#the cherry on top is that a lot of these people call themselves feminists... okay? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

livvywrites · 5 years

Text

11/11/11 tag

I was tagged by the lovely @waterfallwritings. Thank you so much <3

1. How do you come up with ideas for your WIPs?

I put my headphones on, pop some music on, and pace around. And then I play pretend.

No, really, that’s what I do. I pretend to be my characters, in different situations, and I just... play around. I mess with things. I put them in modern situations. I put them in my favorite TV shows/books/movies/games. I have them switch places with a character in that show/book/movie/game. Sometimes I find them narrating their backstory to their future kid, or their friends, or whoever. I dunno. All sorts of crazy situations.

When that doesn’t help, I go and read. Or watch something. Or play something. I give it a rest for a bit. Something eventually comes to me.

2. How do you get past gaps in the plot?

Same answer as above, I guess? Letting myself really feel the characters, really be them, helps me view the situation as they would. I can generally resolve gaps pretty well that way!

3. What motivates you to keep writing?

My characters.

Sometimes it feels like they live in my head, just waiting for me to tell their story. I think about it all the time.

But other than that...

I mean, I was hospitalized a bunch as a kid. I got pneumonia a lot. And bronchitis (which developed into the former). A common cold could turn into bronchitis. I was a sickly kid with a terrible immune system. So I read. I read a lot. I read anything I could get my hands on. (Word of advice: Jurrassic Park and Stephen King novels are not really appropriate novels for a 10 year old to read. Or at least not one who hates gore. Like me.) A lot of those books touched me, influenced me and how I behaved growing up. I want to do that for other people. I want to write the novel they pick up and find themselves needing.

Also, you know what?

Sometimes my writing is pretty damn good.

4. Do you do any other kind of creative writing?

I write poetry!! My favorite poems are:

Death (lightly nsfw)

Wolf-Women (feminist poetry with werewolf themes)

Lonely Ghosts (Travelin’ Endlessly)

This poem I wrote about the main character of TMQ

I also roleplay for a favorite fandom of mine, and I write fanfiction. (You can find my stuff on my main blog, which is linked in my bio.)

5. Do you have any other creative hobbies besides writing?

I like to take photos! Usually of flowers and such. I’ll reblog this with some of my favorite ones~

I also like editing photos. By which I mean throwing lots of filters on them and trying to make them look ~artsy.~

6. What do you do when you’re stuck on a scene and don’t know how to get it out / write it?

I whip out my brackets. And I write a short scene description. Here’s an example off the top of my head--

[Fight scene. CHARACTER A gets injured pretty badly and begins to sway. CHARACTER B is so absorbed by their lover being hurt that they don’t notice when CHARACTER C is grabbed behind them. By the time they realized C has been kidnapped... it’s too late. CHARACTER A dies in their arms, but not before making them promise to save CHARACTER C.]

That’s a really emotional scene, fraught with tension and violence. Maybe I wasn’t feeling it, so I skipped it. But I want to remember what I was doing, hence the summary. Then I move on to the next scene. What the next scene would be in this scenario, I have no idea.

7. How do you decide how to end your WIP?

I’ve never really tried to put it into words, but because you asked, I’m gonna try.

So the first thing I think about is what my protagonist wants. In THE MARTYR QUEEN, Alinora wants her home back. She wants her people free again, and her family/loved ones back. Unfortunately, most of said loved ones are dead. But she can still save her people, so that’s her primary goal. To save her people, she needs to defeat Kai’os, and get him off of her throne/out of her homeland.

Now, let’s look at the antagonist. Kai’os wants to end the world and start a new one. Well--he doesn’t really want to do that, but he believes it’s a necessary evil, because that’s what Fate told him. What he really wants is to keep his family--his two daughters--safe. And that’s how he can best do that. According to Fate. In order to end the world, he has to be able to get to the World Tree. And to get to that, he needs Alinora.

So obviously, at the ending, the two of them are going to clash.

But what happens during/after the clash? Well, now, that’s where I have to think about the OTHER things going on. Alinora’s personality, for instance. What her friends are doing. The “bigger” players in the game--Death and Fate. What I have planned for the next books, and what I need to have happen for Alinora’s character arc.

I hope that was a good explanation ^^;

8. When in the process of writing do you decide how its going to end? Or do you kind of just wait til you get there?

I generally know my endings before I’m even halfway through the story. TMQ’s I knew before I even started writing it. Sapphire Dreaming’s I realized pretty early in the game as well.

9. Why did you decide to join writeblr?

I have been looking for a supportive writing community for so long. I found one on a fantasy forum called Worldsmyths that’s lovely, but people are more apt to talk about the technical aspects of writing on there. Which is great, and all of the advice on there is really good and well thought out. But I also really, really like hearing about other people’s WIPs and talking about mine in turn.

So when I found out that was how Tumblr’s writeblr worked... that’s when I decided to start getting involved in the community. And I’ve found so many WIPs that way!!! And found people who like my ideas too, which was like: what? Because while I’ve met supportive people before this is different. And it’s really nice.

10. What’s your favourite food?

Favorite... food?

I have to... I have to pick?

But, but ToT I can’t.

I’ll try anyway though, I guess, because you asked :P

Let’s see... my favorite dessert is a toss up between tiramasu and cheesecake, but I also really, really like brownies.

Breakfast wise, it’s hard to go wrong with blueberry pancakes or a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Or omelets.

For lunch, I really like sandwiches. Lately I’ve been on a subway kick, and I’ve been ordering a tomato basil wrap with rotisserie chicken, mozz cheese, spinach leaves, ranch dressing, and green peppers. It’s so good.

For supper... Oh, jeez. I eat a lot of chicken and pasta, but I also really like steak and bbq!!

I’m not a big fan of fruit, but I like blackberries and raspberries!! I also really like peaches and cherries.

I love vegetables. My favorites are peas, broccoli, and cucumbers.

...what. was that not in the spirit of the question?

11. If you had to kill off a character in your WIP, who would it be and why?

Um.

So in Sapphire Dreaming, if I had to kill a character off... fuck. I dunno. Maddock, I guess? Side characters are okay right? His death could be really fun, though it would absolutely destroy Aura.

I mean, if I had to choose a main character... I guess it’d be Chase. I love him a lot, I really do, and he is important to the story but. I can’t get rid of Aura or Melantha or [SPOILER].

In The Martyr Queen...

Um.

I actually answer that question in the story itself, so, uh.

I’m just gonna. Move on to the tags & new questions now.

I tag:@witchywrite; @marniebalboa; @quartzses; @she-writes-love; @idreamonpaper (lemme know if you want to be added or removed. yes i know this isn’t eleven people. get nervous about tagging people in things ^^;)

My questions are:

1. Do you have any ideas for future WIPs you’re excited about?

2. What’s your favorite part of writing?

3. What’s your favorite aspect of the genre you write?

4. What themes/tropes do you find show up in the majority of your ideas? (E.g. found family, belonging, love triangles, etc.)

5. Do you have a routine or ritual you do before writing? (E.g. lighting a candle, putting on a playlist, making a specific beverage)

6. What would your ideal place to write look like?

7. Do you sort your characters into, say Hogwarts Houses or Meyers Briggs Types? (Or other kinds of archetypes?) If so, which characters fall where?

8. Have you ever participated in a character chat? (An almost roleplay chat where you introduce your characters to other characters. Sometimes they’re focused around a time limit with specific questions, as on Twitter, but sometimes they’re more free form.)

9. How much prewriting do you do before you start writing?

10. What’s the last book you finished reading? Would you recommend it?

11. What’s your favorite piece of writing advice, or favorite quote about writing?

#tag games #thank you for tagging me!!!#i love this particular tag game #((i love all tag games))

3 notes · View notes

overwhelmsion · 6 years

Text

{warning: long post ahead. read it in its entirety if you feel like making me feel validated}

Okay I have to vent because this is the kind of shit that makes me not trust romance reviewers!!! And their taste!! And their judgement for good writing quality and actually emotionally satisfying storylines....

This is a book by an "acclaimed author" or at least someone I saw having her praises sung on twitter very strongly. I mean after Tessa Dare I should have learned my lesson. First off, the quality of the writing itself was not deserving of the praise I've seen. It could be that maybe it was just this book. I haven't read any of her other books so idk if it's consistent or different from her usual stuff but there are two things that struck me about this story/writing style early on: it's juvenile (it's about college students so idk maybe it's done on purpose somehow) and it's full of US-american sensibility. It just doesn't track with me. It was hard for me to connect with the characters and the situations "they found themselves in" and their respective reactions as well. A looooooooot of this book fell really flat. Flat. No-sense-making flat.

The "hero" is her past bully. Like actual, physical bullying. Having stuff thrown at her, flyers of her being big as a whale posted at school, actually being run over by a car, needing brain (head?) surgery and SPENDING TWO YEARS IN REHAB bullying. But he's hot and a secret intellectual with feminist tendencies so it's all good. God.

So he pops up at her school (college) and even though she's terrified of him and they're not even friends he casually calls her honey... like those douchebags that think they can call you honey so the douchebaggery that they say is lessened somehow. I'm rage typing right now. In my experience, men using honeys and babes and sweethearts in their speech is more of a reason to run away from them than to believe they're soft bois and find them trustworthy. I see you author, I see you.

I cannot groan enough at the "jock who is a secret intellectual and not only that, he has strong feminist views" trope. Like he's not just a secret intellectual, he's a secret intellectual when it comes to all the interests that the heroine has. It's ridiculous.

Okay but nothing, I mean NOTHING, tops the MOBSTERS being included as a plot point in the book, especially that MOBSTERS have some kind of (monetary????) interest in the outcome of COLLEGE WRESTLING MATCHES. It made me want to snicker when I was reading it but now that I'm writing this I'm horrified at the stupidity. Mobsters. Mobsters. In this day and age. Oh and not only that, at the very end their HEA is capped by the couple becoming insta-rich with mob money. Which, gross. Mob money, really? Do you have no sense in your head, author? Am I supposed to actually feel happy that the "perfect WOKE cinnamon roll" hero is accepting money from people involved in drug and human and sex trafficking? FUCK YOU! Murder and extortion and political corruption? Uuhh especially with all the types of corruption happening nowadays (this is a direct reference to donald's administration, yes). (Seems the book came out in 2016, but still.)

Let's go back to the bullying for a bit. So my bullying at school never ever ever became physical. Not even in having people throw so much as a rolled up piece of paper at me. Not even someone passive aggressively shoving against me in the hallway. Not someone "accidentally" hitting me with a ball in gym class. Never. Not even someone using the threat of violence towards me. Never. Which I'm mentioning to say that I wouldn't let ANY of my past bullies get away with the "explanation" (which turns out to actually be an EXCUSE) that the hero gives here*. The hero who hung around and bullied her with the type of guy who would actually RUN SOMEONE OVER WITH A CAR. The hero who actually threw things at her and posted the aforementioned whale posters. Oh god. His excuse? It wasn't me. Some other being was possessing my body. I have no explanation, only that I felt bad afterwards (cue world's tiniest violin). I didn't know why I did it. I also didn't wanna be doing what I was doing (although that last part was implied, he didn't actually come out and say it). And like, 20 minutes after he gives this explanation the heroine brings something related to the bullying up (because someone apologizing or giving an explanation doesn't automatically erase your trauma) and the hero practically yells "I JUST TOLD YOU IT WASN'T ME" at her, shutting her up. I think he does it a third time too. Unacceptable. Ridiculous.

A lot of things in the book happened just because the author/character said so... like the plot moved in certain directions or the characters felt a certain way BECAUSE WE WERE TOLD it was that way not because it made any sense. The character said something and it made it true... there was no true logic. I read somewhere recently that said it's not important so much that the story makes logic in like, your world building or the tropes you put the story in, the most important thing is that the story makes EMOTIONAL SENSE. This books fails this maxim IN SPADES. In spades. The author just TELLS US the plot makes emotional sense, the plot doesn't actually hold up for the reader as making emotional sense. It's bad. And the quality of the writing itself is... not bad, it's just not good. I seem to recall someone describing the author's writing prowess as chemically amazing or alchemy or something, but hey maybe it's just this book that's bad.

Another thing is that the main characters either act childish or mature based on what the plot needs them to be. Not because of characterization, just because of how cute the author wanted certain scenes to be. They're either mature or immature about sex depending on what's going to be cutest or whatever... I mean I get it they're college kids so they're supposed to be a mix of mature and immature, it's just not alluring for me to read as a 30 year old. It does not come across as cute. It makes me eye roll. Honestly I feel like this book should have a warning that it was going to be juvenile because none, I really mean it, none of the romance books I ever read had as much of a juvenile tone as this one.

The cherry on top of this all..... he bullied her because he had a crush on her. Like that's the ONLY reason. They sort of give another reason earlier on but it doesn't track very well, it doesn't make sense he would bully JUST HER because of it. And that's another thing... the other bullies? Barely mentioned. Other bullying victims? NEVER mentioned. Bullies don't have just ONE victim, I have enough experience with it to tell you that with full fucking confidence. The hero was, at the bare minimum, hanging around with two other bullies and I do not believe for ONE FUCKING SECOND that they only ever bullied the heroine. But none of this is ever mentioned because then the author would have to actually address it and why would she actually do that, right.............................................................................

But the puketastic climax to this whole story is that he has been in some sort of love with her from the very start and they reminisce over what could have been, all googly eyed, if only he HADN'T VIOLENTLY BULLIED HER PLUS AIDED AN ABETTED OTHER PEOPLE IN BULLYING HER TOO AND ACTUALLY PUT HER IN MORTAL DANGER. Cause you guys, he actually saved her life right after he was a part of putting her in danger!!!! Can you say swoon??????? It is so ridiculous I don't think I have enough sarcasm in the world. I don't know how anyone has read this novel and its conclusion as romantic in any way at fucking all, but most of all seasoned romance readers and authors. It's baffling. Truly astonishing.

*also can we talk about how I have yet to find a villain or bully hero who was actually redeemed. It's always some sort of cop out IT WASN'T REALLY HIM explanation that doesn't cut it.

#rant #romance novels #it's probably an unpopular opinion but what else is new #bullying

2 notes · View notes