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redgoldsparks · 2 months

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I did a short interview for an alumni spotlight on the CCA website. You can click through but I'll also just copy my answers below the cut.

Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) is a nonbinary/queer/trans author and illustrator, a voracious reader, a k-pop fan, and a daydreamer. You can learn an astonishing number of intimate details about em in Gender Queer: A Memoir and in eir other short comics, published by The New Yorker, The Nib, The Washington Post and in many print anthologies. Gender Queer won a Stonewall Honor and an Alex Award from the American Library Association in 2020. It was also the most challenged book in the United States in 2021 and 2022.

Maia shares more about eir life as a full-time artist and activist, fighting to protect diverse literature and the freedom to access information.

1. What is your current practice/business?

I am a full time cartoonist. My job consists of days working at home writing and drawing mixed with days speaking out against book banning and censorship, and in support of the freedom to read, the freedom to teach, and the freedom to access information. I spend a lot of time talking with other authors, teachers, and librarians about protecting diverse and queer books from the current wave of conservative attacks. The first piece I drew for the comics journalism site The Nib was about the rise of fascism in the United States; my later writing about queer, trans, and nonbinary identities has led me into consistently political territory.

2. Why did you choose CCA?

I chose CCA because I was looking for a MFA Comics program, of which there are very few, and I wanted to stay in the Bay Area. Because I'm a local, I was able to meet the majority of the MFA Comics faculty before I applied and felt immediately welcomed into their community. The fact that a majority of my professors for the first year of the program were queer was a huge draw as well.

3. If you could share one piece of advice with current or future students, what would it be?

Every single person has a story only they could tell. No matter what media you are working in, do your best to tell the story which is uniquely yours. If you aren't ready to tell it yet, just keep making art until the time to share that story arrives. No time spent creating is ever wasted.

4. What's your secret to staying inspired and creative?

I realized fairly early in life that my very favorite way to spend the day was drawing while listening to music, a podcast, or an audiobook. I like making things! I would rather be making things than doing almost anything else. I created a life in which I can spend a lot of time creating things and even if I don't particularly know what I am making, I am happy.

5. What do you have coming up?

My second book, Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, written with Dr Sarah Pietzmeier, is coming out in May 2024 from Dutton. It's a nonfiction comic about chest binding as an aspect of trans healthcare. I'm currently drawing my third book, Saachi's Stories, written with Lucky Srikumar; it's due out from Scholastic Graphix in 2026. I am also working on adapting Gender Queer: A Memoir into an audiobook.

#maia kobabe #gender queer a memoir #interview #comics #making art

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actualbird · 3 months

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just read a bunch of really good substack essays and am now having delusions of mid-twenties grandeur, which is to say im thinking about writing nonfiction again, which is, you know, the creative writing graduate version of wanting to start a podcast

#i love making posts i can just put whatever words together one after the other #but man i do miss writing nonfic. thats what i specialized in in college.........#dootdootdoot #''what if i started writing essays again this time on substack'' and other sentences that lead to grief

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ghost-in-the-corner · 6 months

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I just finished the Magnus Archives for the first time, and I'm just gonna get my thoughts out

When I started the podcast back in June, I was beginning a solo art installation based on botanical studies. When I say beginning, I mean I had just received the funding for it.

I'm a photographer first and foremost, but I also dabble in painting and creative nonfiction. What I did for the exhibition was take photos of plants in a region that had never been studied from a floral perspective before. I also gathered water from local sources to paint the landscapes, and wrote small prose pieces to go along with it.

The areas I went to for this project were very deep within the mountains. So remote, in fact, that the only person I'd see for days on end was the botanist I was working with.

As I write, that exhibition is being taken down. The finished pieces are being placed into storage by my funder after being shown for the past 2 months. I only found out about its ending last night, as I now live in the UK.

I'm writing all this because of the strange coincidence that my exhibition was ended prematurely right as I finish the podcast that got me through it. It's emotional, thinking about how I listened to Angler Fish as I was beginning my preliminary sketches, but I just finished Last Words editing a photo for a completely different project.

The Magnus Archives is, frankly, a lot to chew on. A good bit of food, mind you, but a lot. As someone studying to work in film theory (yes, I do too much, no, I don't sleep, no, I will not stop) it's rare to find any piece of media that is so deeply complex, yet is far more original than most other things today.

I could go on about so many different parts of the podcast. The moral implications of the actions and beliefs of the Archivist. The utilization of experiential creativity to draft a powerful, distinct narrative. The use of the medium to utilize the audience's imagination and force them to project their own experiences onto this concept. The debate over who may have truly had a choice and who had everything determined for them. I'll probably write more about this stuff in the future, and I haven't even begun to think about all the goofy stuff I could say.

The ending of my exhibition itself was rather unsatisfying for a number of reasons. But the ending of the Magnus Archives was anything but. That podcast was a masterfully crafted, uniquely original, and deeply thought-provoking narrative. I, frankly, don't have many words at the moment, and I believe it would be a disservice to my experience of the podcast to try and force anything beyond this out.

So, yeah. The Magnus Archives was phenomenal. This is not the last rant you'll be hearing from me about it.

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post-leffert · 4 months

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PIU #3 call for submissions!

Plastic in Utero: a journal of anti-civ anarchy reborn from the compost of wasteland modernity (PIU) is calling for submissions for the third issue!. This zine-journal is open to all who want to contribute to the discussion of the current shit-hole we exist in, which some call civilization, capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. Issue 3's topics will be religion, spirituality, symbolism, and related subjects (such as irreligion, nihilism, god(s), etc). However, contributors are encouraged to explore beyond these themes. The intention is not for the topic to impose limitations on the conversations, but rather to serve as an icebreaker that can connect the various texts within the journal. Feel free to share your perspectives and contribute to the ongoing discourse from previous issues, as well, particularly in the letter section.

PIU accepts the following: Essays, reviews, and interviews (2,500 word limit) Fiction pieces (2,500 word limit) Creative nonfiction (2,500 word limit) Art (keep to one page!) Poetry (keep to two pages, please be clear on formatting requests) Letters (350 word limit)

Deadline is April 1st, 2024. Contact Artxmis at tmwg1995[@]protonmail.com or: Po Box 72 Seymour, IL 61875

If submissions are mailed, format at 9 or 10 pt font, TNR, landscape, two column.

Plastic in Utero: a journal of anti-civ anarchy reborn from the compost of wasteland modernity (PIU) is an extension of the Uncivilized Project, which encompasses the Uncivilized Podcast and Uncivilized Distro. Uncivilized Distro currently has: PIU #1, 34 pages. $3/copy, free to prisoners PIU #2, 42 pages. $3/copy, free to prisoners Anarchism in Review #1: "Leo Tolstoy (1828-1919)" by Luigi Galleani, including a biography by Artxmis Graham Thoreau. $2 if ordered alone, free if requested with copy of PIU.

#plastic in utero #zines #zine #anticiv #anti civ

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thealogie · 4 months

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romeo-shmomeo, I found his essay on Touchstone while mb not AS gay, much funnier as he painstakingly describes every idea he had and tried to develop and how none of them worked lol and basically to the end of the essay he's none the wiser on why the audience is laughing. Hilarious,plus he was 25 and on his first RSC round when he wrote it, pretty impressive. In general I found from these essays that DT is not half-bad at writing, he sounds as natural and concise as when he speaks. In sentences.

I know. He made me really feel the anxiety and the difficulty of playing touchstone. I love how in that recent podcast he was like “ach! I’m just an actor I’m no good at writing or other creative things I leave that to the professionals” and then at 25 he’s writing long form theatre essays. Granted it’s a different skill set from writing fiction but I’d read a nonfiction theatre book by him any day

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bettsfic · 1 year

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craft essay a day #11

took a couple days off because i got a plot bunny for a fic that turned into a short story that turned into a novella that turned into a novel but might still be a novella depending on whether i want the main character to commit a murder or if i just want everyone to have a good time.

"The Sword of Damocles: On Suspense, Shower Murders, and Shooting People on the Beach" by Anthony Doerr, The Writer's Notebook II: Craft Essays from Tin House

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass

filed under: plot & conflict, structure, pacing, process

summary & my thoughts

in 2017 i was at tin house and i went to Anthony Doerr's lecture on simile. i use the word "lecture" loosely; it was closer to a performance. the guy's got great energy. i was so inspired by his lecture that i skipped the next one and returned to my room to start writing a new story, one that would go on to get published, win an award, and become my writing sample for the next four years, including my PhD application. i think that story was so successful in part because i wrote it only as a way to practice what Doerr had taught me about the work of similes. in fact in put so many similes into this story that when i workshopped it later, my professor wrote a little note in the margin that said, "not everything has to be like something else."

i wrote the thing to practice similes, and i ended up taking all the similes out. so it goes.

later, i attended Doerr's reading. having an audio processing issue, i'm really not a fan of readings. i would be able to listen if i could just look down at my phone, but that's rude so i end up only really getting disparate sounds and the occasional fleeting mental image. so i sit there in the back, bored and wishing i could process sound without requiring a second sensory stimulus.

with Doerr, a miracle happened: somehow, there was something about his sentences and paragraphing that made me able to understand what he was saying. for a brief, shining moment i understood the cultural obsession with podcasts. he was reading an excerpt from a short story, and i was hooked. and then it ended on a cliffhanger. so, being in the back, i left right before the end of the event and bought his book, hoping that when i asked him to sign it, he would tell me where i could find the story.

i was first in line. i gave him the book to sign and asked about the story. he said sorry, it wasn't published and probably wouldn't be. devastating. as he was signing my book, he looked at my badge which had my name and listed my genre as creative nonfiction. he asked what project i was working on. i was somewhat taken aback by this (because his line was now a mile long and also why would he care?), and told him the truth: "i'm writing a memoir on fanfiction."

over the years, i've been pretty open with just about everyone regarding how cool i think fanfic is and that i write it. it's not something i'm ashamed of and i'm generally not afraid of being judged, because it's an awesome and wonderful thing that exists in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise has no idea what they're talking about and probably isn't someone i care to know. i've talked to dozens of authors, editors, and agents about fanfic and for the most part receive mild and polite curiosity as they attempt to align what i'm telling them with what they know of publishing. ultimately i'm sure they dismiss it, but for a beautiful couple minutes, i introduce them to something new.

(not a single person i've ever spoken with has known anything about fanfic. to us it seems so huge, but in literary circles, some people haven't even heard the word fanfiction.)

Anthony Doerr's eyes went wide. he gasped. he glanced around as if having a grand epiphany and said, "everything is fanfiction, isn't it? everything is inspired by something else."

"yes!" i said excitedly, appreciating that he and i are both excessively, possibly offputtingly, enthusiastic people. he signed my book, For Beth! A fellow writer. Your fan, Tony.

unfortunately his line was getting even longer (that's what happens when your book wins a Pulitzer i guess) and we had to cut our conversation short. a week later when i got home, i cracked open his book (all the light we cannot see) at, i don't know, 8pm maybe, and didn't go to bed until 5am when i finally finished it.

which is all to say, what Anthony Doerr says about writing, i listen to.

his essays are a lot like Mary Ruefle's in that he kind of talks about and around a general topic, and as such, this essay is a bit hard to summarize. in the vein of Wayne Booth he also leans heavily on dissecting block quote examples, and so this is a very long essay.

he begins with a disclaimer: "i'm an absolutely terrible writer of suspense. i use up most of my sentences describing trees or snow or light." i actually lol'd at this because i use his short story "The Hunter's Wife" in my lesson plan on developing imagery, and specifically refer to his detailed descriptions of trees, snow, and light.

he introduces the idea of "suspended suspense," or the moment of the story at its apex and relishing in the length of time it hovers there.

"I'm more interested in measured, proportionally handled suspense; the kind of suspense that makes you simultaneously want to skip forward a few paragraphs and to find out what will happen and dwell for as long as possible inside the slow blister of rising action."

he goes on to pull my favorite move of any craft essay: elaborating on the etymology of the term he's discussing, in this case "suspense," which comes from the latin "pendere" which means "to hang."

he talks about the idea of a plot being the thing in a story that is always ticking down to zero, and then compares storytelling and the concept of an obstacle to sports games and the reason people watch them.

"One way to look at games, tournaments, and seasons is that they are essentially highly formalized structures designed to produce obstacles. Why? Because obstacles are delay, and delay produces compelling narration."

Doerr believes that the draw of suspense is the ability to create a kind of anxiety outside of reality where one can feel emotions within the safe bubble of narrative structure. the story, after all, must always end, but life continues on.

he elaborates on two ideas in relation to suspension: interruption and diminishing returns. he cites a study which declares that humans crave interruptions in anything lasting. taking a break at work, for example, or an intermission at a play.

"Maybe interruptions—slowing down scenes just at their most pleasurable—are a way of making the sensations of vicarious anxiety and longing feel acute to us for as long as possible."

of the law of diminishing returns, he says that humans "crave newness" and that part of the allure of a break is to make new something pleasurable and familiar. for example, savoring chocolate by eating it slowly.

"...a huge percentage of writing your most climactic, emotional scenes is about learning to go very slowly. One has to learn to trawl the attention through the texture of the dream."

while all of this is great in theory, it doesn't really address the practicality of writing the damn thing. my favorite rule of thumb is "when the action is hot, write cool," an adage from Debra Gwartney that is certainly prescriptive but something i always keep in mind regardless. action hot, write cool is more or less what Doerr is saying. he's saying, slow down and take your time, while Gwartney is saying, the way to do that is to create narrative distance. my go-to example is the climax of the personal essay "The Fourth State of Matter" by JoAnn Beard, in which we become so distant from JoAnn's point of view we reach into the point of view of someone else.

climaxes are my least favorite thing to write. once i reach them, i skip all the way to the end of the story and write backwards, until the only thing left to write is the climax. i can't say whether or not this is effective advice, because i simply can't do it any other way. if there's a better way, i don't know it.

but i do have something you can try when you finally have to buckle down and get it done:

climaxes are generally the most emotional and visual part of a story. it's where the internal conflict meets up with the external conflict, and therefore you're dealing with both interior narration and sensation, and external movement of bodies in space. you should not expect yourself to handle all of these things at once. you only have one brain, and these sorts of scenes take two brains, maybe even three (how can you expect yourself to be inside your character's perspective while also standing outside of it to direct the action?), and so sometimes you have to layer them.

for your first pass on the climax: work on blocking only. all you're doing is rendering bodies in space. who are the characters in this scene, where are they in relation to each other, and what are they saying. how do they get from A to B interpersonally and/or physically? let's say your characters are finally having their first kiss. you have two bodies that have to go from not touching each other to touching each other. you potentially have some discussion between them. don't worry about dragging it out at this point per Doerr's recommendation. just get mouth A against mouth B. this is more or less only a light pencil sketch of the scene.

second pass: you've focused on the movement, now you go in and add the static details involving the sensation of the kiss and any other external detail your character is attending to, like an airplane flying overhead. most writers like to elaborate on what a person tastes like, which personally i think is weird and unnecessary because i as a reader don't really need to know what someone had for lunch, but whatever. you do you.

third pass: interiority only. my favorite way to pace out a climax is to allow your narrator access to time. allow them to think into the past, into something we don't know yet, or have them realize something, or whatever. let them think. you're controlling the mind of your narrator; use that to your advantage.

if you need to, make a pattern of it: blocking sentence, external sentence, internal sentence. movement, feeling, thought. of course, you're going to revise the shit out of this whole scene later hopefully and so you'll be able to move things around and rewrite as necessary. but in terms of just getting the whole thing onto the page, i find this layering technique pretty useful.

craft essay a day tag | cross-posted on AO3 | ask me something

#cead #plot #conflict #structure #process #pacing

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revelisms · 9 months

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Book Recs

Thank you @ravenkinnie for the tag! :-)

This list is a bit all over the place, since I've never been a consistent reader (which I'm trying to be better about...slowly lmao). I tend to find things I really like and keep them as referentials for when I need to feel inspired.

Sometimes A Wild God — This poem put breath back into my soul after a huge creative slump years ago. I adore Tom Hirons's prose. It captures such a mystical flavor of dark, ancient, old-magick beauty. Absolute stylistic bookmark for me; I always come back to this when I want to evoke something otherwordly.

Residence on Earth — Favorite poet, favorite poetry collection (Spanish/English version). Neruda's been a staple on my shelf for years. Everything in here connects back to the elements in some way, and how the human experience coalesces in them all.

On Fairy Stories — I have to include Tolkien somewhere on here (The Hobbit and The Silmarillion are close runner-ups), but I'm opting for his essay on what defines fantasy as a genre. I've been inspired by his writing forever, and this piece is just a treat. Plenty of etymology breakdowns, as you'd expect, and analyses of historical fae-stories and myths.

On Trails — Getting into the nonfiction scientific prose side of things, this was my first real introduction into the genre. It's part-memoir and part-research study on the behavioral evolution of trail-making and its connection from ants to cities.

Voices of Chernobyl — Anthropology major coming back to bite me, but I love oral histories. I fell into a big rabbit hole with global nuclear disasters a while ago, largely thanks to HBO's podcast for Chernobyl, which was significantly based on this book.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena — One of my favorites, for plenty of reasons: falls in the vein of historical fiction (set around the events of the Chechen Wars), multi-character POVs, protector-dad and rebel-daughter found family, and overall just a haunting, beautiful novel.

Cloud Atlas – In the same vein, this is also one of my favorites, for a similar set of reasons and more: multi-POV historical fiction plus time travel (jumps everywhere from 1800s to dystopian future), set around a murder mystery. Tons of humanistic themes in here on what it means to find purpose and connection through time.

The Return of the Native — Hardy's my Victorian-era author of choice, and this book is so damned broody, I love it. Basically just 1000 ways to describe how the English countryside will pick her teeth with generation upon generation of lonely souls in woe with their lovers—and I eat it up every time.

Red Dragon — Hannibal as a whole is just a solid top-of-the-list for favorite series—books, movies, show, everything. But there's something about how this book introduces it all that is just captivating. Something I always think about is how Harris writes in past-tense 90% of the time, but will switch to present-tense when talking about certain characters. It's downright eerie, and creates this sense of infinite presence you can't escape from. AGH. I just love his writing a lot.

I tag @bucky-yes @zkyfall @karnaca78 @the-blue-quetzalcoatl @cherryblossomssoda and anyone else who'd like to join!

#tagging game #book reqs

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somethinabouttwistedwonderland · 27 days

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You have matchups you say? 👀

If you don’t mind, I would adore a matchup.

My name is Rose and I’m 5’8 with brown hair and hazel eyes. I’m goth and definitely show it in how I dress, always wearing all black and typically some skeleton jewelry.

I’m pansexual and genderfluid. I am an ISFP personality type and typically creative write in my free time. I love painting and sketching but I absolutely suck at it. I’m Wiccan and have a deep fascination for the macabre. I listen to quite a few true crime podcasts and podcasts about various mysteries. I read quite often and though I typically read fiction books, my current read is a nonfiction book about mortuary science! I do a lot of the cooking in my household along with bake quite often.

I have ADHD and motor tics which infuriate me to no end when they act up. (They also hurt like hell.) I’m on my schools track team for shot put and javelin. I’m typically a very quiet person and don’t talk much but once I get to know someone I actually become pretty lively. I do well academically in most subjects but math is the bane of my existence, along with literary analysis assignments. If I care about someone, I typically give them little gifts that are specific to them. Sometimes they’re hand crafted like mini good luck potions for my favorite teacher, a baked good of some kind, or even a coupon for a free drink that I know they love. I sometimes give… weirder gifts, like animal bones or crystals. I thrive on physical touch and quality time but sometimes can’t quite get the quality time I want due to falling asleep. I’m typically very tired and nauseous….

Now that all of that is done, Ty <3!

Thank you for this first matchup request!!

I match you with....

Lilia Vanrouge!

I did have a touch of trouble with this one, however, I decided to go with Lilia!

Lilia definitely takes interest in the strange and weird, and you're no exception! (I say this lovingly, don't take it the wrong way!)

A unique sense of style, Lilia can definitely respect that.

Your fascination with the macabre would amuse Lilia quite a lot, as he is one for all kinds of unique and different aesthetics, he definitely appreciates your unique sense of style.

He would be a great partner when dealing with your ADHD, as old and wise as he is, he knows a thing or two about knowing when to adjust the environment to suit you.

He'll be extremely attentive to make sure you're happy, while at the same time, being an incredibly fun partner who you can enjoy your time with.

He'll definitely find it quite entertaining to see you become more lively when you're in private with him, wondering if he could make it a habit to see you livelier more often. Of course, Lilia is a prankster, so he'll often try to get you to loosen up if you feel anxious in public, however he does respect your boundaries.

Lilia is VERY interested in what you do in your free time. Maybe you two can listen to true crime podcasts together? Maybe he could write his own murder mystery and let you try to solve it? The possibilities are endless!

He adores odd little gifts and trinkets (I mean have you SEEN his room??) he will hoard every single thing you gift him. If he likes it enough, he might even eat it.

Lilia's version of quality time will definitely be trying new things with you, going on trips, doing things he's never done before, etc. If you like pulling pranks on unsuspecting strangers, then this is also something you both can do together! Lilia is very used to dealing with sleepy people, as his son is one of them. If you end up falling asleep while out with him, he carries you to your bed, and awaits your return to the waking world.

Sorry it's pretty short. I kind of struggled, but here you go!! I hope it's to your liking!!

Other characters i considered: Malleus, Idia.

#twisted wonderland #disney twst #twst #twst x reader #lilia vanrouge #twst lilia #twst matchup

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longreads · 2 years

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Plotting Out Structure and Writing Out Heroes: A Chat With the Writer and Editor Behind The Atavist‘s New Issue

In this excerpt from The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, host Brendan O’Meara talks to Katia Savchuk and Atavist editor-in-chief Seyward Darby about their work on “A Crime Beyond Belief.”

#longreads #creative nonfiction #creative nonfiction podcast #the atavist #true crime #craft

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seeingteacupsindragons · 1 year

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A long time ago now, there was a fair amount of kerfuffle on twitter about “Do you have to read in order to be able to write?” I saw a lot of takes that there were other ways to learn craft.

And there are. But I’m still going to argue that you almost have to be exposed to the medium you’re creating in to be good at it (if you don’t want to be good at it, that’s cool, too, have fun!). You have to expose yourself to it, observe it, engage in it. That specific medium. Not others.

There are lots of ways to learn the craft of storytelling. Anime, manga, comic books, webcomics, graphic novels, comic strips, movies, live action TV, cartoons, short films, poetry, screenplays, stage plays (both on the page and on the stage), opera, ballet, music, newsreels, creative nonfiction, podcasts, video games, tabletop gaming, role plays, let’s plays…the list is basically endless, and they all teach various elements of storytelling.

And a lot of them overlap! You can definitely get inspiration for your novel from anime and movies and podcasts. There are still character ideas and worldbuilding concepts and structure you can gather from them.

But if you’re trying to write prose fiction, you need to learn how to express those ideas in prose fiction. And the only way to do that is by…reading and studying prose fiction.

There used to be a Thing in a lot of fanfiction that characters would “sweat-drop.” This was pretty obviously taken from anime and manga, where the little raindrop marker on a character’s head indicates…oh, I would say the closest word is probably usually chagrin. And that works in anime and manga!

It…kind of doesn’t work in prose fiction. It looks weird, only means something to a very limited subset of people, and it’s just kinda awkward. There’s other ways in prose to indicate that emotion, but it’s not described in manga the way it will be in prose, because manga isn’t prose.

If you’re watching a movie and the leitmotif starts playing in a minor key, you start anticipating something tragic will happen. It brings out mournfulness and anticipation and fear, oftentimes. But in a novel, if a character says, “It was as if minor chords started playing,” …grief isn’t really the feeling a reader gets. In prose, that same concept reads as cheeky and genre-aware and leaning on the fourth wall. It’s amusing, and even if it tells readers to anticipate a certain thing, they aren’t going to be in the same mood as they will be from hearing it. It just doesn’t translate that way.

There are other ways in prose fiction to built mournfulness and fear. And you won’t learn what they are if you don’t read it.

I had some classmates, back when I was taking a screenwriting class, who you could tell were prose fiction writers and not great at adapting to the new format, probably because they were so new to it and hadn’t ever even really read it. So we would get stage directions that would read like, “Tonkan script covers the pillar in the center of the room. The Tonkan people haven’t been seen in a thousand years and their language was lost long ago. They’re mainly known for their weaponry left behind in their ruins…”

And that’s…great, for prose fiction (it’s not because I came up with it in a minute and don’t care about it). But in screenwriting? None of that means anything and it’s a useless dump of info in the screenwriting. In screenwriting, that usually looks more like, “Tonkan script, a lost language made of sharp angles and edges, mostly squares and rectangles, covers the pillar in the center of the room. A camera pans over it. SEAN’s eyes widen at the sight.” Because that actually indicates what’s going to be on screen in the movie. That includes the relevant details to the format. The former? Not so much.

And finding time for reading can be really hard. I get that. I don’t read as much as I’d like to, either.

But it’s critical, to learn a craft, to actually engage with that craft. It has its own unique methods and techniques and secrets that you have to know to produce it well.

Maybe it’s frustrating. But creating well is hard sometimes! It’s a still that takes a lot of time and effort! It should be appreciated.

#writing

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hellogirlslikegirlslikeboysdo · 4 months

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And the lights are not fluorescent, and there are no words on the page. - Voice/Rough Draft Essay

Author's Preface and Ch. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7

Description: My final portfolio for one of the creative writing courses I took based around exploring the creative nonfiction essay in its many literary forms, with any and all identifying names or signifiers censored out.

During my many travels, I have found sticking a man and his daughter in a hot car for approximately 116 miles, radio on low, murmuring music she likes and he doesn’t, homemade food in Tupperware in insulated beach bags in piles of slowly unfolding clothes in the back of the trunk, will, against or with their collective will, bring about conclusions. Asinine, podcast-y, “This action will have consequences“ conclusions. Some the father’s already decided and convinced the daughter of (and vice versa).

You’ll get them in a wide variety of (recurring) topics too! The entertainment industry, capitalism, education, and, if you, the reader, happened to be a stowaway on my last return to college, my mother’s own gradual and uncharitable concussion:

That she, at the ripe old age of 50-something, is done growing as a person.

It checked out when consulted her track record, like it was fact-checking for an intervention: Her slow-roasted resentment in my grandmother’s miserly recognition of her overwhelming lifelong achievements (and, subsequently, her brother for slurping up all the motherly attention grandma served up, like the part eched little thing he was), barely abated by her (1) confrontation of my grandmother’s behavior. The following mourning period, shared with me and my father for two months at best. Her go-to apology: “I guess I’m a bad person then!” said in the most patronizing voice she could muster (and believe me when I say she has plenty of experience).

My mother is a firecracker more than she is a woman, raw, rich personality stuffed inside what looks like Barbie-laminated plastic, engineered at initial creation to shoot off into the sky quicker than the strike of a match. To burn out, quietly, like the star that she is, following the promise of a thunderous boom. A great disappointment you only understand in adulthood.

Of course she saw life, her life, as just sorta…like that. Nothing to be done about it, you could figure she figured. Best to hang that soggy pit of sadness on the coat rack and hope to god it dries in time for work tomorrow.

I wasn’t grown up though, despite my age of 20 whole years. At least, not enough to understand how anyone else could think like that. Could find something tucked away in the recess of their life that just wasn’t quite right, and go “...Mmmm that should be good enough.” The best explanation, the one meant for someone so young and hopeful in their delusions, was found in the very first conclusion I managed to bulldoze my father into coming to that evening: Ever since man first inhaled the emancipating power of creativity and survived the exhale, there has been art born out of someone, somewhere, going “...Well, it looks like the picture in the book”, and calling it a night.

You may be surprised to hear this, considering this little article of mine is (arguably) fairly coherent and, at the very least, not actively killing your brain cells, but my favorite television show of all time is one of the laziest, thoughtless, and most exhaustive pieces of media 14-year-old me had ever seen in her measly little life. It was a 15-minute serialized animated cartoon named Breadwinners running on Nickelodeon's spinoff channel, Nicktoons, at the time, aired only two seasons, and if you value your time and self-respect, you will not watch it. All you need to know about the show is the words of its co-“creator” (the term, of course, used in the most ambiguous sense possible, within the confines of human minds) Gary Di Raffaele on his and Steve Boris shared writing process: “I think, when you watch a Breadwinners episode, it feels and it sounds like no other cartoon because it’s, it’s got that, that constant drive, that constant beat.“ (“Meet The Creators”), an unofficial elaboration on the previous statement, “The way we produce our show is pretty much unlike anything else that’s been produced.” (“Meet The Creators”).

What follows these sentiments are only a few more words on the animation process and the collaborative angle the show’s crew takes, but Gary’s tone (and the show itself) is so clear and obvious that the second part of that sentence, I feel, can barely be classified as an inference. “Unlike anything else that’s been produced”, because that’s what makes the show so unique, so fun and wacky and zany!

So good.

The filming of this interview (with the help of fevered, extensive consumption of both every decent video essay critiquing this show and every episode of the show I’ve gotten my hands on) has only confirmed my suspicions. Sometime after the greenlighting of their pilot and the subsequent order of a first season, Raffaele and Boris had come to the reasonable observation that one of the many redeeming qualities used to defend a show’s quality is its supposed uniqueness, its fresh ideas or concepts. Even its ability to introduce familiar archetypes and plotlines and tropes in a new and exciting way, or with a twist or subversion of sorts! They then, despite now having contact with at least a few of Nickelodeon's experienced and accomplished writers now within contact, stumbled down one of the many historic writing pitfalls of overeager amateurs and seasoned veterans who have lost their touch over time: The assumption that because their writing looks like some of the quality art they’ve seen before, it simply must be of just as high a quality.

This artistically stunting philosophy grows in many familiar places, the way mold grows on trash bins left on the curb on a hot summer Tuesday. You may find it in the 12-year-old who is just beginning to explore their artistic capabilities by tracing screenshots of anime characters they found online, or the burned-out cartoon writer, a fast-approaching deadline for the shipment of an episode’s storyboard hanging over their head, and a hastily downed Starbucks coffee hanging off the side of their desk. You may even find it trapped within the inner workings of your own creative work (though I do hope you never do). Either way, you will find the same outcome in every new example you find yourself confronted with:

The writer eventually mistakes their work’s resemblance to the type of art they aim to recreate, whether that be in the way said example tugs at the heartstrings or gets its viewer’s blood pumping, for proof that their work accomplishes these feats too, simply due to its traceable proximity to its inspiration.

The stand-up comic throws in jokes that don’t land because they have identifiable setups and punchlines, the romance novelist adds a sex scene even when it grinds the plot to an unnecessary halt because her favorite book has one too, and the writers behind Breadwinners use an inventive new production strategy to make the zaniest, off-the-wall scripts their network had ever seen, in hopes they would help the show stand out amongst all the other wacky competition in each week’s programming block and ensure each episode shocks and surprises 9-12 year olds everywhere. That Breadwinners would be innovative, eye-catching, and above all else, unique.

This inherent “uniqueness”, of course, was presumed to come neatly prepackaged with the intended goal of their solely comedy-focused cartoon: Making the viewer laugh. In any way possible. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Breadwinners, you know fully well that it did not.

“But [REDACTED],” You cry. “Haven’t you ever written something in the style of the things you like? Who are you to judge?” Normally, I would recount the “Appeal to Hypocrisy” fallacy in detail, but this article is already long enough (I would also question why you are talking to an online article as if it can hear you, but I digress). I will instead surrender my own early work, “Body Swichers” (I invite you to ignore the spelling, if you can), as tribute, and instead call your attention to this excerpt from a twelve-year-old me with a cliche plot line and far-too-early access to Microsoft Word: “Instead of the cheerful, spike-haired boy, he saw his sarcastic, witty friend, Gretchen in the mirror…Megee raced toured the closet and pulled out an antique, dusty, enormous book.” (Sacristan 1)

Notably bad grammar and sentence structure aside, this quote is a direct result of my ongoing journey as a writer. The first thing I had ever written, the first chapter of a romance/adventure story, was an attempt to recreate the magic I’d found in the many, many novels I had gotten lost in as a child. It was, predictably, not successful. Every line held the bland and awkward hallmarks of a child’s first draft, despite both my parents’ insistence on how it didn’t. Instead of falling back on the idea that it was good by virtue of it sharing an intended style with works I had deemed good, however, I opened up my laptop a few weeks later, pulled up Internet Explorer, and set out to find why that chapter didn’t intrigue me as much as the writing in my favorite series.

This process soon led to the discovery that the books I liked had big, descriptive words in them, words like “sarcastic” and “antique” and “enormous”. The incorporation of these words in my next work led to the question of why everything I wrote sounded so clunky and redundant all of a sudden, which led to learning about effective word choice, and then good sentence structure, and then impactful tone and atmosphere, and countless other improvements! Most importantly, however, is how it highlights the difference between my approach and Boris and Raffaele, despite still sitting at an amateurish level myself.

They took inspiration thinking it would ensure quality work, to somehow magically copy and paste its greatness into their own writing. I took inspiration to learn what made it so great in the first place.

So, there. That, I figure, is how someone could look at something in their life, whether it be art, a personal flaw, or even their entire self, and assume it resembles what it's supposed to look like well enough to “pass”, whatever in god’s name that’s supposed to mean. (One way, at least.) And I’m sure this theory could apply to other aspects of issues I’ve touched upon in this article. The dire need to push yourself as a writer and avoiding the comfort of creative complacency in your work, the way this type of thinking directly informs the prevailing disrespect children’s television writers holding in their audience, mistranslating “silly and childish” as “good enough for kids”, even how that reflects a wider disrespect for children in society as a whole!

I hope, however, the single grain of wisdom you and I both take away from this literary exploration is the same one I found detailed in Stephen King’s autobiography, On Writing, in his mother’s disappointment upon realizing that that the little hand-drawn comics he’d been showing her were direct tracings of someone else’s work. IN the novel, she dismisses the original works, citing them as “junk” and insisting that she “...’bet you [he] could do better. Write one of your own.’” (King 28)

Can you imagine, truly, if King (a young child who’d never written an actual story in his whole life and could have very easily done so!) had disregarded his mother’s advice under the guise that nothing could be better than something identical to one of his favorite things to read, that drawing something that looks like them was good enough on its own? If we were forced to live in a world where this advice didn’t lead him to publish so many of the literary classics we know and love today, like “It”, or “Carrie”, or “The Outsider”?…I can’t, since I haven’t actually read any of his books, but this world has been gracious enough to let me bear witness to Carrie (1976), the Carrie musical’s off-broadway cast album, and some of the loveliest It fanart I’ve ever seen, So I imagine that world, in the kindest of words, totally blows. It stands to reason, then, that we, as writers, have a creative duty to keep growing and improving both ourselves and our work, to make sure we never come to see it.

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salvadoerena · 9 months

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hey! this is chance & here’s this week’s prompt. what websites or resources do you use while you write or develop a character/story? what do you think of them and would you recommend them?

OOOOO GOOD QUESTION!!

Funnily enough, tumblr is one of the main ones. My characters tend to develop from ye olde tumblr oc ask/rp blogs, so I got in the habit of reblogging a lot of funny posts tagging my characters. It still happens even if I'm not tagging them. For example if there's a post like "every friend group has the chihuahua, the yorkie, and the borzoi" or like, a picture of someone holding a giant mouse or something, in my head I go "haha, yeah Andy is tooootally a yorkie. Too much energy and slight diva tendencies" or "oh man giant versions of little things would be rad. is there a way I can worldbuild on that? more oxygen in grounded islands means bigger bugs?"

Sometimes, if I'm looking for inspiration regarding character designs/fashion references, I might go on picrew or pinterest and just look and see different styles people might have or mess around with doll makers. Usually picrew doesn't have what I'm looking for exactly, but it'll be something like "oh there's a fishnet top in this one. i think Mareilli would absolutely wear this" or "oh this is a fun hairstyle. i should give more of my characters long hair so they can do more updo's," you know? So if you're looking for character design/inspo, highly recommend!!

If you wanted my biggest website inspiration though, it's probably youtube. I spend a lot of time on there watching speedpaints/character designs/costume builds/etc and it's a HUUUUGE inspiration. A lot of dichotomies I make between Grounded/Aerin islands comes from listening to people like Bernadette Banner regarding like...okay so like she made a video re: the costuming choices in Game of Thrones and that REALLY sent me on a spiral into looking at what differences in fashion and textiles you would find in islands that...float...and have windstorms haha;;;

This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would so the rest is under the cut! (Please read under the cut there's some writing programs and editing services I recommended under there).

And I know everyone says this but seriously: consume as much media as possible. I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how much television, music, film, books, anime, manga, comics, podcasts, and video games have either driven me to better my writing or have inspired me to make certain creative choices.

A lot of things from Seraetia were heavily inspired by Black Sails, from things like costume design to obfuscating certain characters' motives to me deciding to go whole hog on including polyamory as an end-game relationship status for some characters. Reading The Locked Tomb series and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians (plus literally everything else in that series haha) really pushed me into forcing myself to work on my imagery and prose, while also forcing me to think about pacing and how/if I should write it as a saga or how arcs should work. Nonfiction stories and documentaries also help!! Though, I'm pretty biased as I'm more into animals and psychological research, but I have definitely referred to those things when thinking up like, units of measurement and cuisine and things.

Also do NOT underestimate the power of infodumping and word vomiting with friends. When I write out my acknowledgements, @okiedoki and @miscbeary are going to be front and center "Thank you guys so much for letting me speak nonsense for hours on end and just nodding along." Roleplay with friends!! Even silly little inconsequential things or alternate universes or iterations upon iterations will help you to flesh out your characters! I've come up with so much about James and he's gone through so much development because I would go "Haha what if he was in the modern world he'd probably own an iguana that would be funny. Why an iguana...? You know, it's probably because he likes to be seen as different, but also because he just thinks they're cool. They're dinosaur-like and he enjoys the fact that something so unconventional and kind of scary can love and be loved--OH MY GOD JAMES SEES HIMSELF AS A MONSTER AND USES THE IGUANA TO PROJECT AND TEACH HIMSELF HE'S WORTHY OF LOVE."

*cracks knuckles*

Now in terms of actual programs you can use to write stories!!

Google Docs tends to be my go-to, but ever since I discovered StimuWrite 2, I tend to switch between both. Since I do most of my writing at night, Gdocs is really harsh on my eyes (even with f.lux, blue light glasses, and darkreader), so I like that you can set a gentler background on StimuWrite. Even better, it makes my ADHD brain happy and actually stay on task bc there's so much stimulation in there lol The only downside is that it doesn't really save your work (there's an emergency back-up it creates, but it's only for the last couple of writing sessions I believe), so I'll use it to write out a bulk portion and then transfer it to Gdocs.

If you're planning on writing a serious novel and want something with a little bit more organizational prowess, I would go with Scrivener. It has a lot of bells and whistles that are actually pretty neat, like being able to save reference documents/photos and putting it in the same "container" as the actual writing passage. Honestly? It's a lot. But!! It includes a built-in tutorial that does a REALLY good job of going through everything, so highly highly HIGHLY recommend following it because it explains the features very well and I do quite like them! Unfortunately, it does cost $60, but it's a one-time purchase and genuinely very useful.

If you're more into screenwriting that novels and the like, cannot recommend FadeIn enough. We had to use that in my Creative Screenwriting class and it was SO easy to use and made exporting scripts SUCH a breeze. In fact, Welcome to Irth was entirely developed in FadeIn, haha.

If you're looking for more like, art resources I would go with things like Clip Studio Paint/Paint Tool SAI. I used to use FireAlpaca like a decade ago, and I really enjoyed it! Can't say how well it's held up, though. PureRef is great too!! It helps you keep track of your reference images, and you can set it to "float" on top of other programs.

FINALLY LAST BUT NOT LEAST!!!

If you're looking for an editing service, please please PLEASE look into RoseLark Publishing. I had the privilege of working with them this past summer getting a Manuscript Assessment and I'm so glad I did. They're very professional and are great at communicating their timelines and everything! They might still be accepting editing assessment applications at this time, but you can shoot them an e-mail on their contact page!

Anyways, I am going to stop myself here or I will literally not shut up. Thank you for asking!! I looooooove love talking about my writing and apparently about the writing process as well, lol.

#digital-chance #ask #long post #writing #writing ref

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davyjoneslockr · 8 months

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📡🎈 for the writing ask game!!

Super interested especially in the style one because it’s always fun to hear how people see their own writing!

(For this ask game)

📡: Why is writing and sharing your writing important for fandom?

I've been involved in fandom spaces for most of my life, and it's always been something I've been really passionate about, but a lot of that time was spent as sort of a passive lurker. I engaged with other people's content online and went to local cons every now and again, but I always wanted to actually create something myself and feel more involved with fandoms, I guess. I actually had a bit of a run with this in the Danganronpa fandom (I was a voice actor in an unfortunately never released and now defunct Fangan podcast), and that got me thinking about what I could do to engage with fandom more. I've always written fanfic, but it took until a short time after I left the DR fandom and got stuck in JoJo Hell, which was my first year of college, to work up the courage to actually post it.

All this to say, writing and sharing fics makes me feel like an active part of a community. I've made a lot of friends through it, had opportunities to work on some incredible fan projects, and, honestly, the past four years in the JJBA fandom have been the most fun I've had in any fandom. Plus, I think of it as sort of paying homage to this series that I love so dearly. Idk. My work probably isn't all that important to fandom as a whole, but I'm definitely having a good time participating :]

🎈 Describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? Does it change?

That's a hard one, actually. It definitely changes depending on the mood I'm going for, and it's obviously changed over the years (it's actually funny reading back older fics sometimes, because I can tell when certain writing workshops or creative breakthroughs in my academic life bled over into my hobby writing). I'd say my writing is heavily character-driven; while that comes with the medium in fanfiction, my original fiction and creative nonfiction tend to be like that, too. What details I focus on while narrating a scene, and which ones I overlook, should say something about the POV character. Stylistically, I love playing with sentence length. Sentence fragments and run-on sentences are my best friends, and I love you polysyndeton <3 (I notice I used to be really into asyndeton, too, but not so much anymore). The character-driven-ness carries over into the style, too; I tend to get a bit more purple prose-y with Giorno than I do Mista, for example. And I use almost exclusively present tense in my writing now, because I want everything to feel more immediate and immersive - more like watching a scene unfold in real time than recalling a memory, if that makes sense. I actually wanted to be a screenwriter at one point in my life; I guess I could describe my style with regard to that, in a way? Trying to write a film onto a page? Something like that.

#sorry my answer for the style thing isn't super coherent. it's not something i think about much but definitely something i will now!!

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blysse-and-blunder · 1 year

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in lieu of a commonplace book: holiday edition

monday, dec 5, 2022 ~ 9pm ----> thursday, dec 22, 2022 ~ 4pm ---->

saturday, dec 24, 2022 ~ 4pm

i’ve had this one languishing in drafts for so long that it’s now a holiday ilcb! stay warm out there, get yourself something nice to drink and light a candle or two or three, i am sending you a hug and a far-too-long post.

reading brrr what did i just finish. when i first drafted this post it was wintering by katherine may. fine premise, i generally accept her point about life inevitably having periods of winter and learning from them. i like the creativity of her different chapter topics. i am tepid to cool about the mix of research and creative writing, mostly because it wasn’t as scientific as i would have liked, and the bits of memoir turned me off at first. i’ve been reading more nonfiction the last few weeks, so i’m also here to report that index, a history of by dennis duncan was quite entertaining for being a book about a piece of book apparatus, and it will probably be a source of many good party facts for the next few months. i began listening to it as an audiobook though, and i must say the melifluous narrator’s voice was a) very entertaining because he had a really hard time with the latin and b) did his best with the fact that many of the examples in a book about indexes (indices?) were just lists of things and page numbers. switching back to print was a good move, imho.

book of the month and possible new entry in my top ten of the year, though, was the goblin emperor by katherine addison, which housemate G gave me as an early christmas present and which was absolutely my shit, between the shakespearean language and the shakespearean court intrigue. the emotional weight of a character shifting from the formal ‘we’ to the informal ‘i’ midsentence! the gradual building of a totally new world and language system! all the supporting cast coming to love the main character in ways that he can’t quite believe but which are clear to the reader! it reminded me of the best bits of the hands of the emperor in that way, and it ranks alongside that one as far as being ‘books that i didn’t want to end.’ the name of the ‘untheileneise’ court is evocative of ‘unseelie’, ever so slightly, and the flavor combination of reading this while also watching the d20 show mentioned below has been delectable.

watching couple of different contenders for this topic, surprisingly, between continuing to watch bossam: steal the fate with @hematiterings and fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood with @hematiterings and @pep-squad-lizzie, and having watched crouching tiger, hidden dragon and 20 minutes of a random episode of the white lotus on the plane, or now having been at my parents’ for a minute having started enjoying miss scarlet and the duke and three pines with them. on my own, though, it’s been dimension 20-- i bought a year’s subscription for myself as a present, and the entire visual and storytelling aesthetic of a court of fey and flowers has been hitting so right. i love aabria’s dm style, i thought this during exandria unlimited too (and i just did a cursory search of ilcb posts to make sure i haven’t said this already?? if i have please forgive me)-- there’s a richness and glitter to her narration and the details she chooses to highlight. and everyone in this group is doing such a great job, i’m in ep 2 ‘the great hart hunt’ right now and just, the different strategies each of the characters has selected to solve the puzzle, the combination of more court intrigue with humor and whatever earnest emotion peeps out sometimes, plus the slightly-different-but-equally-creative take on goblins from brennan and k.p. hobb here as opposed to the goblin emperor (they both have emotive ears!) is very good to me, personally.

listening mostly podcasts, if i’m honest. i put on an 8-hours-of-gentle-christmas-carols yule log youtube video today, but really i’ve been listening most to the WBUR podcast last seen when doing dishes or cooking or otherwise getting the streets of this city back under my feet. the episode on the jewel heist is where i started, while the one on chinese pie / pâté chinois and the franco-american/quebecois in new england gave me an emotion. this evening, though, there will be christmas music and yes that is a threat.

playing more stardew (while enjoying fey and flowers in the other window) but i’ve decided i can start a new game for a new year! while i work out how to download things from the itch.io bundle i bought literally two years ago, and scroll through the under $10 section on steam’s sale, recommendations are welcome. things i’m intrigued by: spiritfarer! a dragon age? i do not have a gaming laptop, a desktop computer, or a good gaming rig in any sense, and i will be choosing based entirely on Vibes (art / music / tone / narrative / writing etc), but input and suggestions are always welcome! also i tried to teach my dad 2048 and it went about as well as i could have hoped. also i asked for a zelda DS game for christmas like it’s 2013.

making there was a lot that could have gone into this section over the last few weeks, if i’d posted it when i initially started thinking about it-- i hung a poster! remounted a shelf! and now have dried orange slices for last-minute ornaments and made many (MANY) molasses-ginger cookies, and am in the process of mulling apple juice (california apparently not believing in proper cloudy apple cider). we’re travelling to see family the day after boxing day, so any real holiday baking will probably happen once we’re there, rather than being made now and then having to be frozen or eaten all in a rush-- so nothing to report on the bread / pie / candy front. yet. CIDER UPDATE: it tastes like hot apple juice. luckily irish coffee is also an option now.

working on but it’s christmas! i hear you cry. yes, and all free time is time you could be working on your journal piece, i reply. i’ve also been grinding through RAship hours before the end of the year, even though my contract continues until the end of april, because the more i can get done now the easier the spring will be. also i’m reading some diss chapters for a friend (self-serving also because his topic is close enough to mine that i can call this research!) and working on a letter of support for a prof who’s been good to me over the years and who is up for a teaching award. my journal piece is a cleaned-up version of a talk i gave, so really it’s a question of prettying-up the footnotes and inserting better citations, and trying to make it Good Enough while not too different / not rewriting it entirely. what does this actually look like? hell if i know, but unless someone gets back to me about image permissions it’s a moot point anyway. happy new year to me.

#in lieu of a commonplace book #ilcb #posts i wrote instead of wrapping presents #merry chrysler! happy crisis!

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