i recently found out what the * * * that sometimes separates parts of a text is called and youre never gonna fucking believe it
No Egrets
The reblog blog of ritabuuk and devilrose. We actually like egrets.
She was an American in a fanfic written by someone British; I was a Brit in a fanfic written by someone American. She came to me and said "will you help me with my maths? I need to get a good grade to stay on the American football team"; I told her "I'll bloody well help you parse math".
trying to be a writer is so scary. like what if I’m actually a Wronger
I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture.
All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line?
The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy?
Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess.
I want the fat left it.
I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence.
Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."
on one hand I think it's extremely important to make cuts and leave behind the best quality version possible. and there are ways to write “thinking” and “feeling” that actually show that and get into the characters head more without just telling, ways to rely more on interesting nuance. verbs and adjectives that have more punch to them. however you can go too far and cut out any kind of soul.
and all you're left with is the driest plainest most workmanlike prose imaginable. no description given to the world and no development of the characters, just talking heads in a void. there's no style, there's no enjoyment, it's on the verge of being an instruction manual.
it's important to strike a balance because either kind of extreme runs the risk of being utterly terrible to read--like anything else the real answer lies in shades of grey
just saw a “only one bed” fic with the major character death warning
Was trying to make a joke about TV writing to my friend the other day and had to pause and go "...does the phrase 'surf dracula' mean anything to you?"
image description: tweet by @/topherflorence, reading: back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you'd see that fool surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale /end description
do any of you even enjoy reading or watching fiction at all? if i wanted the plot with virtually nothing else i would read the wikipedia page
I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:
Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.
Fanfiction is insane. You can write porn so good you make friends.
"Readers have SHORT attention spans! The average reader takes just TWO sentences to decide whether to put a book down! You have to HOOK them in the FIRST sentence! GRAB them by throat and don't let them BREATHE—"
... have... have we considered that perhaps the average reader just, like, knows what they like in a book? I mean... first sentences are famous for establishing things like *checks notes*... genre, tone, POV, pacing, character, voice, uhhh... writing style...
The average reader is putting your book down because they discovered it's in first person (or not in first person). The average reader put your book down because they wanted a cozy read, or they're sick of cozy reads, or romance, or grimdark, or assassin princesses, or vampires, or or or. The average reader put your book down because they just didn't like your writing style—no, not because it was boring... they just, get this, didn't like it.
The average critical reader put your book down because it had six grammatical mistakes in the first two sentences.
The average reader will read quite a ways if the premise intrigues them, they like the genre, the writing style doesn't get on their nerves, and the characters pop off the page. In fact, they'll probably read the whole book, so long as it delivers on its plot promises and doesn't drag in the middle section.
The average reader will, however, stop reading after just two sentences if it's clear by the second sentence that the only thing they'll like about this book is the opening line.