortly after I started to receive bills. Again, unless you are mega wealthy, who can afford a 20K hospital bill? Thankfully, a few of my best/worst qualities came in super handy in this situation. Those being: I am crazy stubborn, I don’t like being told I’m wrong, and I really don’t like injustice in any form. At this point, I knew not only were the bills in question not covered, but my plan did not cover a single hospital in Vermont. Let’s think about this: The plan I was put on did not cover a single hospital in the state I live in. What this meant is I could not afford healthcare. I could not afford healthcare and I couldn’t walk. Between this and arguing with surgeons about how I wasn’t getting better, I wasn’t in a good place.

Despite my burning desire to just ignore the situation and hope it would go away and the ongoing feeling this was really wrong and I should be focusing on getting better and not on the unethical practices of a mega-corporation looking to profit off of my suffering - my desire to not ruin my credit or go broke won. I continued to work with my benefits vendor and hound Aetna about why this was allowed to happen. Many times I uttered phrases like “You put me on a plan which does not cover any hospitals in the state I live in. I cannot get the care I need. How is this okay?” The customer service reps varied in their responses. Sometimes they stuck to the company line and would say “Your plan provides you with choices.” Sometimes I could tell they knew what was going on was wrong and they would just say “I don’t know.”

My benefits vendor continued to advocate on my behalf. About three months later, I got an email from them saying Aetna had agreed to put me back on my original plan and re-process all the claims where I owed 97%. My response was “this is fantastic!” and “did they acknowledge what they did was wrong?” Although Aetna did not do so, the benefits vendor reminded me their decision was basically the same thing.

What came next was Aetna’s really poor attempt at reprocessing all my claims from the period of time where I was on the awful plan. At first they just took all the claims and plopped them in the out-of-network provider status, which meant I owed a similar amount of money. I had to call them and prove the hospital was in fact in-network and they needed to put them in the correct category. Here’s a fun fact: if your plan has networks you will have different deductibles and out of pocket limits for each. In my case, my deductible for an out-of-network provider was $4,000 and my out of pocket max was $8,000, which meant I still “owed” a ton of money between in and out-of-network providers.

During Aetna’s second attempt they got it mostly right. Mostly being about 80%. The other 20% I needed to call them, go claim by claim and show them examples of other claims where they categorized the same provider as in-network. I had to do this because of a stark reality, which is truly awful - insurance company reps think you don’t know anything about insurance. They will do their best to defend the claim and to make it look like you just don’t understand. They will go as far as to say “this other really big bill was covered and if we did this in error, we’ll take it back. Maybe you should just pay the $400 x-ray.” Thus, here’s a gimpy tip: be ready for a fight. Have all your ducks in a row and know health insurance is not that complicated. Just because they try to tell you you are wrong, doesn’t mean it’s true. Most likely it isn’t. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been wrong yet.

By the time Aetna managed to reprocess my claims for the second time I was recovering from my third surgery i.e. it was August. After four months of arguing with Aetna, I had had enough - except the insurance nightmare wasn’t finished with me. The hospital requires you pay your portion of a surgery before you have the surgery. Per my plan, this meant I chucked out $2,000. Potentially the worst part of this whole situation was the bills in question were not only in-network but they put me over my out of pocket max for the year. What this meant is, not only did I not owe the hospital nearly 20K, but they in fact owed me $1,100. At this point, I had had a few conversations with the billing department at the hospital because Aetna had finally processed my claims correctly and it was clear the hospital owed me money.

After four or five phone calls over two months which always ended with “we are waiting on Aetna, just give it more time.” I started to become impatient. When I become impatient, I become less nice. My tone with the billing department changed from friendly inquiry to “figure it out" and "where’s my money?” After the seventh or eighth phone call, I was passed to a supervisor who explained to me “your plan doesn’t cover this hospital. Aetna shouldn’t have paid us.” The fireballs coming out of my eyes must have been pretty epic. I promptly explained this wasn’t the case and they must have the wrong ID card on file, which was infuriating because I can’t tell you how many times I had to verify my insurance. Remember - the hospital wants to be paid.

After having a three way call with Aetna and the billing department, where Aetna told the hospital they were wrong - I promptly sent them a new ID card - again. At this point it was November, which was seven months of arguing with Aetna or the billing department. In very not nice words, I told the supervisor I wanted my money back now and was done with dealing with them. They realized they had royally messed up, said they were sorry and refunded my money within a few days.

Since then things have been okay. They have been okay because I feel like I can argue with Aetna and it’ll work out. Is this desirable - absolutely not. I would like it if they could do their job and it didn’t look like I owed thousands of dollars every few months. Perhaps this is asking too much. There have been little blips. There was the time about two months ago when the hospital called to tell me Aetna told them I didn’t have insurance for a six month period of time and they were going to take back all the payments they had made during that time - meaning I would need to pay. A 45 minute three way call later, we had the situation figured out, since I had insurance the whole time. Every once in a while a claim will be processed incorrectly and we’ll have the same “no, you’re wrong and fix it” conversation I’ve had so many times before.

There was the one time an independent customer satisfaction firm called me to ask about what I thought about Aetna. After my solid 30 minute rant, the person thanked me for sharing my story and said she wished more people would speak up. She sounded sincere and I’m not sure she knew what she was getting into when she dialed my number.

If I may offer some gimpy advice, here are my tidbits of wisdom when it comes to being gimpy and paying for it:

1. Know the details of your plan inside and out. In theory, I could’ve prevented some of this if I had checked if the hospital accepted my plan.

2. Look at your bills. Look at your bills maybe 10 times before you pay them. I can’t tell you how many times there were mistakes made either by Aetna or the hospital. My favorite was when the hospital double billed Aetna and they paid it. It felt like the monsters screwing one another over and I just got to sit by and giggle.

3. Don’t give up. Insurance plans are not that complicated and if you think something is wrong - it probably is. Keep calling until you either get the answer you want or they can super clearly explain why you are wrong.

4. Don’t pay a bill if there is an issue. Getting money back from a hospital is a nightmare and in general, they understand if a claim is in process.

Lastly, we need to do better. I am compensated quite well, I don’t have kids, my partner works, I have limited debt, and I had to face the harsh reality I might not be able to afford to get better. In so many ways I am privileged when it comes to my healthcare and there are millions of people who don’t have these same privileges. If this was my experience, I can only imagine what others have had to deal with and it’s not okay. To all the people who spout off about how single payer isn’t okay and access to healthcare is fine the way it is - please tell me how what I experienced was okay? because I don’t see it and I know I’m not alone.

#insurance #health insurance #coruption #speak up

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