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pastafossa · 1 year

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Using Tarot To Help You Write

Right ok, so I’ve wanted to do this for a bit - there are vague references to tarot in my story TRT and I’ve answered a few questions about how I use the RWS-style tarot to write but now I have a little bit of time while I wait for my laundry to dry. So let’s get into it.

If you’re looking for another tool in your writer’s kit, you could strongly consider adding a box of tarot cards to the bag. Set aside, for a minute, what you’ve heard about it. Set aside any spiritual aspect, telling the future, the ‘OoOOOooOOh evil’, or even the ‘DRAW DEATH MEANS DEATH’ you see in movies. Instead, strip it down to its base.

Tarot is about telling a story.

(Below: Oak, Ash, & Thorn Tarot)

From a storytelling perspective, the first 18 cards of the RWS style tarot, known as the Major Arcana, essentially tell the Hero’s Journey as the Hero sets out on an adventure and searches for knowledge. There’s disaster, love, temptation, and wise people they meet along the way before eventually finding enlightenment at the end of their journey. The Major Arcana contains major archetypes and themes present through so many stories. When you add in the rest of the cards in the Minor Arcana - the other 56 cards, encompassing a variety of emotions, archetypes, figures, and various life events you might run into - you’ve got something perfect when you want to introduce new elements to your story. I keep a small deck on my desk and use it frequently when creating random OCs, plotlines, or problems for characters to solve.

And before you go, holy shit Pasta that’s a lot to take in, using tarot for your story doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to have 20 years of tarot experiences, you don’t need to be an expert, you don’t need A Great Gift. You don’t have to know about tarot at all, really. You just need one thing:

The right storytelling deck.

More below the cut.

Look, there are a million styles out there, some that focus heavily on storytelling imagery and some that focus more on symbols; some that feature animals or nature, and some that focus on people. I generally lean towards animal-based decks since I’m more familiar with animal/nature imagery, body language, and symbolism, but in reality the best deck to use for writing is simply the one you’ll actually use. If you’re drawn to one, go for it. That being said, if you’re looking for something to use without needing to get into all the symbolism of each card, I generally recommend using a deck in which all cards, including the Minor Arcana, depict a scene you can examine - aka, one that plays up a story rather than a straight up symbol. Let me show you an example with three decks.

Left: Mystical Cats tarot; Middle: Oriens tarot; Right: Children of Litha tarot

These all depict the same card: the Seven of Swords, meant to depict deceit, theft, betrayal, lies, and trickery. The middle card relies a little more heavily on symbolic meaning (the black widow spider, which ‘betrays’ when mating and uses a sticky web - symbolizing a potential trap), whereas the other two cards show an active scene (Card 1: OH NO HE’S GONNA STEAL YER MOUSE WHILE YOU’RE NOT LOOKING; Card 3: YOU LOVESTRUCK DIPSHITS, TURN AROUND, THE SNAKE’S EATING YOUR EGGS). I’ve found cards like Card 1 and Card 3 are faster and more convenient for storytelling, because you’re basically presented with a scenario/characters/a situation right off the bat, whereas a symbolic card is more open-ended and might require some digging unless you’re already fairly familiar with the symbolism. If you’re going to get a deck that depicts people instead, I recommend looking for a deck that’s diverse. Humans come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and having a deck that reflects that (something like the Modern Witch tarot) is valuable for storytelling. So if you’re picking a deck to help you write, look for:

Decks that use scenes/storytelling imagery for all cards

Decks with imagery/body language you can easily read at a glance

If you’re looking for a deck with people - decks with a diverse range of body types, ethnicities, sexualities, and genders

A deck with imagery you actually like, otherwise you won’t want to use it

‘Ok, so let’s say I’ve found a deck, or I already have one. What does using tarot for fic even look like?’

Let’s do two quick readings for two writing scenarios you might use this for! This will also show you can be as complex or as simple as you need to be. These are also the two scenarios I use tarot for most when writing - character construction, and plotline construction. First I’ll use the Children of Litha tarot, which uses a moderate amount of storytelling imagery. Then I’ll use the Mystical Cats tarot, which is probably the most story-heavy deck I have, imagery-wise. That way, you can see how construction gets a bit easier depending on how scene-heavy a deck is.

Scenario: I need an original character for this chapter or scene! Quick, draw three cards!

Quick reading: she’s very gentle but there are also two tigers inside her and one of them wants to kill you, especially if you fuck with her pet birds

More complex reading - Personality, Flaw, Backstory:

Card 1 - Personality: This character is someone who’s unafraid and bold in their kindness even when faced with danger, and they know when a gentle touch is needed. They believe strength is found not in being cruel or violent but in responding with love. This usually works out for them, to the point that even Scary People (TM) seek this character out, knowing they’ll find love and affection. Alternatively, this character is one half of the Brooding Rough One Loves The Gentle Soft One trope. Whatever works for you!

Card 2 - Flaw: Despite all that, the gentle character’s got a temper, and it exists in direct conflict to what they believe about strength, thus producing cognitive dissonance. This is someone who’ll dodge conflict to avoid showing their temper, but eventually that repression’s going to blow up into a real fight and it’ll be messy.

Card 3 - backstory: This temper and conflict avoidance is due to some tragic incident in their past that left them deeply wounded. It’s one reason they’re so gentle, but there’s a lot of lingering anger and trauma. These wounds are not healed, and if you look deep enough, you’re going to find blood.

Depending on how important this character is, you could add even more: a card for a strength, a card for a challenge they need to overcome to grow as a person, their family dynamic, etc. Again, you can make it as detailed or as simple as you need.

PASTA NOW I NEED A LITTLE PLOTLINE FOR CHARACTERS TO SOLVE. Quick, draw four!

Quick reading: holy SHIT your characters gotta move fast, cause there’s a pissed off dude out there who wants revenge NOW and is ready to fuck up a *shuffles cards and draws* religious temple of peaceful cat loving monks, one of whom is the one that fucked up Angry Dude in the first place WHEN HE WAS A BABY WITH HIS MAMA, PLOT TWIST OH NO, IT’S PROBABLY THAT ASSHOLE STEVE IN THE BACK OF THE THIRD CARD, LOOK AT HIM LOOKING OFF INTO THE DISTANCE.

More complex reading - Theme, Problem, Setting, Solution:

Card 1 - Theme: As you can tell from our cat with zoomies, your protagonists are on a clock. The theme here is urgency, it’s speed. Things will start off with a bang and they won’t have much time to slow down. This’d be good for a one shot or a chapter.

Card 2 - Problem: look at that cat, they’re so ANGRY, they are PISSED, someone did them dirty and they’ve been stewing over it for a while. They can’t stop feeling that betrayal no matter how much they try to lick it off shake it off forget about it. They want REVENGE for what was done to them and they’re gonna cut someone up.

Card 3 - Setting: Ah, a peaceful, sunny place where everyone’s just chilling. Everyone’s happy. Maybe a religious place, say, a church or a convent or hell, a nudist retreat. Either way, no one knows what’s coming. Except (and this is why scene cards are so fun)... for STEVE there in the back. Look at him. Everyone’s relaxing in the sun but he’s staring out into the distance. He knows. And just like that, Steve’s the In Hiding person who betrayed our Problem - Steve the Asshole isn’t a part of the Sun card’s meaning, but a storytelling scene card lets you stretch like this and have fun.

Card 4 - solution: Clearly the only person who can stop Bad Person... is their MAMA (or potentially his siblings). Maybe a character goes to find the Problem’s mother and brings her to the church to talk the Problem into giving up. Maybe the protagonists desperately tell the Problem that your family wouldn’t have wanted this, even if that family was hurt - the Empress is generally very nurturing and loving, so that’s a fair bet. Either way, the solution to the Problem is their family.

Once you get the hang of this, you’ll start to find other ways you can use it. I’ve used it for creating quick or more complex or more randomized characters, for creating plotlines and character arcs, for a few of Jane’s cases in TRT. You can use it for backstories, for settings, for problems and solutions, for deeper themes to explore with your characters. Hell, if you want some practice, you could literally go through the Major Arcana and write one-shots dealing with each card’s theme. Ultimately the possibilities are endless, whether you want to construct a detailed plotline or if you just have a new character you want to randomize or flesh out a bit.

In short: go get yourself a deck and have some fun!

#tarot #writing #writing advice #fanfic advice #fanfic #fic advice #writing tips #fic tips #tarot for writing #basically look for a deck that tells a good story and then you won't have to to know anything about tarot for it to work #you can just go 'oh cat has zoomies in this card so this character is a hyperactive wild child always on the move and is amusing'#you can make it as deep or as hilarious or as shallow as you want #decks used here: oriens tarot - children of litha tarot - mystical cats tarot - oak ash and thorn tarot #honestly the mystical cats tarot is prime storytelling material

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jackwolfes · 8 months

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I would love to start writing grishaverse fics but I'm worried about not getting the characterisation correct. I've started with a modern au, which was maybe not the best plan considering it's probably harder to keep the dialogue in character when they're not in their normal setting. Any words of wisdom? Since you seem to be so inherently good at nailing all of the crows 😅

your point on AUs is interesting because 1) i am a big big AU writer and 2) i know some people insist that AUs are always automatically less in character which is just emphatically not true and is often times good old fashioned pretentiousness

but i would say that the key thing to AU writing is understanding the characters in their entirety, as well as how their character changes depending on the situations they're in, and adjusting accordingly. i run into this problem all the time with wylan! so in AUs where his entry into the barrel is entirely different i have to reevaluate how like, scared for his life he'd be basically, and how that changes how he relates to other people

for another example - the way matthias changes as a character in SOC is tied to how far away he is from his (for lack of a better term) cult, paired with the love he is met with from nina and the evidence of "goodness" from grisha (jesper & kuwei). so then that becomes: what is the au equiavalent of the druskelle? how long has it been since he's left them? how long has he known nina, has he met jesper/kuwei, has he had closure yet against brum?

i also think it's suuuuper important with AUs to remember that in the books they are all teenagers and all act like teenagers. if you're writing aged up AUs, certain ways they act will necessarily be different - ie all of them, at one point or another, think way too highly of themselves and/or act like immature gits that don't know how feelings work: if you're aging them up you'll have leeway to temper them a bit. interestingly i think the netflix show does this really well, with wesper especially - wylan isn't flushing constantly when jesper flirts with him because he's already a sexually active adult, etc. it's an interesting case study wrt how to age characters up and keep the essence of who they are

anyway i have wildly different confidence levels for the different crows so don't like, take this as gospel, but if you're interested i jotted down a few of the key things that i keep in mind about each of them below the cut:

matthias is funnier than anyone gives him credit for. he doesn't always mean to be but comedy + matthias = winner

if you're writing early matthias: he is scared and lost and angry. he is in a new country he does not know the language of, freshly betrayed by someone he was never supposed to trust, and kicking himself for being stupid enough to "fall for her tricks" (while also being so profoundly in love that he is angry all over again that he is still "being tricked")

if you're writing later matthias: he is just. fucking. trying. he can see that there is something hopeful on the horizon and has realised that he wants it and will do what he can to make steps towards it. i really like writing matthias as clueless but well meaning, where he's a bit thick about a lot of things but really wants to do better! like your cishet uncle at christmas who is REALLY trying to get your pronouns right because he knows it means something to you but just doesn't have a grasp of how they work, yknow?

his faith is SO important to him, especially as the series goes on and he starts doubting everything. when he's in fjerda he's embedded in it but when he's in kerch, it is the literal only thing he had keeping him going. when he joins the crows, he clings to it as if to prove to himself that not everything he learnt was entirely wrong until he can reconcile religion with loving grisha

wve

if you aren't familiar with the signs of autism, research them. once you have, congratulations! you now have a guide to writing wylan van eck.

wylan is infinitely meaner than anyone gives him credit for. i dont mean snarky, i don't mean bitchy, i mean MEAN. early on, he says some fucking savage things without any real consideration for how jesper feels because he just fundamentally hasn't had real kindness from anyone in so long, which means he doesn't know that he doesn't have to expect cruelty back.

he does not want to be doing anything illegal. he'll do it but won't fucking like it - except he will also at the same time be very prideful about what he's doing. so he'll do it, and won't fucking like it, but by god will he do it well and make sure everyone around him knows how clever he is. he doesn't brag, exactly, but he WILL be smug and will not skimp on theatrics when needed.

the thing that made wylan click for me was someone saying that he is not SHY, but he is RESERVED. at no point is he really actually timid. he gets flustered, and fear/anxiety for his life is fucking rampant, but he is at no point shy with his opinions. he just refuses to show his whole hand and is very much like kaz in this respect.

early wylan is just having the worst fucking week, all the time. like every day is the worst day of his life: he's tired, hungry, scared, anxious, belittled, lonely. a part of him genuinely believes that he'll be able to go home again, which makes him resentful of the how bad his life in the barrel is.

underneath all of this wylan is still a profoundly hopeful character. i think one of the most interesting things about him is that he has an unhindered belief that the world is at it's core good, even though it also has bad things in it, and a fundamental unwillingness to settle for other people's cynicism. he's not stupid, he's not deluded, he's barely even optimistic, but throughout the series he genuinely does seem to believe that there will be a happy ending in some way or another.

if you aren't familiar with the signs of adhd………….

jesper to me is just doing his very best to get through life without feeling any negative emotion ever for any longer than he has to. much like matthias, he is lost and scared and angry - but instead of channeling this into a pseudo-facist military cult he tries to stop feeling the bad feelings as quick as he possibly can. he has learnt that bad feelings = the worst, and the way to deal with that isn't to embrace them to understand them and move on [because he has also learnt that "bad" means "should be hidden"] so he tries to not feel them at all. he does not dwell on his mother's death or his father's insistence that a beautiful part of himself is a curse. he squishes it down and tries to cover it with gambling and flirting and anything else that'll get him through - except those coping mechanisms always make him feel worse, which he tries to bottle up and cover with a joke and a smile…... etc etc etc

to emphasise: when he covers things up, he does so in the biggest, boldest and most public ways as if that'll prove to everyone else, as well as himself, that he's fine. he doesn't shut up, he's a snarky asshole, and his whole thing is that he refuses to stop moving because stopping let's the bad feelings catch up.

he is both incredibly cynical and incredibly optimistic, which is a strange juxtaposition to get your head around but makes him really interesting! he's described as having "reckless optimism" and an insane hope that everything will pull through - but so often when he talks to wylan he is utterly jaded about wylan's way of seeing the world.

jesper doubts himself and his talents fucking massively. whereas a lot of the other crows are almost too confident about their abilities to do things, jesper doesn't really put stock into his talents! and this again comes down to the fact he has fundamentally not taken the time to learn and understand why he has the talents he has, and only gets to that point at the end of CK.

inej to me is just very teenage girl, by which i mean: she is funnier than anyone gives her credit for, she likes to be right, she crushes on idiot boys [and gets annoyed about it] and truly cherishes her friendships. she is a TEENAGE GIRL, not an all-caring insightful mother figure, and when she supports her friends she leans on them in return just as heavily.

related to that she is also infinitely more like… proud than people give her credit for. this is also similar to wylan IMO but inej takes great care in whatever she does, and while doesn't necessarily try to get all eyes on her, she DOES want the people she's manipulating to know that SHE is the one in control of their fates. but for all she holds power over other people and the next steps in her life [which is key re: taking control and autonomy of her life in the aftermath of her assault and displacement] it is always chased with the knowledge that at the end of it, her saints have the final say and final power.

i think it's also really important that she just does not believe herself to be a good person. like she doesn't, but she's making peace with that and spends a lot of time trying to atone for that by making the world better than she found it.

nina is a notoriously hard character to get right [and also i haven't read king of scars so can't comment on anything but how she's written in SOC/CK] but one key thing about nina that i think jumps out is that she is just. tired. she's so tired by the start of soc because she does not like life in the barrel. she doesn't even like ketterdam! she fucking hates it! she's doing what she has to to find matthias but does not WANT a life in the barrel. her key goal and motivation is to fucking skip town as fast as possible.

it's also key IMO that she has had a very similar upbringing to matthias. it's very easy to see his indoctrination, and i wouldn't say that the ravkan's are quite as bad as the fjerdans considering ideologies and tactics, but as the books go on nina very much discovers that the way she was raised [taken from an orphanage without a say, raised to be a soldier, told to never question anything/step out of line/consider an alternate view] was also not great, which is why she decides to leave and make change on a local level

nina doesn't really hold back what she thinks, especially when she's upset with someone: she will just tell kaz someone they're being stupid straight to their face.

related to that, she is just low-level irritated at kaz for every waking moment of the series

he's not mean, but he's a sarcastic fucker and incredibly blunt about the truth of things. he genuinely does not care about hurting other people's feelings [key with wylan tbh but seen with all of the other crows]

he doesn't volunteer information if he can help it: he likes to have the upper-hand and the last word, but will never show all of his cards until he is absolutely 100% without a doubt certain he's won something

he would rather be shot in the head than show true vulnerability [see: the "who is jordie" conversation]

that bitch loves a grand gesture. he doesn't have a love language so much as he only knows how to express his feelings by doing things for people [see: buying his crush a big boat]

#uthers bald head #soc #six of crows #advice #fic advice #asks #long post

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queenie-ofthe-void · 3 months

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Any opinions on posting dark Dead Dove fics? I see them on Ao3 but haven't really come across any on my dash, and I've got one queued in my drafts but I'm nervous to post. I made sure to tag it and post the CWs before the page break.

Really looking for advice so I go about it the right way!

#fic advice #i'd rather never post than do it and fuck up people's day #maybe i'll just add it to the Ao3 account i'm theoretically setting up #immortal vampire eddie munson #dead dove fic advice #hurt/no comfort #steddie #steddie fic idea #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson

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cncozutarapoto · 5 months

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I want to write my own take on Katara and Zuko being trapped in Ba Sing Se together during the war. I read a fic a while back that explored that idea, and I want to write something similar but not plagiarize their work.

I got the idea from seeing Zutara Week content. Idk I really want to do it, but am scared of copying someone else's work. Any advice is appreciated!

#fic advice #fic ideas #zutara #zutara week #help me pls lol

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bahoreal · 10 months

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jay's wee guide to editing fics

by popular demand (five likes on a post i made asking if anyone wants this)

please note this is a loose guide of what works for me and is designed to give newbie fic writers an idea of what purpose an edit has. if you don't vibe with it you don't have to follow it. if you have your own preferences please feel free to add them!

first i should say it is important to do an edit before you post your fic. this can apply to any work of writing (some of the QC details I used a lot in the scientific papers i wrote)

an edit can be generally categorised into one of these: update/style check, QC, consistency check, proofread. this can either be done by you (the writer) or by a beta reader

update/style check: there's probably a better word for this kind of edit but I don't know it. This the most in depth and time consuming method of editing and generally done on first drafts. it is an edit done where you're not happy with the work to be published as-is, where you think parts are missing, parts could be updated, parts might be out of sync or not fit with the flow of the piece. when you're doing an update edit, you should be looking for things like:

- did this feel jarring against the rest of the tone

- did i have to read any of the sentences multiple times to figure out what they meant

- do I have enough elements that reflect the theme i'm trying to build, or was the theme too on the nose?

- are my characters behaving in character

- are there any points where a character knows about something before it has been confirmed in the text - is this intentional, or was it a mistake and the character shouldn't know? This is especially important with longer fics, sometimes the timeline can get messy

note for beta readers/if you are using a beta reader: specify whether this edit is meant to be granular to word choice, or about sentence/paragraphs. I have had beta readers that changed every fifth word I wrote because they thought a different word would fit better (which switched my story to their style, which I didn't actually want), and beta readers who would highlight a sentence or a word and go "this doesn't make sense, consider rephrasing" or a paragraph and go "this felt cut short" o.e. (which was very helpful)

QC: quality check. generally refers to formatting, updating to a style guide, etc. When I am doing a QC I look for things like

- grammar issues (non-intentional)

- typos (non-intentional)

- spelling mistakes (non-intentional)

- language consistency, e.g. going between England English and American English (non-intentional)

- formatting errors (e.g. I tend to add three paragraph breaks between new scenes, and I check that that's consistent throughout)

- tense consistency (switching back and forth between tenses when writing can break the reader out of the immersion, if you're in the present then try to stay in the present unless the character is remembering something. Instead of "She has nothing in the house. She went to the shops.", try and stick to one tense, "She has nothing in the house, so she goes to the shops.")

(- in papers/essays this is also the point where you would fix your referencing)

proofread: a final check done on a final draft that combines the QC and consistency checks. If i've copied to ao3 I tend to do this in the ao3 word editor and make sure all my formatting is in, for example italics, which aren't preserved in the copy/paste into the ao3 editor

consistency check: does what it says on the tin. If there are consistency items you want to keep flowing through your story, such as

- a character calling another character by a certain nickname and then progressing to a different nickname as you move through

- names used in internal monologue are consistent throughout, vs. names other characters use in speech (e.g. I wrote a fic from the perspective of an american, who says "couch", but the english characters say "sofa" aloud.)

- was that character holding a glass? where did it go? were they suddenly on the other side of the room?

- are the times/days correct? was it summer one scene and winter the next? if time is referenced, is it passing appropriately? (also ensuring it's non-intentional, unreliable narrators can switch between times as a stylistic choice)

(- in papers/essays this is also the point where I would make sure my claims are substantiated in the references I have used)

The things to look for are non-exhaustive. In my fics, I tend to do one single edit that combines all of these, or one update/style check and then a proofread if it's a long fic. This is because I don't tend to spend a lot of time on fics. with my original works, I tend to do each check individually, with the update/style check first, then a consistency check, then a QC, then the proofread. 4 drafts (at least, sigh)

A beta reader can help with some of these, especially the consistency check and the update/style check - when you read your own work a lot you do tend to miss things. However I cannot stress enough when you are asking a beta reader to look over your work, set your expectations:

tell them which kind of edit you'd like them to do. If you want a QC and you get back a style check it can feel a little insulting

if you want a more thorough edit like a style check or a consistency check then set expectations for the level of edit. If you want to develop your own style of writing, then specify you don't want your beta reader to be too picky over word choices, only calling out if, e.g. words don't make sense in context. If you want a language check (maybe your first language isn't english and you are worried about writing in english) then ask for more detailed notes on your specific word choice. it's entirely up to you, and knowing what is expected of them can make the beta's job easier!

And some things personal to me:

items/advice about how i write my own fic, these are things I look for in the update/style check to ensure the conclusion is built to in a satisfying way

plot themes, and building callbacks: I like to pick a few callbacks for my characters and have them mentioned a few times throughout the story - enough that readers will notice and appreciate the callback, but not too much that it's all the characters talk about. it's a delicate balance and depends on the length of the fic and the themes you choose. for example in the longfic i'm writing I have romcoms as a theme, where the characters bring up their favourite big romcom lines a couple of times, then joke around finding their own when they finally kiss. in my original novel i have one fun theme of one of my characters absolutely loving bread and always eating it whenever there's bread offered, and also a plot related theme of discussion about poison, poison preparation, and contemporary medical diagnoses of poisoning which leads a character to realise [REDACTED] might have been poisoned (these things are unrelated my character does not die of poison bread lmao) sometimes these callback themes can reflect the plot of your fic, or it can be a fun character thing that keeps coming back, or it can reflect how a character has grown from the start of the story

characterisation through your story: I'd suggest figuring out where your character starts, and the growth you want them to go through to make the characterisation more fulfilling. this can just be something specific you want that character to realise, or the character settling into the role they have and realising they enjoy it and fighting back less, or a character striving for something and either getting it or not getting it and deciding whether they even wanted it, etc. sometimes the simpler the fundamental character arc, the better. it can help with linking the character arc to the plot, and figuring out how minor characters are doing in the background of the fic

have fun and enjoy! don't feel obligated to follow my advice exactly or stick rigidly to one of the edit types, having a mix between them is just as useful and sometimes certain items slip from edit to edit! sharing your work is scary, but knowing you've picked up on typos and minor errors before you share can reduce that fear a bit :)

#fic writing #fic advice #i have no idea how useful this will be but. maybe it will make editing feel less daunting cause it's broken down into parts #again this is what works for me if it doesn't work for you that's compleeeetely okay #and i did not proofread this post so if there are any mistakes well that just proves the importance of proofreading to you #and if you don't edit and post direclty well power to you i have typos every 3 words so i always do at least one read over khfdkjs #also if the edit types have different names then u can also share those! i just use the names i am most familiar with haha

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estel-eruantien · 9 months

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Alright, I need advice - I wanna write a songfic about Billy/SOMEONE where he’s struggling with being a Ranger, coming out of his shell but still being a shy, nerdy boy, anger issues, maybe being gay (depending on who he’s shipped with here), and it all being compared to the song “Werewolf” by Motionless in White 😂

I can’t help it, every time I hear that song I think of all the wolf rangers (Billy, Merrick, and RJ - not sure if there is more, I’m still not past RPM)

So thoughts?? Should I pick one of the others to write about with this idea? Who should I pair them with? Would anyone even read it? HALP

#fanfiction #fic advice #power rangers #mighty morphin power rangers #power rangers wild force #power rangers jungle fury #billy cranston #rj #Merrick

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my-soupy-brain · 9 months

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anybody else?

Any fic writers out there just struggle with the spicy writing sometimes? I'm feeling quite low about myself in many different ways and writing spicy stuff sounds fun but I can't get my head in the game. I don't feel "sexy" so I can't write sexy. Does that make sense? Let me know if I'm just being a drag. I admit that I am.

I have so many sexy fic prompts from you lovelies that I want to get to but I'm just not in the head space. *sigh* I hope I pull myself out soon.

#fic advice #fanfiction writing help #ted lasso x reader

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galaxythreads · 2 years

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help! I need to plan a multi-chapter fic and I don't know how

Step 1. fic idea

step 2. panik

step 3. fic magically pours out of your trauma.

Jokes aside, planning a fic can be just as intense as planning out an original novel. You know you want certain things IN the fic, or maybe just a base idea, but what goes in between those pieces is tricky and can be vague and unknown.

STEP ONE: The idea

Start with an idea. This could be a paragraph you were just playing around with, a headcanon that you really want to work on, a prompt idea. Anything. It does not need to be a coherent story plan to begin with. You don’t need to know the beginning end or middle. Just this idea.

STEP TWO: Brainstorm

Take the idea and plop it down somewhere you can plan. A notebook, a doc, a tumblr draft. Wherever works. You need a place to put your thoughts.

- put your Original Thought, or paragraph or whatever, down.

-With this Thought, what else do you want to put into the story? How can you bridge from this point? What OTHER Thoughts have you had about fics you’ve read, written, or just thought about that you think you can put into this fic? This Thought doesn’t stand alone despite how much you think it does.

FOR EXAMPLE. This was the Thought I had for a current fic I’m working on for the Avengers and Loki:

-Loki didn't know he was mind controlled, but Clint does.

That was it. That was the basis. And then I thought about that and was like. Okay. So what else could come off of this fic?

Then I sat down and I put a bunch of bubble ideas around this one. Like “Okay, well what if Loki’s mind control had lasting effects, not for clint, but for Loki?” and, “I read this fic where an Asgardian civil war broke out over Loki being imprisoned and that was super cool. How could I do something like that?” or “what would happen if THOR went missing instead of Loki?” and “I really like Natasha/clint so I’ll put that in here” and “I think that the scepter was vastly underused as a plot device, so what if we throw that in here, too” and “I have a this headcanon about the Chitauri that Thanos rescued Loki from them” and “What if Frigga was even worse than Odin in some ways as a parent?”

It’s like when you write an essay and they make you do the brainstorm of ideas branching off from your topic prompt. That is LITERALLY what you are doing, but it’s for fun.

STEP THREE: Rough outline

The next thing I DO, and this might not work for everyone (of course all of this might not work for everyone and that’s fine), is to outline the fic in a really rough, terrible way.

So it’s more like a “I’ve gathered all my thoughts, great. Now it’s time to try and put them into a narrative.”

Then you kind of jumble it together. Where the Original Thought goes is up to you.

Here’s a bit of the rough outline for the Loki and Clint fic I mentioned earlier.

-5 months after Loki gets rescued, Thor goes missing between NY and visiting Jane

It takes Three Days before they realize what happened.

-The Avengers start looking for Thor upon Jane’s request, and Loki is surprisingly willing to help them.

-They can find no evidence of where Thor went

-One week after Thor goes missing, SHEILD calls them to let them know the chitauri woke up.

-Loki is apprehensive about this.

-Clint is too, though he couldn’t say why

-They go to the SHIELD facility where the Chitauri are, somewhere in New Mexico, and drag Loki with them.

-Fury says that he doesn’t think the two things -- Thor going missing and the Chitauri waking up -- are related.

-Says that there’s a group that escaped from a different facility and they have pictures of the Chitauri in NY.

-Loki is not happy with the fact that Thor may have been taken by the Chitarui, and it’s fairly obvious to anyone who watches them.

-Loki asks to speak with the Chitauri. Fury says that’s a dumb idea, but Loki’s like, literally, what do I have to go back to?

-Clint realizes that he can understand the convo and is immensely disturbed by this

-The Chitauri taunt Loki openly about Thanos, and neither confirm nor deny that they have Thor

-They threaten Loki pointedly and Clint finds the situation strange

-They leave for the day and try to figure out what to do about Thor. The Chitauri escape and attempt to claim Loki after beating him brutally. The Avengers come after him, and Clint stays to help Bruce clean up Loki.

-Loki poisoned by chitauri and having nightmares

-Clint realizes that he recognizes the scars on Loki’s back from dreams and is like “???”

-Loki’s like “np”

-Clint’s like “SoME ProBlem!”

-Clint doesn’t tell Loki that he recognizes them, and Loki doesn’t suspect so

-The Avengers go to Jane’s house to look for signs on where Thor went and Clint sorta expects Loki to treat Jane like crap, but he just ignores her.

-They find evidence of magic around the house, and Loki says that the possibility of Thor being taken by the Chitauri is low. The Chitauri don’t have a teleportation device of their own.

-Draws them back to square one.

-Fury suggests the possibility of it being an on-earth person. No small number of people who would like to use Thor for anything. Powersource, norse god, etc.

Anyone who has actually read the fic is aware that the actual story doesn’t go in this direction anymore. But that’s kind of the point. The plan shouldn’t be so rigid that you aren’t willing to evolve it with the actual story.

STEP FOUR: ACTUAL PLAN

Personally, this is what works for me for an Actual Plan rather than a distorted rough narrative plan.

- I decide on how many chapters I want in the fic. Usually, about 12 because my chapters are lengthy. Then I set out a long line of numbers.

etc.

and I plan out exactly what is supposed to happen in that chapter all the way out to the end, using the rough narrative plan as a basis. Think of these as summaries. You don’t NEED to put down dialog or exactly who is doing what all the time, but you should be able to picture the scene(s) in your head.

AND

There should, ideally, be at least ONE thing you are excited to write in every chapter, or writing the fic will be a burden on your soul.

OUTLINE FOR THE WEEPING SIREN CHAPTER 4

-End chapter 3.

-Thor tells them the next morning to gather their strength because they’re going deeper into the woods to find the girl, says that she can’t be far. THEY LEAVE THE HORSES IN THE VILLAGE. They stay overnight for another three days without successes, only faint moaning and all of them are exhausted.

-Thor says that they should stay there, and he and Prince Tjan are going to go hunting.

-They stay where they are, and set up the tents as Loki attempts to start the fire without much success

-The others teasing him, Loki’s kind of like “I’m done!” and starts to walk off, but then the Weeping Siren attacks.

^^^ this was, side note, the original scene I wrote for this fic.

-All of them panic and scramble to make any sort of defense against the Weeping Siren with very little success.

-Hogan gets dragged off and all of them panic, attempting to search for them, but feel sorcery wash over them, freezing them in place. Sif screams, and Loki is the only one to escape somewhat. Tries for an attack, and the Weeping Siren catches him and Loki pleads with her to spare the WT and Sif’s lives.

-WT and Sif are startled.

-Loki insists that he’s more valuable, he’s the second prince of Asgard, he’ll make a good ransom.

-The Weeping Siren says something like “you are weary, child. You do not think clearly. This is salvation.”

-And then she hits Loki over the head with a rock or something, and Sif and the WT panic. Loki crumples into unconsciousness, and the Weeping Siren gathers him into her arms like a lost pup

-Puts the rest of them to sleep.

-end chapter 4.

The benefits of doing it on a chapter by chapter basis is that you -- generally -- know what’s going to happen in the fic later and can foreshadow and plan accordingly. It’s not some big mess that you hopelessly untangle yourself from. you’re less likely to have narrative inconsistences. AND. you can watch yourself get closer to the end of the fic which is just a boost of serotonin. Because you know how many chapters there are (ish) so when you get to chapter ten you’re like “Oh! Great! Two more chapters to go!”

(And then it turns out to be three but that’s okay we all enjoy suffering anyway)

if you really don’t want to do a chapter by chapter plan, here’s what I recommend instead:

KNOW THE MIDDLE. THE BEGINNING. AND THE END.

Fill in the bits in-between with “I would like this to happen about here” and kind of work your way from there.

STEP FIVE: WRITE. Adjust plan as needed.

It is extremely unlikely that you will write the entire fic without adjusting your plan once. You may get halfway through the story and realize that it’s not going to work this way, so then you have to restart the plan from that point on. I did that with the Loki and Clint mentioned above a few weeks ago and I feel like it’s much better now than it was originally.

Honestly, most of my fics I start planning AFTER I’ve written the first chapter in it’s entirety, which is why I’ll post a fic and then not update it for like four months much to everyone’s frustration. XD

Hopefully this made sense, and please feel free to add any thoughts on how you plan your fics successfully or any questions you may have. <3

#fics #my fics #how to plan a fic #fanfiction #fic advice

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roanniom · 9 months

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Issa, how do you write so beautifully? Like the stories you weave are unreal. I’m just starting out and I’m worried I’ll never be as good.

Oh my gosh anon, thanks for your kind words but please don’t be discouraged.

First of all, I literally have an honors degree in creative writing. And I have a masters degree that has a focus on story development. So that’s a very specific advantage. It would actually be a really bad thing if I wasn’t at least marginally okay at this stuff lol.

But mainly I’ve been writing and sharing fanfic off and on since I was 12. I am 29. So time and practice are also on my side.

I’ve shared a lot more specific fic writing advice on here (I think I tagged it all #ficwriting ) but I truly stand by the advice that you have to write to entertain yourself. Do you have a fantasy? Something you’d like to live through or pretend to live through? Write it down for yourself. Inject a character you love if you’re going for a certain fandom.

It is all about writing scenarios you enjoy envisioning. The rest comes with time ♥️

#fic writing #fic advice #anon

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jacky-rubou · 1 year

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Hey guys. I'm wondering if I should post my Blind!Ford fic as I finish the chapters or if I should keep writing it all at once like I've been doing. I've gotten to a point where I could possibly post a chapter soon but I'm unsure.

#gravity falls #ford pines #stanford pines #au #fic advice #blind ford #the only thing I'd be worried about is losing motivation #but i want to get this fic out when i can to hopefully garner more interest over time than just dumping it all at once haha #i am at a quandary

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ivedonemywaiting · 1 year

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Dearest mutuals, I need some advice! How do you deal with less than polite comments on your fics?

I don’t want to silence anyone by deleting their comment, and I want to listen to any and all feedback, but also want to maintain a respectful tone in the comments section…. So I responded thoughtfully and thoroughly to the comment but am unsure how to proceed.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated x

#author asks #fic advice

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pastafossa · 1 year

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how long did it take for your fanfiction to start getting some recognition? did you "advertise" it or "promote" it in any way?

i know that people say this doesn't matter, but i feel like even if you love writing the feeling that you're just talking to yourself gets pretty exhausting at some point. so i'm not talking about having thousands of readers but rather like. what's your advice to have readers at least?

- someone who hasn't even started writing their ideas yet...

LONG POST INCOMING.

First I want you (and everyone else reading who may be struggling with this) to know I'm absolutely with you and generally think 'it doesn't matter' is a horseshit answer. It's this weird thing we do in fanfic that we generally don't apply to other artforms that I've seen. If you're a painter, a playwriter, a novel writer, and you say, 'I want at least a few people to love my paintings, I want some people to come see my play, I want my novel to be published and do at least ok' we all support them, we nod, we agree, we talk about how they can do that successfully. It's considered normal to want some amount of success. But hold up fanfic instead and it becomes, 'how dare you want that praise, you're being egotistical, you should be writing only for yourself'. I'm not saying you can't do that - there are some who do - but it's definitely this bizarre switchup to say there's this single artform in which we can't want attention on our work and that there's something wrong with us if we do. That can be an absolute creativity killer depending on what kind of writer you are (hi, extrovert writer here who only gets writy writy juice from social interaction - aka comments and discussion. So I totally get it being exhausting just doing this on your own).

So let me say this categorically: you're allowed to want things. You're allowed to want kudos, comments, and hits. You're allowed to want messages and asks. You're allowed to want some readers you can talk with about your story.

You. Are. Allowed.

Ok, now that that's out of the way.

Edit: more below the cut cause I didn't realize the length of this on mobile

TRT definitely didn't get popular overnight. The first four chapters were sporadic, and then I took a hiatus due to life things for a couple years. During that time, it kept slowly ticking up bit by bit on AO3, with occasional comments. Iirc it was hovering somewhere around 700 kudos by the time I came back in Jan 2021 - and that's a awesome! It's big! But it's also a number that was gained over a few years, to put it in perspective. It absolutely took off after I came back though, and over the past 2 years both TRT's popularity and the stats of my one-shots in the fandom have grown. Part of that's just the time frame (TRT's been up about 6 years), but it's also due to a couple things that I think built up TRT's popularity.

Building a tumblr presence was huge. Ironically I didn't really intend to do it for advertising; I just wanted a place readers could ask questions or we could all freak out about Matt or I could post some drabbles or updates on the fic. But considering the fact that AO3 and tumblr are the top fic sites online, I wound up promoting my fics unintentionally just by being a friendly, happy tumblr user and fandom goer. All I did was follow the courtesy rules I knew - post stuff regularly, reblog, comment, make friends with other writers, just be friendly in your neighborhood because you love the lady with the gif flower shop on the corner or the wise old pizza maker who serves hot fandom takes all day long. I built familiarity with my writing and name by posting short fics, and by taking part in challenges and prompt lists and short requests for drabbles if I saw them, though that's something that's hard to do if you don't have time (I've got less time now, but I started this blog in the early pandemic so I had aaaaall the time in the world to write and was using it to stay sane). I tagged religiously because I LOVE tags, but that helped, too. Tumblr's search system is half broken but the half that works means people CAN find your writing even if they aren't following. Doing all this over here got me a huge boost over on AO3.

I will say that if you can have a fandom tiktok presence, there's a lot of fic reviewers, edits, and good stuff that can get your fic some readers (I've had some people do this on tiktok for TRT and it sent a surge over). I personally haven't done anything there yet, in part because while I'm on tiktok I try to keep my actual, real person accounts separate from my fic/fandom accounts and i haven't bothered to make a second account solely dedicated to the Pasta name yet.

Longfics on AO3 have the advantage in fic stats in the sense that every time you add a chapter, it gets bumped to the top of the front page and you get seen again. Eventually a lot of people will click out of curiosity. They may not, however, give you a lot of user subs or add to your other fic stats at first, whereas if you do a bunch of oneshots you're more likely to get user subs but less hits on each fic. This is a decision you'll have to make, and I know folks in both camps who built their followings using different methods on each. Either way, it helps if you're posting regularly, either in a long fic or one-shots. I call this the Stephen King method, who said he just writes a ton and throws it all at the wall, and eventually you get enough good despite the bad that you start building a following.

Learn learn learn. This is standard fic advice I always give, but it's still relevant. I think one of the reasons imo TRT has done so well is that I've spent a lot of time over the years learning how to write and edit - I read a ton of books (sometimes just to figure out HOW good authors structure their stories), I took a lot of English classes, I've taken some creative writing courses in my spare time. That two year hiatus was heavily spent doing a lot of research and practice around an original novel I want published one day. And I used ALL of that in TRT, just to see what it was like to put it all together. Be hungry for knowledge, be hungry to learn. The more you learn, the better your fic will be, and the more people that will click.

That learning also includes a looooong string of fanfics that started at a very novice level (hello 12 year old me), to fics that were ok and did moderately well but weren't anything huge. Hell, I had a tumblr account for my previous fandoms before I wandered over to Pastafossa, and while those fics did decently, I never had the huge reaction I've gotten here. But I used each and every one of those fics to learn and grow and adapt. Treat your own fics the same way. If it doesn't get hits, try to learn from it before moving on to the next idea a little wiser and a slightly better writer than before. There will always be people who start to follow you along the way.

A small one, but important: I swear to god, do not shit-talk yourself. Not in the summary, not in the tags, not in the A/Ns. I'm not talking, 'this is my first fic!' That's fine. I mean trashing your own work. Shit like, 'ha ha this sucks, it's terrible but oh well' will absolutely lower your stats, because people will believe you and will ditch your fic. On top of that, it's just mean to yourself, and as I said above, you want to be a good person in the fandom neighborhood. That means not breaking the windows of your own house.

People generally think of summaries as a side note, but a shitty summary can absolutely tank your stats. Treat it like the rest of your fic - this is the trailer before the movie, and it's a huge element of what gets people interested in the first place.

Lastly, like I said at the top, the biggest factor is time. There are people who post one fic and explode in popularity, absolutely. But far, far more little followings are built on the bones of time, of abandoned fics, of muttering and highlighting phrases in books in the middle of the night, of trying and trying and trying until we have at last have a breakthrough and then drag that breakthrough forward with us to the next fic. TRT is absolutely one part lightning in a bottle - the biggest success I've ever had anywhere with my writing, a confluence of fandom factors and world events that gave people (and me!) time to write and read. But it's also standing on the back of whole lot of fics I wrote that look like everyone else's: ones with no comments, low interaction, insults; ones where I had precisely zero idea of what I was doing, but wanted to try anyway. And the way I got through that, as a writer who needs interaction in order to create, was by building friendships in fandom so that even when a fic didn't do all that well, I still had friends I could talk to about the characters, the world, the fandom itself. I asked friends to look them over and give advice. I had friends being my cheerleaders. And if you're an extrovert like me, or just a writer who needs that to create, then those connections are vital as you build up a following.

That's a lot of what I've done. I know there are other ways to build a following, but this is generally what I've done, what I've learned to do, and it seems to have worked. Just remember that there are no bad fics - just learning opportunities. Learn something, and that fic's a success, and work as hard as you can to make those fandom connections to carry you through the process.

I absolutely hope to see your work around one day, so that I can be on of those followers!

#writing advice #fic advice #fic tips #building a following #fanfic #fic #writing tips #tbh i was shocked and still kind of am by how popular trt's become #because i have had ZERO previous experiences in my fic writing time that aligned #BUT #there are absolutely things I did in hindsight I think that helped a ton #and all of the practice and writing fic including the ones with zero interaction helped #i learned how to be a good fandom goer even when i didn't write #because i genuinely loved my little neighborhoods #and i used a lot of that when i started writing again cause why wouldn't i???#also avoid petty fandom drama you don't need to waste your energy on it #i WANT my blog to generally be a positive space cause i've got shit going on elsewhere and i don't need more #but that also means i think that people like wandering through cause they know there's a lot of happy things here #be the person in the neighborhood watering your daisies and putting out a rainbow pinwheel even when ted down the block #is feuding with susan up the block over the height of ted's fence

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jackwolfes · 2 months

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Fic questionssss

If you're writing a specific au (a Disney au or smt, for example) how do you fit the characters you want to write into the roles in the au? (this probably isn't very clear so, like, as an example: fitting wesper into beauty and the beast)

What do you do when dialogue isn't flowing right?

Do you use writing prompts often in long fics?

omg hello love!! i have a bunch of answers, apologies if they're a bit incoherent today 😅

1: i totally get what you mean with like, pre-set AUs and fitting characters to this. i think you can get a LOT of really OOC AUs like this but for me the key thing is just accepting that to write an AU of an existing story, you will need to change things about the original setting or plot. like i have seen some where people are so clearly trying to shove two characters into existing scenarios where they just don't fit, and often dynamics that are just??? not thought through?? and i think that generally these types of AUs are fun when you use them as a spring board rather than a doctrine. regency wesper au is a very good example of this because it's not really a bridgerton au, because that just wouldn't work??? for a dozen reasons. and a few times when drafting i had them do things that were just wildly OOC so i had to restart and think about what they would do in that situation, damn the fact it changes the actual fundamental narrative of the source AU. which honestly comes from just having a good grasp of both the AU source and the fic source and really consciously trying to make connections in what is both explicitly written and left vague

2: dialogue can be SUCH a struggle but i find it's sticking worse when i'm trying to get characters to say things that i want them to/that progress the plot, rather than getting them to say what i think they'd say? which can at times be a hint that you're forcing them unnaturall into something, so it can be a good time to review what you're trying to make them do and why. i also reread/watch source material when this happens to reacquaint with their actual voice, which sometimes helps!! and when in doubt, filling in with a place holder like '"something about character a's pretty eyes," said character b' and coming back to it can help keep up flow without getting totally bogged down in the, minutae

3: i don't really use like, those long lists of writing prompts that you get on tumblr (like these) for anything at all other than lil ficlets, but i readily and freely draw inspiration from many things in life (artwork, music, general tumblr posts, other media, shit that happens to me irl, stuff my partner/friends say about the fic i'm working on or just generally)!! i think for me it's more about letting inspiration come freely and snatching up opportunities when they get my creative beans flowing rather than seeking out answers - although i do think that those long prompt list type posts can be a good way of thinking about things generally and think it's great to encourage if it works for you!

#violets-and-books #asks #advice #fic advice #long post

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