#helloooo back 2 my roots | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stiltonbasket · 3 years

Note

For the renouncement verse I’d love to see a continuation of the one with Xichen and Lan Qiren, with pregnant-with-a-girl wwx being gently coerced to be lazy for once in his life by, apparently, the entire lan clan

(author’s note: double prompt this time! and please please reblog if you can, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

Anon 2: helloooo for the renouncement verse, do you have anything during wei ying's pregnancy, like lwj fretting over wwx bc i feel that wwx would still do crazy experiments even whille he's pregnant?

Wei Wuxian is not particularly good at sitting still.

In fact, everyone who knew him at Lotus Pier when he was a child—and everyone he met at the Cloud Recesses, too—knows that he prefers scaling little cliffs and swimming and climbing trees to resting, even under a physician’s orders; and that never really changed until the last four years of his first life, which were riddled with barely-hidden illness after the loss of his golden core.

But his resurrection returned him to full health, and full strength, so that even the strange fits of nausea that began soon after his wedding (which Wei Wuxian naturally blamed on the bland cuisine of his married home) turned out to be a baby instead of some weird kind of mountain plague. Lan Zhan hasn’t been worrying any less since they found out about the little one, of course—if anything, he seems to be worrying more—but the point is that Wei Wuxian is well into his fourth month, which means that his sensitive stomach is back to normal again, along with his dislike for staying in bed.

And since Wei Wuxian is only with child instead of actually sick, why would he stay in bed when he could be up and causing trouble? He wouldn’t, and he won’t, which is why he cheerfully disregards all of Lan Xichen’s warnings about rest and spends the fifth day after the healers give them the news experimenting in the jishi.

With fire talismans.

And smokescreens.

And a great many other things that horrify Lan Zhan past the point of speech when he comes crashing into the workshop, and get Wei Wuxian bundled right back into bed with Xiao-Yu keeping watch to ensure that he remains there.

(He also set the jishi’s chimney on fire, which was probably why his husband broke the door down instead of lifting the locking talisman, now that he thinks about it.)

“You cannot take such risks,” Lan Zhan says hoarsely, cradling Wei Wuxian’s flushed face in his hands and pressing their brows together. “Wei Ying, xingan, anything could have happened if you had breathed in the smoke, or if you grew lightheaded while the door was locked, you—my darling, please, please leave such dangerous things for after the baby is born. It is not safe for either of you.”

“It was only a little fire,” Wei Wuxian protests, before Lan Zhan leans in and presses a fervent kiss to his lips. “And I had purification talismans in the room to keep the air clean, anyway. I’m fine.”

“Suppose they had failed?” his husband counters, tracing the curve of his cheek with a finger that shakes so much that Wei Wuxian nearly bursts into tears at the sight of it. “Suppose the fire spread from the hearth, and you could not put it out in time? What would I have done then, Wei Ying, with my heart’s beloved and my child in danger?”

“Well, I suppose...”

“No more experiments,” Lan Zhan tells him. “At least none that you cannot safely perform in the jingshi with Xiao-Yu and myself close by. Please, sweetheart.”

Wei Wuxian promises to stay out of his workroom, since he still hasn’t quite worked out how to say no to Lan Zhan yet; but he does refuse to keep off his feet, because that suggestion comes from Lan Xichen instead of Lan Zhan.

“Find something safe for me to do, then!” he complains. “I’m not an invalid, Xichen-ge! In fact, I feel stronger than ever. I’m going to go swimming tomorrow, just wait—”

“You will do no such thing!” Lan Xichen cries, horrified. “Suppose you catch cold? It is nearly winter, a fever of the lungs this late in the year could kill you!”

And then he tells Lan Zhan, the traitor, and gets Wei Wuxian banned from entering any body of water except for Zewu-jun’s hot spring until the baby arrives. He isn’t even supposed to bathe there without supervision, because the warm water might make him dizzy enough to drown without someone there to watch him even if it does wash the tension out of his back and shoulders.

Even Lan Qiren seems to be determined to keep both Wei Wuxian and the little one in the best of health, which he discovers when he stalks over to his uncle-in-law’s house in the sixth month to tell him that Lan Zhan and Lan Xichen are being tyrants.

“I’m not allowed to mess around in the jishi anymore,” Wei Wuxian grouses, counting on his fingers as Lan Qiren sighs and fills up his plate with braised pork and plenty of healthy greens, seasoned strongly enough that even Wei Wuxian wouldn’t mind eating a full serving of them. “I’m not allowed to go swimming—” and here Lan Qiren pours him a cup of sweet soymilk and pushes the dish of warm potatoes closer to Wei Wuxian’s side of the table— “and I can’t even teach anymore, since I lost my balance and sprained my wrist in the lanshi just one time!”

“You are heavier than you used to be,” the older man observes. “If you had not caught yourself in time, the fall could have seriously hurt you, let alone the baby.”

Wei Wuxian lays his head down on the table—as well as he can, that is, with the baby in the way—and groans. “I know,” he says, aggrieved. “It’s not that I want to put us in danger, but I’m so bored, and I have to be useful somehow.”

Lan Qiren freezes with a cup of tea halfway to his lips. “Useful?”

“I’m the Chief Cultivator’s husband, xiansheng. I can’t just sit around doing nothing,” Wei Wuxian huffs. “If I can’t work on my talismans, and I can’t teach, and Zewu-jun won’t let me do any of the sect work because he’s afraid I’ll get tired, what can I do?”

The teacup thumps back onto the table with a sharp clattering sound. “Wei Ying. Nephew, that is enough. I will hear no more of this.”

Wei Wuxian lifts his head in surprise. “Ah?”

“You are not here to be useful,” Lan Qiren says severely. “We are your family, and this is your home, and you may do whatever you please in it. Have you been so poorly treated here that you must sit here before me, scarcely three months from your confinement, and fret about doing nothing when you ought to be resting and preparing for the child’s arrival? Because I will have words with Wangji if so, make no mistake, and—”

“Lan-xiansheng, no!” Wei Wuxian cries. “That’s not what I mean, it’s just…”

He has the rest of the denial on the tip of his tongue, but a tear rolls down his nose and plops onto the steaming lotus roots before he can say anything.

It hardly makes sense to him at first, because he truly does love tinkering with spells and talismans in his workshop, making cultivation as accessible to people without golden cores as he can, and he loves teaching the baby disciples and going on night-hunts with his own faithful little flock of juniors; but his body has made its exhaustion very clear in the past several weeks, and sometimes all he wants to do is curl up in Lan Zhan’s arms and sleep the day away with his childrens’ voices keeping him company from the next room.

And Lan Zhan wants him to rest and let him dote on him more than anything, so why does Wei Wuxian keep fighting it?

“It’s not his fault,” he murmurs, dimly aware that the plate of hot-and-sour potatoes looks suspiciously damp. “It’s just… me, I guess.”

“Eat your food,” Lan Qiren tells him, sounding suspiciously gentle as he puts a sweet bean cake into Wei Wuxian’s bowl. “And make sure you finish your tea, I put strengthening herbs in it.”

His uncle-in-law comes back to the jingshi with him after lunch, along with Lan Xichen, and the three of them have a very long talk with Lan Zhan while Sizhui and Jingyi babysit Xiao-Yu; Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren offer him and Lan Zhan advice, and Lan Zhan pulls Wei Wuxian into his lap and comforts him without bothering about the impropriety of it, until he can finally nod off to sleep when the two of them are alone again.

“I’m really not a bother to you, Lan Zhan?” he whispers, tucking his face against his husband’s chest and listening to his heartbeat. “You don’t—mind, that I can’t do very much with this baby?”

“No, never,” Lan Zhan chokes. “Wei Ying, why didn’t you just tell me you were feeling this way? You cannot imagine how much I want—how I need—”

“Need what?”

“Let me look after you, sweetheart,” his husband pleads. “Let me look after you both. Give me the privilege of satisfying my beloved’s every wish, and soothing your fears when your heart is heavy, and keeping you and our little one well. Please, xingan?”

(Upon further reflection, perhaps it is a good thing that he never learned to say no to Lan Zhan, after all.)

#wangxian #mo dao zu shi #the untamed #renouncement verse #my fic #wangxian arranged marriage au

213 notes · View notes

alittlefrenchtree · 3 years

Text

Helloooo! Guess who’s back? The Dune notes! yaayyyyy!

ok, chill.

SPOILERS BOOK 2 : MUAD’DIB (Chapters 1-4)

Chapter 1:

I’m still struggling to get all the politic aspects and understand who’s on which side but that’s not what I’m focusing on right now. Once I’ve read the whole thing and had the whole picture, I’ll study all the details of this part of the story.

I loved this quote:

in the French translation, and thought it was beautiful to see Arrakis through Paul’s mind and eyes only to find out that the original quote said stuff like Cheddar-colored. Damn you, American people.

Chapter 2:

Bless you, Muad’Dib, your father and Princess Irulan. Might your words be heard loud and clear on every planet of every universe.

I love, love, love this chapter. This whole conversation between Hawat and the Fremen, the world building made through it and through the Fremen is really good. I don’t think the Fremen has a name because he’s exactly what he describing of his people. He’s only one to serve the whole clan.

Many interesting stuff about the conversation and the scene.

First, I wonder if the Mentat’s abilities can work on Fremens? This part seems to say that they can’t : "But still he did not know what this Fremen wanted and this rankled. Mentat training was supposed to give a man the power to see motives." Then here again : "He said worm. He was going to say something else. What? And what does he want of us?" It’s funny to see how Hawat’s powers seem to be limited after we saw part of what Jessica and Paul were able to do.

"You must make a water decision, friend."

is my favorite quote of the chapter. The whole chapter is built to make Hawat and the reader really understand how primordial the water is. Blood doesn’t exist in the Fremen’s mouth, life is all boiled down to water. They doesn’t seem to care about the Spice either. When he’s thinking in terms of currency, it’s not about the Spice or money, it’s still about water:

"You think we have the Byzantine corruption. You don’t know us. The Harkonnen have not water enough to buy the smallest child among us."

It’s one thing I find fascinating about sci-fi/fantasy writers who are creating whole new worlds in different universes. It’s not only about thinking about crazy new technologies or super powers or anything like this. It’s when they shift the whole logic because context is different and you see it in the smallest details, in ways of speaking, in turns of phrases. It’s where you find so much richness for a fandom. And get so easily immersed in the said new universe. Every time I'll get really thirsty in the future, I'll think about this chapter. And the water decision.

I’m guessing water is one of Dune’s real plot? Every stranger coming to Arrakis comes for the Spice, thinking it’s the goldmine of the planet, the way to conquer it and truly owns it. But it’s not and the Fremen are still the one owning the desert powers because they’re the only one seeing that Arrakis needs to be ruled by water and not by the Spice? I don’t know. But that’s where my guesses are heading at the moment.

About this,

I’m really curious about how they’re going to handle on screen the deep religious roots of a large part of the story. We all know how tricky it can be. Is it going to be tone down? Are we going to see people living in the desert worship a young white male? We’ll see.

Chapter 3:

It’s cute to see how, even if Paul sees himself as a some kind of monster or as something else and undefined, he’s still sensitive to what he sees with his powers of prescience. But it's difficult to get a grip on what he is exactly, and how he feels.

Ok-- wait a minute. Last time I’ve heard about Liet, it was supposed to be a local divinity and now… Liet is Kynes. Ok. If you say so. — does it mean there going to be some kind of competition between Liet and the Muad’Dib? About who has the biggest divine aura? About who’s supposed to lead?

Anyway, what Kynes says, it goes with what I mention earlier. About how all the different people who came on Arrakis have failed to make it a Paradise because they were all focused on the Spice instead of the water.

I love how convenient Paul and Jessica are as characters to introduce the descriptions of every room they step in. You can go wild on details and just be like that’s not me, the bene gesserit/mentat/whatever Paul is things are calling for all. the. details. I should do that. Only write characters who allow me to naturally waste 7 lines of words on the pattern of a wallpaper. Frank Herbert doesn’t do that, but I definitely would.

Again, it’ll be interesting to see how Tim is going to handle the Paul and Kynes’ confrontation/conversation. We’ve seen him touch on these kind of feelings and behavior with The King but Paul seems to require a lot more of everything. So I’m impatient to see.

And I’ve already leaked the quote but let's look at it once more time. Quickest way to prove Timmy is the right cast for Paul.

"In this moment he'd give his life for Paul, she thought. How do the Atreides accomplish this thing so quickly, so easily?"

Because that’s what Timmy does, right? Makes people ready to give their life for him.

Ok about Duncan… We’re back at it, right? He’s not dead until I’ve seen the body. And I didn’t see the body so, he’s not dead. I think? Paul’s abilities don’t seem to be 100% reliable (at least not yet) so even if he believes Duncan’s dead, he might not be. I certainly hope so. My boy Jason deserves more.

I still wonder how the power of prescience is working. Are the blind spots blind because Paul is living through them at the moment and can’t have knowledge of the immediate future OR would they have been blind even if he had looked in their direction long before?

I was also wondering if Paul was going to rely too much on the new dimension of his abilities and how long it was going to take until he realized he made that mistake. It was… quick but I guess it’s Paul, so it shouldn't be surprising.

And that fear litany ❤️ I could kill to write something as iconic and powerful. I could read it every day and still got the chills each time.

Chapter 4:

The Baron is like me, he needs to see bodies to believe in death. I’m delighted to have common ground with that creepy, disgusting asshole. Delighted. To be honest, I’m not that interested with the Baron himself. So far, he’s been nothing but clichés over clichés and really not the best ones. He’s the evil character so he's all the kinds of evil. Shocker. I usually like evil characters (very often more than I love "good" ones) but not him. Really not him. I hope it'll change but I’m afraid he’s too far gone and beyond redemption.

I’m very interested by what’s Hawat is going to become though. Will he turn his allegiance to the Baron? It kind of remind me of Teal’c in Stargate SG-1, but the other way around. The Baron opposes two things : Hawat’s loyalty and his admiration towards those who calculate without emotions. Based on what we know about Mentats and how the human part carried by the human body overpower the Mentat’s education and training, I’d say loyalty should win? And the part of me who is part Mentat agrees on the loyalty so, we’re all good. But it can be an interesting storyline, so I’m waiting for it.

What’s funny about this quote

is that he could very much be talking about Paul and still be right. Or the baby sister. Or Lady Jessica. All Harkonnens are waiting.

And what’s also funny is how The Baron thinks of Feyd-Rautha. In addition of being absolutely disgusting there are some similarities between what the Baron wants for Feyd and what Paul is meant to be/already is.

I wonder if Feyd is meant to become some kind of opposite alter-ego to Paul. A better, more subtle opposant than the Baron. Could be fun.

You know what? Every time I start this kind of post, I said to myself: I'm pretty sure I haven't that many notes this time, it should be quick. And then here we are again 🤷🏻‍♀️ See you next time! 🌖💛

#DUNE FIRST READ

15 notes · View notes

touyaz · 2 years

Note

Hey! my hair is straight up black and curly but i managed to bleach to a level 9 without burning it! it took me 2 times. Ask on the stores where you bought the materials if they have some sort of alternative plex. It really helps. Also, tip! Also get someone to help you. Remember the mix only lasts 40 minutes from the moment you make it. Start from the back bc that parts has less heat and it will take more to bleach. (next)

Try to work the sides simultaniously. Also, for it to be uniform, you have to saturate the sections. MAKE YOUR ROOTS AT THE END. (the heath of your scalp will make that process super fast and it could burn you). Depending on the developer you'll get a higher tone. U can use 30 vol. (40 works too but is very strong and can ruin your hair very easily). Once you wash it, take a little of hair and see the elasticity. If is a little elastic, don't bleach it again. Wait AT LEAST 2 weeks

helloooo!!! I really do appreciate you sending this advice in, thank u so much!!! I have absolutely no desire to actually bleach my hair tho LOL

#i dont want my hair to be like. Bright Blue. i just want a subtle dark blue :'))#but thank u for sending this in regardless & im glad it worked on your hair!! <333 #anon

1 note · View note

divinaes-bookofsecrets · 3 years

Note

Helloooo love!

Are you spirit readings still available?

Hello there 👋 my darling .. starting at 7:18pm I have effectively channeled your Spirit Guide through my special Shamanic Healing Journey experience and have come to find out that you've got so many Spiritusl Guardians , some of yoyr Spirit Guides are angelic realm goddess angels and even Archangels .. (x3 of them ) and you've got two elemental realm mystical beings for Spurit Guiees .. I believe i have connected with a very shy fairy witch goddess named OlivineRavenn and she's a very special creature because her mythological background is actually ♥ in my particular heritage...

I am more than 1/3 Finnish from Finland, my Mothers nordic bloodline of Scandinavian heritage makes me a strong Shamanic Healer& I'm an eclectic-earth witch myself, who's path is mystic Shamanism and Also my (other) half of heritage which is Native American, that's where I get my roots of shamanism from, but Finland is what keeps my Shaman blood thick with culture traditions that I can folliw without people telling me I'm too white to be practicing native traditions

I am an Albino Indian

Your Spirit Guide is telling me that she is , too, the same mux as me now..

(I suppose that was your Spirit Guide talking through md, going on n on about herself but counting like talking about meee lolol)..

I suppose that makes more sense now, knowing how her symbolism (Raven/crow)

But , with your Particularly Shamanic Session i will have to cut it short since you've not payed by donation yet., Im only going to go as far as your Spirit Guides let me within 2 +1/2 hrs of work because I cannot continue to work for FREE, !!

Especially in financial recession i need real support since I've got no secure income working as a psychic advisor.

So, id appreciate it if you'd help me meet my goal of reaching $120 by tomorrow ,so far I've got $12.11 so pleaee I suggest that you make a donation of $9 or more: is my time and effort not worth so so very much more ? I know my skilkset is far more valuable than onky a $10 tip so pleaee make my day , because the PayPal youllbe donating to is my coven cancer fund , and its for myself and my Dad, we both have Cancer and both also have home care(nursing staff)

that are hired to come x5 a week but I've cut down to x3 a week and now my schedule is going to ( as of next week ) going to be less than x4 hrs of nurses per week !! 😮😯😲😳😳🤯😵🥶😱🤮🤮🙀😬😬😬 mb link to PayPal is in all my other posts, you shoukd see it easily , www.paypal.me/ripleysreadings

Your Spirit Guide Reading Cont'...⚡⚡❄❣🌸🌿🕷🌏🦋

OlivivneRavenn is a fairy witch goddess of 🔥 fire Nd earth 🌎 and her current image is as follows (she looks just like thus photo, shc has dark hair and dark eyes .

Your Spirit Guide is legendary!

Shrouded in legendary mystery, has been a prominent character in the Underground Scandinavian Folklore legends and Fairytale...She was the sister and aid to King Gatae himself. In some of the legends, OlivineRavenn saves King Gatae by whisking him off to WhiteRabbitCity after a fatal battle. In her witch goddess form, OlivineRavenn is an elemental master and herbalist.

Part fairy, she was a priestess of WhiteRabbitCity and consort to the Lady of the Lakes. Moreover, she possessed the ability to cross into other worlds and realms. Invoke OlivindRavenn, fairy witch goddess, when working with fairies and elementals, parting the veil, and casting magic with herbs. Her symbol is the raven or crow.

It is now 10: 04 pm

Here is one image of your goddess , SpiritGuide

Anybody looking for a Spirit Guide session with me to do their Shamanic Healing Journey experience 🙏 please remember that I can't work fir FREE and that channeling intuitively takes hours , like fir example: do you see the time I started this reading at ? 7 o'clock now it ten ... crazy.. time flies. Nos pleaee everybody understand that i have cancer and need to pay for urgent homd care services and that I've got NO OTHER INCOME besides this psychic advisor job title which j have lost my high paying job at The Purple Ocean Psychics🔮 App on Google🤔 now I'm sort of doing charity psychic readings here on Tumblr anc on instagrsm bug thix cannot happen ang longer!!

I really need to af least make enough to feed myself because this month i survived off one leaf of bread and half a jar of peanut butter...

But I did manage to bum a bag of rice from my next door neighbor but ghrg are a frank pot an z bit of a pervert an id rather NOT had to go back over there , fir nothing I jusf don't wanna pug myself jn that situation . Please hell md people!!

14 notes · View notes

kape-theory · 4 years

Text

A STUDY ON MY COMPLETED WIPS' ROOT ELEMENTS: because i am both bored and itching to write, just not actually write the wip im working on the mo, always glad

LOVE BITES.

werewolf

the idea of smexy w/o the smexy

a very deadpan, no-nonsense female protag

short storyyyyy

TFSU.

dual partnership that transcends romantic inclinations. partners to lovers? i only know bastards to bastard partners

a character devoid of human emotion who gets triggered by his partner

is a chemist

likes to torture people

finds the fun in experimentation

and using that data immediately on unbeknownst test subjects

and then his partner, the always grinning, slightly sneaky, ready to go to pound town 24/7

is a pure pup with a demonic side, actually

the implied sexual congress/tango between them, perpetually brought up (and shaken) by the always grinning one

and then their babysitter, the very tired agent, send help

fucking plot twists

crime syndicates????

duping world class leaders???

for the m o n i e s

sexy action scenes

c a s e s

cosy mystery interpretation in the 21st century

that was not easy btw, since psychologically thrillers are all the new rave u g h

untrustworthy point of case origin/partner in (almost literal) crime

a funky protagonist who you sometimes can't trust (comes off w/ major yandere vibes)

creepy dead body

plot twist after plot twist

ngl there are only two plot twists. i think

the very small town vibes

gASP ANOTHER DEAD BODY?

crazy ass perpetrator

DOAP.

our sleuths dancing the tango of slowburn + romance

gASP A FRIEND IS DEAD?

dead friend committed self-inflicted murder. how? call now!

MORE BACKSTORIES FOR THESE DANG SLEUTHS

depression is sexily back (bc my friend is a dumbass who killed himself. sorta)

plot twist after plot twist after-

you get the idea

more 3d secondary characters yay!

protagonist gets kidnapped. twice

sprinkled humour abound, you have been warned

HUMAN FUCKING TRAFFICKING

2 epilogues

dead friend might not actually be dead at all

everyone is hiding something but everyone is still at fault lol

and then there were none sexier vibes

SHIT ON PAUSED.

HPR.

royalty!!!

deception tactics. monarchy vs the people

(i hear the revolutionists)

small town black girl aspiring to be an actress, gets tangled with all of this !!

sexy, quiet, socially-inept hitmen!

sexy, vivacious leader of your protection unit!

sexiness abound

sexy, terrifying Santa Claus vibes antagonist!

basically just sexy over all, w/o actual sex lmfao

ST.

new adult

guy needs help.

girl is an expert of.

contract made

uh oh

i hear

f e e l i n g s a b o u n d, time to fucking skedaddle

literally the entire plot ^^

really need to fucking finish this wip oh my god i am tiredt

SHIT COMING SOON.

TCT.

con artists vs billionaire

chaos ensues

plot twist!

its actually con artist vs billionaires !

plot twist again!

con artists vs billionaire family!

lies lies lies lies lies

there are no actual decent person in this fucking wip. not a single decent fucking one.

everyone is a whore for the monies

everyone is also conning someone, welcome

everyone is a whore for someone too lol

(incest shit abound eugh)

for dem monies, we can do anything

even fake date

even maybe get some real feelings

and then destroy that trust

con artists, amirite?

SHIT ONGOING.

GMSF.

charming bby sleuths

one who is quiet and likes following mysterious breadcrumbs that has a six fucking sense

and the other, a liar, a recorder, a writer

my precious bbys

this is the one that has a lot fucking plot twists jesus christ

epistolary storytelling method helloooo

more plot twists

there is no one murderer

there are GASPS TWO MORE

and one sort of framed one

#s4 #2020

0 notes

daedriclorde · 4 years

Text

Fic Writer Questions

@kunstpause writes:

The idea behind it from last time:

This is me wanting to hear more from my writing friends. Things about process, personal preferences etc. There are a lot of ask lists going around but not everyone always gets the questions that they want. So I thought of a way to ask couple of things to several people, so there is maybe even a bit of dialogue happening. And if people are having fun with it I’ll come up with a bunch of different questions next week.

Feel free to grab this and tag me back, even if I haven’t tagged you.

xxx

Thanks for the tag @maraleesquill!

1. Do you have a preferred genre to write? Do you like to stay within the rough directions of the genre or do you like to mix and match?

FANTASY. I can’t get enough of it, seriously. Full disclosure, I’ve only written fic for one fandom (Skyrim), so it’s not like I’ve got a lot (or any) experience writing for different genres. But I really don’t see myself leaving fantasy. I might *eventually* branch out from Elder Scrolls (helloooo Witcher and ATLA!) but even then I’d stay within fantasy. I could see myself doing a modern AU someday, but even that would be rooted in fantasy. I just love the worlds you get to create within it!

2. Are you a writer that has a plot idea and then figures out what character(s) to use for that or are you more set on writing (a) specific character(s) and come up with a plot around them?

BOTH. The long winded fic I’m working on now started with the character Aerisif, though she didn’t have a name back then. She was based on the character I was playing in Skyrim, and then I changed a few features for the fanfiction. For that very first one, Homecoming, I created the plot around her.

But after that, I just had so many ideas about where the rest of her adventures could take her. So then it became plot centered, and I took a look at the large cast of characters at my disposal, considered their inherent characteristics, and decided how I could use them in my story. And we are still riding that idea!

3. 1st person, 2nd, 3rd, all knowing narrator or unreliable narrator and so many more choices - do you have a clear preference? Or different ones for different kinds of writing? Do you feel a certain pov works best with a certain setting and if yes, which one?

Personally, I like 3rd limited. I may bounce around which character we’re following from chapter to chapter, but I **try** to limit the knowledge I provide with what that character would know/see/think/feel. So when I’m writing Aerisif, we’re getting the world from her point of view. We get her opinions and judgements, we feel her pains and burdens. But when I’m writing say Farkas, or Brynjolf, we get an entirely different perspective on the world.

Don’t know that I do that entirely effectively, but that’s the goal at least!

Loved this, made me think a little harder about how I write.

@potatocrab, this has your name all over it! And anyone else who writes, this is an open tag!

#fanfic #writing #fanfic questions #writers #writeblr

1 note · View note

richincolor · 6 years

Photo

New Releases

Happy Monday! There are quite a few books dropping this Tuesday, and they all sound pretty amazing. I’m personally really excited for Check, Please! — the gay, pie-filled, hockey comic of my dreams. I’ve been following the webcomic for two years now, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy with bonus tweets (!). What new books (or comics) are you loving?

Analee, In Real Life by Janelle Milanes Ever since her mom died three years ago, Analee Echevarria has had trouble saying out loud the weird thoughts that sit in her head. With a best friend who hates her and a dad who’s marrying a yogi she can’t stand, Analee spends most of her time avoiding reality and role-playing as Kiri, the night elf hunter at the center of her favorite online game.

Through Kiri, Analee is able to express everything real-life Analee cannot: her bravery, her strength, her inner warrior. The one thing both Kiri and Analee can’t do, though, is work up the nerve to confess her romantic feelings for Kiri’s partner-in-crime, Xolkar—aka a teen boy named Harris whom Analee has never actually met in person.

So when high school heartthrob Seb Matias asks Analee to pose as his girlfriend in an attempt to make his ex jealous, Analee agrees. Sure, Seb seems kind of obnoxious, but Analee could use some practice connecting with people in real life. In fact, it’d maybe even help her with Harris. But the more Seb tries to coax Analee out of her comfort zone, the more she starts to wonder if her anxious, invisible self is even ready for the real world. Can Analee figure it all out without losing herself in the process?

Check, Please!: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu Helloooo, Internet Land. Bitty here! Y’all… I might not be ready for this. I may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It’s nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia! First of all? There’s checking. And then, there is Jack—our very attractive but moody captain.

A collection of the first half of the megapopular webcomic series of the same name, Check, Please!: #Hockey is the first book of a hilarious and stirring two-volume coming-of-age story about hockey, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best four years of your life.

Here to Stay by Sara Farizan For most of high school, Bijan Majidi has flown under the radar. He gets good grades, reads comics, hangs out with his best friend, Kenji, and secretly crushes on Elle, one of the most popular girls in his school. When he’s called off the basketball team’s varsity bench and makes the winning basket in a playoff game, everything changes in an instant.

But not everyone is happy that Bijan is the man of the hour: an anonymous cyberbully sends the entire school a picture of Bijan photoshopped to look like a terrorist. His mother is horrified, and the school administration is outraged. They promise to find and punish the culprit. All Bijan wants is to pretend it never happened and move on, but the incident isn’t so easily erased. Though many of his classmates rally behind Bijan, some don’t want him or his type to be a part of their school. And Bijan’s finding out it’s not always easy to tell your enemies from your friends . . .

Pride by Ibi Zoboi Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable.

When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding. But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick’s changing landscape, or lose it all.

Wildcard (Warcross #2) by Marie Lu Emika Chen barely made it out of the Warcross Championships alive. Now that she knows the truth behind Hideo’s new NeuroLink algorithm, she can no longer trust the one person she’s always looked up to, who she once thought was on her side.

Determined to put a stop to Hideo’s grim plans, Emika and the Phoenix Riders band together, only to find a new threat lurking on the neon-lit streets of Tokyo. Someone’s put a bounty on Emika’s head, and her sole chance for survival lies with Zero and the Blackcoats, his ruthless crew. But Emika soon learns that Zero isn’t all that he seems–and his protection comes at a price. Caught in a web of betrayal, with the future of free will at risk, just how far will Emika go to take down the man she loves?

American Road Trip by Patrick Flores-Scott With a strong, loving family, an incredibly loyal best friend, and a budding romance with the girl of his dreams, life shows promise for seventeen-year-old Teodoro “T” Avila. But he takes some hard hits the summer before his senior year when his nearly perfect brother Manny returns from a tour in Iraq with a devastating case of PTSD. In a desperate effort to save Manny from himself and pull their family back together, T's fiery sister Xochitl hoodwinks her brothers into a road trip with many stops along the road to visit loved ones from their past.

#new releases #ya lit #omgcp #we need diverse books #wildcard #long post

190 notes · View notes

xoloveleonie-ss · 6 years

Note

That post about Echo is so on point!!! Many people don't understand the show or some of the characters, Echo included. I don't think they'll change their minds or learn to see the show the way it is actually written, but it's always nice to see there are more people who understand the writing and more importantly, understand Echo.

Thank you so much for this message Anon

I mean i get people not liking Echo since she is a pretty underdeveloped character compared to others, especially when it comes to her backstory before we first meet her. We literally know almost nothing about her life beforehand and most of what we know about her is only from season 4 where she was the “villain” and not a main character with a lot of intricate storytelling where we get to look inside them and see where they are coming from. With Echo you had to put all the puzzle pieces together yourself and connect the dots and if you’re not willing to do that then it was easy to hate her and that carries over to season 5. With Echo you have to put in work and be openminded to completely understand her. You have to be able to take a step back and separate yourself from your love for the mains to be able to see her fully and GET her. With her you don’t get everything handed to you on a silver platter which is why it’s so easy to misunderstand her intentions or hate her. If you’re not willing to put in the work you won’t understand. And that’s not particularily a bad thing, some people just like watching the episodes and be done with it, but in doing so you will inevitably miss important character moments that are maybe to subtle to recognize at first watch.

I feel like the problem with this show and fandom is that this show demands a different type of audience that it actually has in big parts. This show invites you to psychoanalyse the shit out of these characters, to question their morals and in turn your own, to ask yourself what you would have done in a situation. All the characters make morally questionable choices sometimes and (at least for me) there is no single character that has never done something wrong. A big part of this fandom gets this and appreciates it but another big part of the fandom are also shippers who probably honestly care more about their faves getting together (im not talking about a specific ship here, they all have fans like this) than the actual plot. I mean this show is also rooted in family and friendship and relationships but you have to find a balance between the 2 to really appreciate the show for what it is. It shows you the ugly reality and not a fairytale and if you accept that fact the show starts to become so much more fun. It’s a show to analyse, not just simply watch while playing on your phone.

People often justify their hate for Echo by saying “well we didn’t see her develope into this new person, the writers need to show not tell” BUT at this point in time if the writers would show us then the same people will complain about them shoving Echo down their throates and her eating up screen time that could be spend on precious Bellamy or Clarke. People honestly need to make up ther minds. I just recently saw this with a reactor i won’t name that was mad at the Becho scene like “shoving them down our thoates” but in the comment someone said something about Becho being canon and to deal with it and the reactor replied saying Becho just had like 3 scenes and it just doesn’t do it for them. ???????????? i honestly laughed a little because they contradicted themself so much and it just shows that they just WANT to find reasons to keep hating Echo and Becho. And it doesn’t help their case that that person was a Bellamy/CLarke shipper either sooo. I mean most of the reactors are but like..you need to make up your minds peeps or this just won’t work.

I happen to always have been a person who loved the bad characters turning good trope in tv shows. The first show i was obsessed with was probably the vampire diaries and i loved, like LOOOVED Damon and Klaus. Bad people fighting their destructive impulses because they want to be a better person (if for a certain someone they love or themselves doesn’t matter) or just people tormented by their upbringing and them not knowing better back then but now trying their best to be good people even if they don’t always succeed in it (helloooo Echo) is one of my tv show kinks tbh. I could watch that shit all day and not get tired.

So it’s no surprise i started love-hating and later just loving Echo immediately in season 4. Before that she just wasn’t that important of a character for me to really care but i was always intrigued by her.(*whispers* i also started liking Becho since MW, i just KNEW it would happen some day, i smelled that from a mile and 3 seasons away) I JUST LOVE ECHO SO MUCH!! SHE WENT THROUGH A LOT AND SHE DIDN’T KNOW BETTER AND SHE JUST DID WHAT HER PEOPLE NEEDED HER TO DO EVEN IF IT PAINED HER TO DO SO!!! A LOYAL QUEEN!!

I still have hope some people will change their minds on Echo some day, maybe next season if Echo makes it that far. I swear i’m gonna turn religious these days so i can pray for Echo to survive all this bullshit. I don’t even mind Becho breaking up as long as my baby stays alive. Bellamy and Clarke getting together is fine with me, i’m chill with most ships in this show, but my baby needs to not get hurt in the process please.

#echo #echo kom spacekru #echo kom azgeda #the 100 #t100 #becho #ask #i just realised i love getting asks or anonymous messages #og.post

19 notes · View notes

aether-asterisk · 6 years

Text

Halloween in Ebbott Falls - Chapter 2

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

<<In which sacrifices are made as an invasion of the undead takes root from inside the house.>>

oooo here we go! this is where it gets interesting!!!

By the time they got back, the house was silent. The lights were off and an eerie chill swept throughout the halls. Only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room could be heard. Each and every room was vacant, aside from the girls's upstairs bedroom.

Absolute silence.

The door creaked open as Pacifico stepped in. "Helloooo...? Mama? I know you guys didn't leave yet..." Century followed her inside. "They had to have. This house is very much empty." "Nooooo!!!! I wanted to go trick-or-treating!!!" "We can still do that, we don't need--" Thunder crashed. In the light of the window stood a large mysterious figure in the shape of the devil himself for a brief second before the lightning passed. "What was that?!!" Century looked back at the window. The only thing that stood outside was a tree. Pacifico chuckled nervously. "Right, I'm just seeing things! Totally not scared!! Totally not worried that Mr. Dreemurr's gonna come outta the grave as a zombie and try to kill us!! He's dead, fair and square!!" "The life spell. That may induce a zombie uprising. You may be right." "NO!!!" Pacifico screamed, "We gotta get outta here!!!"

Suddenly, the front door opened. A shadowy figure stood in the doorway. Pacifico screamed and held on to Century for dear life. "There you girls are!" Ollie stepped inside. Flowey was attached to his straw hat, as part of his farmer costume. "I just came back in to refill the candy bowl. The trick-or-treaters just keep on coming! And...I thought you were doing the haunted house thing?" "Maybe that's why they're showing up more," Flowey piped up. "We were going to do that, but we eventually decided against it. I was too busy teaching Pacifico how to be scary." "Oh, no," Ollie set down the empty bowl on the table. "Don't tell me you turned Pacifico into...well, you." Pacifico smiled nervously. "No, I'm okay, don't worry, I totally didn't kill--" "Sorry to interrupt, but I should really go get the candy and be on my way. The girls are in the living room putting on their costumes so you didn't miss much. Happy Hallow--" "B r a i n s . . . "

A ghoulish boss monster loomed over Ollie and the girls, decrepit and tattered, biting into Ollie as he and Pacifico screamed bloody murder. Century grabbed Pacifico's hand and took her into the kitchen. "We need to hide." Pacifico's first instinct was to dive into the cupboard and bury herself in the various snacks inside. Century swooshed into a different cupboard, inside a large pot. Pacifico trembled as she heard the groaning of both Asgore and now Ollie, holding back tears as she hoped to god they don't catch her. The groaning soon faded. The coast was clear. The older skeleton peeked out of the cupboard, only for her twin sister Gigi to be across the way. "W-what was that?" Century slipped out of her cupboard. "Zombies," she whispered, "Asgore and Ollie are now zombies." Gigi gasped. "Ollie's a zombie?!" "Shush, they'll hear us and come back!" Pacifico said in a hushed but firm tone. "Now, where's Q?" "Right here," the littlest alien sister's head poked out from behind the doorway. "Who's a zombies?" "We need to set up a base. They could come back any moment. Follow me, dear cousins." Century led the girls upstairs to Caffrin and Papyrus's room, also completely empty.

"Okay, we need to find something to defend ourselves. Everyone split up and look for some useful stuff," Pacifico ordered. "I-I-I think I would just rather hide until it's safe," The timid skeleton slowly opened the closet, only to reveal the zombified Asgore inside. Gigi slammed the closet shut in a fright "G-girls--!!" "What is it, Gigi. Did you find something good." Gigi, still shaking from what she had seen, looked at the closet and back at Century, shaking her head vigorously.

Century floated towards the closet. "Don't be a baby. What did you see." "D-don't open the door, please, It's gonna be scary, they were in the--" "Nothing. There is a lot of old junk in here, though." "Oooh, Good thinking, Gigi!" Pacifico began searching around in the empty closet, "We can use stuff in here as weapons!" "Like this old picture frame. Could make for a good throwing disc if we sharpen the edges." Century took one of the old photo frames next to the closet, holding a picture of Ollie as a toddler. "Hold on, I have a pocket knife."

"A pocket knife?!" Pacifico ceased her rummaging to look up at Century, whittling away at the wooden frame. "You had a pocket knife this whole time?! Why can't we just use that, then?!!" "Because if I throw the knife at them, I'll never get it back. But a throwing disc such as this," Century held up the now-sharpened picture frame, "can offer more maneuverability and even a clean slice. And if you throw it right, you can retrieve it like a boomerang. Or just get it back manually using magic. Here, I'll show you. Pretend that old mannequin is a zombie. I'm going to decapitate it. Watch how I throw the frame and note the spin."

Century threw the frame at the mannequin, aiming straight for the neck and slashing off the head. The plastic head fell to the ground with a soft "thunk" as the frame boomeranged back at the half-shadow, who caught it as Pacifico flinched. "Oh, relax. You have mittens on, so forget about cutting your hand. Just catch it when it comes back." She handed the frame over to Pacifico. "Now you try. See if you can chop off the torso. The key is velocity and angle." "But we haven't learned either of those things in school yet!!!" "You'll know. It takes practice, but once you have it, you'll feel it."

"Okay," Pacifico took a deep breath. With a small grunt she threw the frame at the mannequin, attempting to follow exactly how Century did it, and sliced through the torso, cutting it evenly in half. The upper torso, however, did not fall over like the head did and instead stayed intact. "Good, Pacifico," Century nodded, "You threw it so hard it kept the chest in place without even a snag. Impressive." Q attempted to grab the picture frame. "I wanna try too, gimme gimme!!" "Get your own!" Q grumbled. "Fine." She waddled over to the bed to grab one of the picture frames above the bed, a smaller one with the twins as babies. "Wow, Pacifico, you were a cute baby." "Don't mention it," Pacifico used her magic to bring her photo frame back to her. "Seriously, don't." "Woah! This painting looks so real! It almost looks exactly like Ollie! Only weird looking...." "Q, WAIT--!!" It was too late. The undead soft boy grabbed Q from behind and the remaining three girls chose not to stick around. They ran down the hall, only for a bony hand holding Pacifico's Unikitty plushie to be seen at the end.

"hey, kid, um--" A hearty throat clearing sound could be heard as the voice switched to a more feminine, high-pitched but still dreary tone. "hey, pacifico, come over here and save me. i ain't a zombie yet, i swear." Pacifico slowly approached the doll, only for Century to hold her back. "It's a trap. They got to my father." "But she speaks the truth, she's still intact! I gotta go save her, my beloved!" "I'll go," Gigi spoke up from behind them, "If it is a trap, I might as well get it over with because seriously we are children caught in the middle of a real-life zombie invasion this is not a movie we are definitely going to die." "Gigi, no," Pacifico grabbed her sister's arm, "I'm not gonna let you get zombified like them. We already lost Ollie and Q, I'm not losing you too!" Gigi shook off Pacifico's grip. "It's either me or Unikitty, and I have to toughen up at least once in my life. It...may as well be the end of it. Now, I'm going, and there's not a thing you can do to stop me! ....If that's okay."

The timid skeleton ran up and grabbed Unikitty, throwing her back to the girls before immediately being tacked by their uncle Sans, whose skull had cracked even further as he dribbled onto Gigi. "f r e s h b r a i n s ." Before catching Unikitty in the air, Pacifico instinctively threw the photo frame as she did earlier at Sans, decapitating him while he still had Gigi pinned. "Now's your chance, Get outta there!" "I can't! He still has a strong grip on me!" Gigi struggled to free herself from the headless Sans's grasp. "Go on without me, please. It's too late for me. But please....remember my sacrifice!" Pacifico fought back tears as she held Unikitty in her arms. "I....I will."

With that, Pacifico ran off to the laundry room, Century trailing behind.

#this is late oops #halloween in ebbott falls #fanfiction #pacifico #century gothic #gigi #space q #caffrin posts #caffrin writes

2 notes · View notes

pjbehindthesun · 6 years

Text

chapter 11: the glass and the torch

Saturday, October 13th, 1990

“Helloooo – oh, hey Alex.” The door swings open and my obnoxious greeting is cut short as I realize I’m talking to him, not her. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since she got home. My rural manners hitch my smile back up on my face fast enough that I don’t think he noticed anything, but fuck, I still want to smack him on the side of the head with my shoe. Not just once, either, like… once for every word I shout at him. Stop! Fucking! Up! With! My! Friend! You! Fucking! Jackass! I’ll! Fucking! Kill! You! If! You! Hurt! Her! Again! Ahh, that is deeply satisfying.

“Hey, Lucy,” he greets me pleasantly enough, but I have a feeling he’s wearing a similar mask to cover whatever his own thoughts are about me. I can only hope his is concealing a bottomless pit of despair and embarrassment and sheer mortal terror at having fucked up so badly the other night. What kind of idiot actually forgets a whole entire human being?

“Okay, babe, you sure you don’t need anything else at the store? Grocery list looks okay? No? Okay, I’ll be back in a while, love you,” he fusses over an extremely stressed out looking Cora, who barely responds to him as she pores over a piece of paper at their kitchen table. He grabs a few tote bags from the hook by the door and offers me an awkward wave before leaving and closing the door behind him. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was scared to talk to me today. Good. He could stand to be on his best behavior a little more often.

“Luuuuuce,” Cora whines as soon as the door closes, dropping her pen and yanking off her glasses, “I need huuuuugs.”

My murderous thoughts evaporate and I go to my friend and give her a bear hug from behind her chair, and she wraps her arms around mine and silently fake cries. “What’s your damage, woman?”

“I can’t science,” she pouts, and then glowers at me over her shoulder when I can’t help laughing at her.

“I’m looking at some persuasive evidence to the contrary.”

I nod toward their little table, which is covered with paper several pages deep, each one filled with typing that is bleeding red from where she’s marked it up for editing. There are a lot of things my best friend doesn’t do well. Suffer fools. Bluff at poker. Pick boyfriends. But she’s a goddamn science rockstar.

“There does appear to have been a struggle, though… this is that fellowship application?”

She nods, and I take one arm off her to pick up the nearest page. “Page nine. How many pages is it supposed to be?”

“Five…” she mumbles into her hand like she’s trying not to be heard.

“And how many pages is it, currently?” I stand up and try to neaten up the nearest pile.

“Eleven…”

“Okay. This is bleak, but we will manage. We just need fortification. Stay strong, I’ll be right back.”

On autopilot, I grab their teapot out of the cabinet and start boiling water for tea. Once it’s done, I go back to the table, where she’s done a half-assed job of clearing a spot for the cups.

“You’re an actual angel.” She cradles a mug in her hands and her eyes zone out as she watches the steam curl upward.

“You’re delirious and sleep deprived. Okay, where are we starting?”

I understand maybe a tenth of the content, but if nothing else, I can help her find places to trim down the writing, or remove redundant graphs or figures, or shorten the references section, and an hour later we’ve got it cut down to seven pages.

“The rest is on you, or else we’re going to need something stronger than tea,” I groan as I stretch my back, and her head hits the table in a dramatic clunk.

“I repeat, an actual angel,” her voice is muffled by the papers she’s squashing her face into, but then she sits up and flashes a tired but happy smile. “I’m 95% sure I can fix the rest of this myself after a cat nap. Or some FOOD. Let me feed you for your services, it’s only right.”

I follow her into the kitchen, but she hip-checks me out of the way when I try to help. She aimlessly roots through a couple of cabinets before turning around looking defeated.

“So the cupboards appear to be bare… OH!” her eyes widen. “His stash of illicit starches!” She wheels around and produces a half-eaten bag of tortilla chips from a drawer next to the stove. “Do you know what this means??”

“Nachos,” we say at the same time.

I may not be able to live out my fantasy of bloodying Alex with a shoe, but at least I can passive-aggressively eat all his favorite junk food. We pile on our preferred sins and head to the couch with our plates.

“So, how’s work?”

“Medical and fascinating, as always,” I roll my eyes. “The new girl labels all her food in the fridge because she thinks everyone else is going to steal it.”

“Well, to be fair…” Cora holds up a chip and regards it.

“I mean, no jury would convict me for stealing nachos from my friends. But come on, some office rando’s disgusting tunafish salad?”

Cora mimes puking in her mouth.

“Jake says I should make fork marks in every dish, not actually to eat it, just to fuck with her.”

“Jake’s my kind of sicko.”

“Anyway, it’s just the usual office bullshit.”

She scrutinizes her next bite very carefully. “Yeah. You think any more about moving on?”

Her eyes dart up to me, like she knows she’s on thin ice. Every now and again we talk about it, the idea of changing careers, because she knows I hate my job, but she’s at least figured out that it’s mostly an off-limits subject. I love Jeff to bits but he hasn’t gotten that memo yet.

“Ehh, not lately. It pays the bills, it doesn’t take a lot out of me, I have good hours… why rock the boat?”

“Sure, sure, makes sense,” she nods, and I can tell she’s done asking questions. I love her for that.

“Anyway, fuck my stupid job,” I say a little too loudly, “are you coming to the guys’ practice later?”

“Oh come on, you saw how much work I still have to do…” she looks back at the kitchen table with that cornered wild animal look in her eyes.

“Nope, uh-uh. We slayed that monster. You’re going.”

“Yeah, but once this thing is submitted, I really should get started on my thesis proposal…”

“Cora.”

“Lucy.” She fires back in an exaggerated version of my impatient tone.

“What. the hell. is up with you and Stone?”

The customary Stone-induced eye roll is a lot more impatient than usual. “Uhm, Stone’s an irredeemable asshole?”

“Well, sure, but that’s nothing new. What the hell happened last night? Jeff said that when Stone came back inside after talking to you, he looked like a decapitated praying mantis.”

“This image pleases me.”

“Come on, what happened? Why don’t you want to come to the gallery?”

She purses her lips for a moment. “I don’t even know. He’s just up my butt all the time about everything.”

“Speaking of images.” I earn a shove to the knee, but she’s laughing.

“I don’t know,” she says again. “I just… why’s he so fucking interested in my love life all of a sudden.”

“He’s your friend, he cares about you.”

“I know, just… I want things to go back to normal, when Stone being my friend meant calling Alex Cletus and making fun of the Doc Watson tapes in my car. Now it means him treating me like I’m breakable all the time and fixating on every little spat I have with Alex.”

“Well,” I say slowly, choosing my words with precision, “maybe he feels a little protective, I mean, he was the one who picked you up, and probably saw you when you were feeling the most upset that night…”

“No, I know, that’s the thing, I already owe him enough, can’t he let it go? Does he have to keep reminding me that we’re not… equal anymore?”

“Ah yes, the hallmark of a healthy friendship, keeping score.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, you’re the sarcastic one now? Filling in for Stone in his absence, are we?”

“When are you going to drop this and let the poor guy relax? He’s worried about you.”

“Since when does him worrying about me translate to him deserving to hear every gory detail of my personal life?”

“You told me everything,” I point out.

“Yeah, but you’re you.”

“I’m who?”

“Abbott, or Costello, I don’t give a fuck. You’re my best friend. I’m just saying, of course I told you, I tell you everything. I know you’re not going to judge me, think I’m weak, mock me for still trying to make it work. Stone… he wouldn’t get it, he’s always making fun of Alex, and like, I don’t know… he just doesn’t miss a thing, does he?”

She chews her lip, and I can tell she’s not really expecting an answer to that last question, because we both already know it. It’s true, Stone’s invested in her. It’s plain as day when they’re in the same room. He can hardly look anywhere else. I’m pretty sure she has no clue why, because she��s too busy being irritated by him, but it’s obvious enough to me that he’s carrying a torch for her. But it’s also not my hill to die on, and I don’t want to make her feel any worse.

“Well, he’s your friend, he cares about your happiness. Give him a little credit, Cor. Maybe he wouldn’t make a joke out of it after all. You don’t know.”

“Yeah, and if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass hopping…” she gets up to put our plates in the sink, and it’s clear the subject’s closed.

“Okay, well, think about it? Their practice, I mean. Eddie goes back to San Diego tomorrow, you know, it’d mean a lot to all of them if you came with me.”

She gives me a pained expression and I know I’ve got her. “Okayyyy, maybe…”

“Alright, come downstairs at 2, no take backsies!”

She opens her mouth, but I’m out the door before she can say anything.

***

“Uhm, hello?” A muffled voice calls through my door, accompanied by a knock.

There’s no mistaking that guy’s voice anywhere, is there? That impossibly deep voice for such a small frame, and the way he pronounces words like he’s got a gerbil in his mouth. That thought makes me laugh to myself, but the smile’s instantly wiped away when I open my door to see Eddie, his hand still held up from knocking with the back of his knuckle, his other hand holding that one inside a wad of bloody paper towel, giving me the world’s most sheepish look.

“Jesus, what happened to you?” I bolt to the kitchen to grab a dish towel.

“I, uhm, broke a glass,” he explains lamely as he unfolds the makeshift bandage, showing a gash on the outside of his thumb. I take his hand to get a closer look at the cut, which is bleeding like crazy but I don’t see any glass in it, and it doesn’t look deep enough to need stitches.

“And you did this how, by crushing it with your superhuman grip? Here, put pressure on it, Stone’ll kill us both if you bleed out in my apartment before your first show,” I wrap the towel around it and compress it, making him wince a little. “Well, first he’ll kill me, but I guess he’ll have to dig you up first and then kill you again.”

“Nah, just slipped when I was doing the dishes just now, and I tried to fucking catch it as it shattered, so I’m standing there with a pile of broken glass in my hand that I’m try to corral while I bleed all over everything, and guess I just kept making it worse,” he chuckles as he takes over pressing the towel into his thumb and nods in thanks.

“That was a shit plan, Eddie.”

“Yeah, I worked that out too.”

I look up from his mangled hand, and now that the crisis is somewhat under control, I actually notice him for the first time. Jesus, I mean, everyone looks different when they’re wearing a hat, but…

“…what…?” he asks slowly, narrowing his eyes at me just a little, and I realize I’m probably staring pretty rudely.

“When did you get all that hair?”

“I don’t know,” he laughs, “like, slowly, over the past couple years?”

“Ask a stupid question…” I grin at him. “No, sorry, just, I guess you had that hat on when I saw you before.”

“Ohh, yeah,” he laughs. “Your fair city’s pretty fucking cold, if you hadn’t noticed.”

I’d figure out a pithy reply if I wasn’t still trying to work out the mathematics of how this giant mane of hair fit up inconspicuously in that little baseball cap. I’d say he looks like a totally different person, except it suits him. It has this sort of salt-tangled look to it like he’s permanently just gotten off the beach.

“Well, you’re well insulated with that hair, then,” I laugh. “Okay, so, bandaid?”

“If you don’t mind,” he mutters, suddenly looking embarrassed again. “Sorry to bother you, were you working?” His eyes fall on my table, which is still covered with the bleeding carcass of my research statement.

“Essentially always,” I shrug, “so bothering me’s not really a thing.”

“Thanks,” he scratches the nape of his neck with his good hand. “I just couldn’t find anything helpful in Jeff’s place, and I didn’t want to bleed all over every cabinet.”

“Yeah, and even then, I doubt he has bandaids,” I laugh. “Kinda the textbook bachelor pad.”

“Yeah,” Eddie grins, “pretty great, right?”

“I mean, if you’re a bachelor.”

He looks around my apartment. “Yours is nicer, though.”

“I wouldn’t say nicer, I would just say we don’t…”

“…live in squalor?” he volunteers.

“Yeah, that. So are you gonna stay there when you come back up?”

“I don’t know, maybe. He’s been pretty great about letting me futon-surf so far.”

“The only kind of surfing we’ve got in Seattle, after all.”

“Oh, you wait, if there’s surfing I’ll find it,” he chuckles.

“So do you have a lot to take care of back in San Diego? Probably a lot of people you want to say bye to?”

His expression darkens a little bit, but he just shakes his head and says, “nah, not really. I mean, friends and stuff, sure, we’ll probably have a little gathering. But I don’t have a lot keeping me there. Kinda… kinda why I’m here, right?” The frown deepens.

I don’t know the guy or what’s going on in San Diego, but I know how it feels to be asked questions you don’t want to answer.

“Yeah. Hey, let me get you that bandaid…”

“Thanks,” he says with a little smile, and I think he’s talking about more than the bandage.

***

“Okay, so Mike, we said 5, but can you maybe show up a little earlier than that, like, uh, like 4:45? I just really don’t want to be late…”

Eddie’s nervously hassling Mike to make sure he’s got his ride figured out for his flight tomorrow morning, and Jeff’s bouncing his stupid fucking basketball off the wall like he’s catching rebounds while Dave tries to swat the occasional rogue ball with a drumstick. We’ve been playing for hours and I guess it makes sense that everyone needs a break, but I’m getting tired of the goofing off, so I focus on making a big chord chart for each song we’ve written and try to ignore the fact that I’m surrounded by idiots.

“Hey, beautiful!” Jeff lobs the ball at Dave’s head when he notices Lucy coming down the steps and runs over for the usual nauseating makeout session that occurs whenever they say hello, or goodbye, or whenever the hell they feel like it. Before I can avert my eyes, I realize with a jolt that Cora’s right behind her, and she dodges the two of them on her way to the couch at the back of the room. Mike ruffles her hair as she walks by him and she elbows him in the ribs with a grin before greeting Eddie and Dave. Of course, all of this comes from my peripheral vision, because I’m too busy studying this chord chart like my life depends on it to avoid looking directly at her.

“Okay, one more time through each one?” I bark, a little louder than I meant to, and thankfully the guys come back together pretty quickly.

We run through Breath again and then E Ballad, or, shit, Black, is that what he’s calling it now? Anyway, it’s sounding pretty decent. When that one’s over, Mike scratches his cheek and squints at Eddie.

“You change something, dude?” Eddie just looks at him questioningly until he goes on, “what was it… I thought there was a line that repeated both times about clouds, but it was something different in the second chorus…”

“Mmm? Oh, yeah, uh, the broken glass?”

Ed shoots a sideways glance at Cora, who tries to disguise a snort laugh as a cough when she notices I’m staring at her trying to figure out what the hell she’s laughing at.

“I like it! Edgy.” Mike grins. “What next, Gossard?”

We run through a few more things before we feel like we’re in a solid enough place to take a break for a few days while Ed’s gone. The whole time, I have to fight the temptation to look over at her and try to figure out what she thinks of our new stuff. But it’s not going to work that way. If she came to talk to me, she can come to talk to me. I make a meal out of packing up my guitar.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, enough playing, time to go play!” Jeff grins, trying and failing to spin the basketball on his finger. Lucy swats it out of his hands and they wrestle over it like a pair of otters.

“Stone, come on man, come play with us! Last chance to prove your manhood,” Mike nags.

“My manhood’s not contingent on my ball-handling skills, Mikey.”

“Pain the ass,” he grumbles, but he’s grinning. “What about you, Cor? Lucy’s actually not bad, but we could use a little more gender equality out there, I mean, if Stone’s not coming along….” I flick a pick at him.

“Uhm, no, I’m good, I think I’m gonna hang out here,” she says casually, but I can feel her watching me again. A little flare of hope sparks up in my chest, but the image of her furious expression last night squashes it pretty quickly.

As their footsteps pound up the stairs, I hear Eddie remind Mike one more time about his flight, and then the sound of the door closing behind them as their voices dissipate. Alone again. There’s so much I need to tell her. Except I still can’t bring myself to look at her because I’m so apprehensive of another stupid fight.

“So, hey,” she says, fidgeting with her fingernails.

“Hey yourself.” I’m probably being difficult, but I’m not about to stick my neck out again unless she does.

“Can we talk about the other night?”

“That depends.” I lean against a short stack of amps, taking a deep breath to brace myself in case this goes to hell again, and finally force myself to make eye contact.

“On?”

“On whether you’re going to bite my head off again.”

“No biting. Promise.” She bites her lips in. It’s almost enough to make me laugh.

“I’m sorry I bit your head off,” she continues. “You were right to be pissed at me, I didn’t call you.”

Jesus, is that all she thinks it was about? How do I begin to explain it to her? “I don’t care about that, you know. I mean, yeah, you shoulda called. But I just wanted to know things were okay. I mean, or not okay, whatever they are… But I shouldn’t have –”

Her mouth flies open to interrupt me but I wave her off.

“– I shouldn’t have hassled you. You had enough on your mind without me getting in the middle of it.”

She shakes her head with a deep crease forming between her eyebrows. “Don’t do that, don’t let me off the hook. I was a jerk, Stone.”

“You were jerk-adjacent, maybe. But it’s understandable.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have lost my shit. You were just trying to look out for me and I took it all out on you like a fucking asshole. I’m sorry. It’s not your doing.”

“It’s not like I helped, though,” I mutter, fiddling with the dial on the amp. “I have this thing I do, where I end up getting the wrong end of the stick because I’m too busy thinking of myself as the center of the universe.”

“I can relate,” she says, fighting a smile.

“But today I was thinking about it some more, and… you don’t owe me anything, Cora, no explanations. I was trying to be there for you, but I just ended up making your… situation into something that was about me. Which is stupid, because at the bottom of it, you’re just really important to me, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

She’s chewing her lip so hard I’m getting worried about it before letting go of it to ask me, “so, are we okay?”

“I am if you are.”

Finally she lets her smile break the tension on her face as she comes closer to pull me down into a hug, her arms coiled tightly around my neck.

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

Her shoulders shake with a silent laugh, and she sinks into me. “I fucking hated being on the outs with you, you know?”

“I know. Me too.” I press a quick little kiss against her temple and lean my head against hers.

“Ugh, Stone cooties.”

“Sorry,” I mutter, but I don’t mean it.

“I kid because I love. You know I love you, Stoner,” she adds, squeezing a little tighter.

Oh.

Something falls into place that I hadn’t even known was missing. I didn’t know I needed to hear her say it, even in that laughing, joking, friendly way, and I didn’t know that I needed to tell her, but suddenly it’s the only thing on my mind.

“Yeah, uhm… I, I love you too, Cora…”

She pulls back from me far enough to inspect my face, grinning that sly grin. The grin that I learned on the night we met means pure trouble. Pirate smile. I have to smile back, I’m powerless against it.

“Thanks for bailing me out there, bud,” she teases.

“Yeah, I couldn’t leave you hanging, how embarrassing for you.”

Christ, I want to lean down and kiss her, she’s so close, it feels like fighting gravity. But obviously I’m not going to. It’s an asshole move, and she’d kill me and I’d deserve it. In the bad idea hall of fame, that's…

She stands on her tiptoes and pecks me on the cheek before unwinding her arms and stepping back.

“So, is this a band practice or what? The fuck are we just standing around for?”

After what feels like a very long minute, my heart starts beating again and speech returns. I look around the empty room. “Note the conspicuous lack of band…”

“Excuses, excuses. Are you a guitarist or aren’t you?”

She parks cross-legged on the couch and eyes me expectantly. I shake my head and grab a guitar, sitting opposite her in the little folding chair.

“You’re bossy, Red.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Okay boss, whaddya want to hear?”

***

He indulges me with only a little grumbling, but I think it’s because he’s got so many new ideas rattling around in his head for the new band that he doesn’t mind having someone fresh to play them for. After a while, he runs out of stuff I haven’t heard, so he starts goofing around with riffs and songs from all over the place and I stretch out on the couch to listen. I recognize Tiny Dancer right off the bat, and a few others, but he gets a good minute into Dirty Work before I can finally place the tune and complain loudly enough that he gives up.

After the usual eye roll, he breaks into the opening chords of The Rain Song, which sound so delicate that I have to close my eyes because I feel like any other sensory information is just going to get in the way. It feels like he plays that one for ages, occasionally singing a line quietly here or there over the top of the chords, more to himself than audibly. When he finally stops, I open my eyes to see him squinting at me.

“Thought I’d lost you,” he jokes.

“No, the opposite. One of my favorites.”

“Really? Why?”

“Why? I need a reason? It’s perfect.”

“Sure, it’s just so ballad-y and sentimental…”

“…thus spoke the Marshmallow…” I cut over him.

“…and, like, so out of character for them. That’s such a weird album.”

“I’ll have you know it’s my favorite Zep album, you dick.”

He frowns at me. “Really? Houses?”

“This surprises you?”

“I don’t know, I figured you for a IV kind of girl.”

“That’s everyone’s favorite Zep album. Since when do I do what anyone tells me I should do?”

That makes him chuckle. “God, it figures, of course you would like the weird one.”

“It’s a thing I do. Anyway, you brought it up, why’d you play it?”

He drops his eyes back down to his guitar and fiddles with a few chords. “I don’t know. Just… just been on my mind, I guess.”

“Your mind’s a sentimental place then, Stoner, like it or not.”

His ironic smile relaxes a little, and for a second I think he’s stumped for a reply, but then he nods to himself.

“Alright,” he says thoughtfully, “she who likes the weird ones. I bet I got your number…”

He bends his head back down to his guitar and starts playing the opening notes, the intro to that song, the one that sounds the way a sunrise feels. The weird one. Well, the most normal one on the weirdest album, which makes it the weird one in an especially weird way. Only Stone. I sink a little deeper into the couch as the sound radiates, resonates. By the time he starts quietly singing again, my smile’s so big it hurts.

“Hey, lady…”

#behind the sun #chapter 11 #fanfiction #fanfic #stone gossard #jeff ament #mike mccready #eddie vedder #dave krusen #pearl jam

37 notes · View notes

nathandgibsca · 6 years

Text

Beyond BuzzFeed: How I used quizzes to generate 10,000+ qualified leads

“Mom, can I have $5 to buy a comic book and some chips?”

And by “comic book” I meant unwholesome magazines filled with smutty novel excerpts, make-out tips and, QUIZZES.

Oh my, the quizzes.

They’re the REAL reason I bought magazines (before BuzzFeed took over the quiz universe).

Tell me…

… do you remember taking any of these quizzes from Seventeen Magazine?

Are You Paranoid? (ummm, yes, I’m fourteen – the whole world is out to get me)

Is It Really Over? (Pretty sure it never even began, except in my head)

Do You Play Mind Games? (That’s how I bought this magazine, so heck yeah)

The power of a quiz has not tarnished since the late 1990’s.

Lots of marketers make this big mistake: assuming leads from a quiz are unqualified.

They don’t have to be – if you create your quiz right.

Like the one quiz I ran that brought in 172 additional course sales, resulting in an extra $25k in just two weeks. That’s not counting lifetime customer value, BTW.

It’s basic human nature to want to know ourselves better.

Even if it’s just for fun.

Sherry Turkle, MIT psychologist and cultural analyst, explains the popularity of modern quizzes as a way of dealing with our existential dread and altering how others perceive us. It’s not so much taking the quiz that people enjoy – it’s sharing the results.

Here’s how she put this phenomenon:

“They’re specifically for performance. Here, part of the point is to share it, to feel ‘who you are’ by how you share who you are. [It’s] the conflation of who you are and who thinks you’re okay.”

I know what you’re thinking:

How can quizzes help me to grow my bottom line?

‘Cuz we’ve got businesses to run and serious goals. But quizzes will help you achieve your ambitions. Specifically in terms of lead generation.

According to LeadQuizzes, the average quiz has a 33.6% lead capture rate – though in the quizzes I run, I typically see much higher conversions.

Plus, interactive content is far more powerful than a regular ol’ guide. According to a CMI survey in 2016, 81% of respondents agreed that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content.

Dang, that means more than 3 out of every 4 people is hooked by a quiz.

If you’re not impressed yet, that’s cool – but consider these additional points:

They’re fun. When scrolling through social media, you’re more likely to click on something with entertainment value. (Helloooo, Facebook time suck.)

The average quiz is shared 1900 times. No more forking over handfuls of cash for Facebook ads – quizzes are your new BFF.

Ideal lead magnet to attract people in the first stage of the buyer’s journey / TOFU.

You may think you’re being approachable with your 25-page free guide. But a total newcomer isn’t going to invest their time or energy in reading that. They’re in the wrong stage of awareness. What they will invest in is a quiz.

Take a look at this chart:

Quizzes for lead generation… and beyond!

Quizzes are NOT going away. If you think they’re below you or too hard to make, you’d be wise to reconsider. Here’s why.

1. A quiz (aka interactive content) is the future

According to BuzzSumo, the average quiz gets shared 1,900 times. Compared to the average number of shares on an article, you’re entering an entirely new dimension of social media sharing stats. Interactive content is the nectar of the conversion gods.

A CMI Survey from 2016 stated that:

75% of marketing participants said they anticipated that their company or organization would increase their utilization of interactive content marketing.

As you can see from this chart, the future is already here, my friends:

BuzzFeed’s top stories just a few months ago were ALL quizzes:

2. You get more insight into your target audience

I spy with my little quiz a marketer that just hit the jackpot.

Quizzes rock because you get to exercise your super spy powers to better understand your ideal client’s needs and desires. This sounds creepy – I know – but it helps you offer more value.

Here’s why:

You get to see the quiz’s results. Often, one result out of 4 or 5 outnumbers the others. Talk about some powerful insight to guide your future content and copy that your audience will resonate with.

It’s like asking people to fill out a survey… except it’s actually fun for them.

As Coy Whittier of Qzzr said:

“Relevant data allows you to offer a personalized content experience. Quizzes provide a way for you to get that data in a way that people like.”

3. Segment your list the easy way

Contrary to popular belief, email marketing isn’t dead. In fact, it’s getting more and more sophisticated. You have the power to craft targeted marketing messages for specific segments of your audience – as long as they’ve told you where they belong.

For example, you run an online business that teaches entrepreneurs how to start and grow their business. Someone just starting out needs an entirely different approach vs. someone who’s already successful.

But finding out who your audience is and getting them on the right list isn’t always straightforward.

Sure, you can send a survey or use the ASK method right off the bat. Without an incentive, who really wants to fill out a survey? I know, I know – micro-commitments are legit, but what if there was something a smidge easier?

Lucky for you there is.

It’s a quiz.

Quizzes make segmenting your list fun for your audience AND they’re just as effective as a survey. Talk about a win-win.

Here’s how you do it: Create your quiz results based on your different audience segments.

Set up tags for each one. Automatically place quiz takers in the most-appropriate funnel.

K, I see your cocked eyebrow and objections forming on your lips, like:

Are quizzes effective for E-VERY niche?

Are all quizzes going to be a home run?

And lastly, the humdinger of them all:

What makes a truly killer quiz?

Y’know, a quiz that people can’t help but want to click-through and invest 5 minutes on? That’s what I’m about to show you.

How I attracted 10,000+ new leads with just quizzes

You might be surprised at how much work goes into creating a high-converting quiz. One that makes people fall in love with you like you’re Leo on Seventeen’s July ‘98 cover.

Coming up with a great quiz idea is easy. Things get mucky in creating relevant questions and juicy outcomes. Mucky enough to make most people throw in the towel.

Writing highly compelling quizzes – ones that people want to share – is both an art and a science.

Just like any piece of content, your quiz needs to be engaging. You don’t want to make your audience feel like they’re answering questions on a government survey.

Your questions and results have to connect back to your bottom line. In other words, the data you’re collecting needs to be relevant. And the quiz results you create should loop back to the solution your brand provides. It’s all a little mind-boggling.

Writing a quiz doesn’t have to be a struggle. Just follow the blueprint I’m about to outline for you and you’re well on your way to the Quiz Hall of Fame.

Step 1: You create a quiz topic based on who you want to attract

The title and description for your quiz have to capture your target audience’s pain point and solution. It should be inspired by the question: What keeps them up at night?

My mom started menopause a few years ago. She’s always talking about hot flashes and mood swings and all the annoying stuff that goes along with it.

One day I stumbled upon Dr. Sara Gottfried’s quiz and immediately sent my mom the link.

She loved it. Because it spoke to exactly what she was experiencing and the outcome she desired. When your message is on point, getting ideal clients to convert is not a challenge.

Here’s an example of Dr. Sara’s quiz.

Step 2: “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge”

Thomas Berger said it best:

Ask the right questions and you’ll be swimming in data that can help you refine your messaging and strengthen your value props.

Quizzes are good for more than just leads… and telling your friends which Game of Thrones character you are.

Questions help us understand our prospects and get to the root of how we can help them.

So, how do you come up with your quiz questions? Formulate your questions around what you ultimately want to sell.

For example, if you’re selling business coaching services, sse your questions to prequalify potential leads.

Like this question from a quiz “Should You Hire a Business Coach?”

Because of that question, you know this biz offers customer feedback analysis services. Now, with these quiz responses, they’ve got data about how ready their TOFU prospects are to engage in the sales funnel.

Selling products? Use your quiz questions to help your potential customer understand all the possibilities you can offer them.

To make your quiz creating process easier, I put together some example questions:

How often do you _______? (ex. Work out, review your quarterly goals, get mad at your kids, etc.)

On a scale of 1-10, how ______ are you? (ex. Happy with your relationship, satisfied with your job, etc.)

A genie grants you one wish. What do you choose?

How likely are you to ________? (stop eating meat, stick to your budget, not check your email for a day, etc.)

Which image best describes your ________? (perfect living space, business, wedding style, etc.)

You should start with these questions in your brainstorming, methinks.

Or check out The Conversation Starters World – my go-to resource for creating outstanding questions that people will want to answer. (Psst, it also boasts a great collection of q’s for those of us who hate small talk.)

Step 3: Write outcomes that give a glimpse of the solution

Creating shareable outcomes that provide value and offer a peek at the solution you provide is an art.

But THIS is what differentiates your quiz from yet another brainless Buzzfeed post.

A major benefit of using quizzes for lead generation is that people share their results. (That’s why you’re reading this, right??)

Overwhelmed by all this juicy info? Grab my free email course and learn how to create a compelling quiz in 6 bite-sized lessons (plus steal my successful quiz swipe file)

The copy you create for your outcomes should offer insight AND a few actionable strategies. Offer real value. The last thing you want is for people to feel like you wasted their time.

Step 4: You test a few copy variations

This step loops back to the first one: know your target audience.

Understand how they speak, what Facebook pages they like, their age, demographic, and beyond. Set up a few targeted Facebook ad campaigns.

Test a few variations of your quiz title and description against each other to see which performs best.

Step 5: You follow up with welcome emails

A welcome sequence will warm up your cold leads. Which is exactly what you want.

Long story short: it helps them get to know you. Because odds are they took your quiz for fun. If you don’t follow up, they’ll forget you exist.

Or worse, they won’t ever have known how you could’ve potentially helped them.

You want to get those new leads into a funnel designed to:

Help you learn more about them and where they’re at in the buyer’s journey

Introduce them to you and your values, so that they can start to know, like, and trust you (before any selling happens)

Provide value and depth that far exceeds anything a little quiz can deliver

Enter the ever-gentle Welcome Email Sequence

A welcome email sequence is akin to the build-up towards intimacy in a new relationship. It’s your chance to make new subscribers in the awareness stage happy – nay, thrilled – to have you in their inbox.

When it comes to lead magnets that involve minimal commitment from the subscriber – like a quiz – a welcome sequence is more vital.

Otherwise, there’s no real reason your new leads should remain on your list when you start sending them emails appropriate for other stages of the buyer’s journey.

Cover these key items in your welcome sequence before selling anything:

Offer your new subscribers a clear overview of who you are, what you do, how you do it and why.

Establish understanding and connection. Set the scene and let people get a really good idea of your brand voice and overall tone.

How can you learn more about your new subscribers? Give them a reason to hit reply and tell you something about themselves.

Build trust and offer value. You can offer a free discovery session, send other free resources, PDFs, videos and links to popular blog posts, give them your best stuff right off the bat – they just might love you forever.

Tell your story and share why you give a damn.

A carefully crafted welcome sequence is a key ingredient for a leak-free funnel and essential to make sure those new leads stick around.

How you attract qualified leads from a quiz

It’s possible – you can create quizzes just as clickable as the ones you see on BuzzFeed. The caveat is they must have a purpose beyond mere entertainment.

What I’ve learned – through much trial and error – is quizzes come in two flavors:

BuzzFeed-style quiz where you capture a ton of leads (that aren’t really qualified)

Quiz like one stolen from Seventeen Magazine’s pages where you offer a solution to your ideal client’s real or perceived problem

Both of these outlets have very different purposes. BuzzFeed operates primarily on a traffic generation revenue model. The content itself doesn’t really matter as long as it gets the click.

You want to copy Seventeen’s purpose which is aligned with a business goal: sell magazines. Their alluringly corny quizzes help them do that.

You have something to sell, right? Make sure your quiz relates back to your overarching purpose: to sell your product, service, or course.

Will a quiz work for my niche?

The short answer is yes. From my experience, quizzes work for just about every niche.

However, they work exceptionally well in these niches:

Health and wellness

Personal and spiritual development

e-Commerce

But if you’re creative, the options of a quiz can work for all types of industries, like:

SaaS

Online service providers

Real estate

Non-profits

… and the list goes on

One thing to keep in mind is that personality quizzes tend to perform best. According to popular quiz platform, Playbuzz, 77% of quizzes that have been shared 100,000 times or more are personality quizzes. So, if you’re gunning for the fences, create a personality quiz.

For example, Dr. Kelly Ann Petrucci – whose bone broth obsession instantly makes me love her – brought in over 40,000 leads with her Gluten Intolerance Quiz.

Or discover the best facemask is for your personality, compliments of the ever-popular Birch Box:

The quiz fun doesn’t stop there. If you sell services like graphic design or photography, create a quiz that gives you better insight into your client’s needs.

Take a look at this quiz by Eight Three Five Creative, a boutique digital marketing and graphic design business:

Even realtors and other professional service-based businesses can benefit from quizzes. Check out this quiz from MyDomaine … now, honestly, tell me you wouldn’t take this quiz if you were house-hunting?

In your quiz, use you can use images, ask questions you might normally be embarrassed to ask, and gain a ton of insight into what the market wants.

“Naw, quizzes wouldn’t work in B2B or marketing… right?”

Neil Patel saw a 500% increase in leads after implementing quizzes. This is coming from someone who already has everything optimized for conversion to a degree far greater than 99% of online businesses.

Check out a few more of these client case studies that LeadQuizzes put together:

Or these ones from Interact:

If these folks can do it, so can you.

To recap, here’s your seamless system for creating quizzes that convert:

Know your audience

Ask quiz questions to lead back to what you sell

Quiz outcomes give glimpse of solution

Test quiz copy variations

Use welcome email series to warm up leads

Now let’s play a game. Drop your best quiz title ideas in the comments below. Funny, serious, business-driven or downright ridonculous—let’s get quizzical!

~Chanti

The post Beyond BuzzFeed: How I used quizzes to generate 10,000+ qualified leads appeared first on Copywriting for startups and marketers.

from SEO Tips https://copyhackers.com/2018/02/beyond-buzzfeed-used-quizzes-generate-10000-qualified-leads/

0 notes