Anotheranonymousquill - Thinking Thoughts Again - Tumblr Blog

no idea what yore talking about but you seem pretty tortured by it. smashin that like button ♥️

Started a new job and probably gonna be MIA for a couple Storyteller Saturdays, but THANKS to the two people who sent some! I promise I'll send a few back when I have the brainspace to answer, ask and read them again :)

Some small details for a character learning sword fighting for the first time:

- sore wrists

- blisters on hands

- every movement opens you up to be hit

- they will hit the tops of their arm and own sides with the sword while learning

- there is a primal sixth sense when you know you’re being toyed with

And, for your typically nonviolent characters.

You don’t aim for the swords. You aim for the person holding the sword.

It sounds so obvious but needs to be accepted. Actively. When holding a sword you have to understand you’re attacking another person. Even to block you have to aim your blocks at the other person or they won’t be strong enough to actually protect yourself.

Could you reblog this if you enjoy seeing your writer friends ramble about their wips on your dash?

"someone already came up with this idea :( now i cant make it" dont care. i would like to see 2 of them. i would like to see multiple, perhaps even many of them. because its kind of swag to see how different people approach the same idea

reblog if you’re a writer who feels guilt whenever they’re not writing and being productive, so I know I’m not the only one lol

STOP DOING THIS IN INJURY FICS!!

Bleeding:

Blood is warm. if blood is cold, you’re really fucking feverish or the person is dead. it’s only sticky after it coagulates.

It smells! like iron, obv, but very metallic. heavy blood loss has a really potent smell, someone will notice.

Unless in a state of shock or fight-flight mode, a character will know they’re bleeding. stop with the ‘i didn’t even feel it’ yeah you did. drowsiness, confusion, pale complexion, nausea, clumsiness, and memory loss are symptoms to include.

blood flow ebbs. sometimes it’s really gushin’, other times it’s a trickle. could be the same wound at different points.

it’s slow. use this to your advantage! more sad writer times hehehe.

Stab wounds:

I have been mildly impaled with rebar on an occasion, so let me explain from experience. being stabbed is bizarre af. your body is soft. you can squish it, feel it jiggle when you move. whatever just stabbed you? not jiggly. it feels stiff and numb after the pain fades. often, stab wounds lead to nerve damage. hands, arms, feet, neck, all have more motor nerve clusters than the torso. fingers may go numb or useless if a tendon is nicked.

also, bleeding takes FOREVER to stop, as mentioned above.

if the wound has an exit wound, like a bullet clean through or a spear through the whole limb, DONT REMOVE THE OBJECT. character will die. leave it, bandage around it. could be a good opportunity for some touchy touchy :)

whump writers - good opportunity for caretaker angst and fluff w/ trying to manhandle whumpee into a good position to access both sites

Concussion:

despite the amnesia and confusion, people ain’t that articulate. even if they’re mumbling about how much they love (person) - if that’s ur trope - or a secret, it’s gonna make no sense. garbled nonsense, no full sentences, just a coupla words here and there.

if the concussion is mild, they’re gonna feel fine. until….bam! out like a light. kinda funny to witness, but also a good time for some caretaking fluff.

Fever:

you die at 110F. no 'oh no his fever is 120F!! ahhh!“ no his fever is 0F because he’s fucking dead. you lose consciousness around 103, sometimes less if it’s a child. brain damage occurs at over 104.

ACTUAL SYMPTOMS:

sluggishness

seizures (severe)

inability to speak clearly

feeling chilly/shivering

nausea

pain

delirium

symptoms increase as fever rises. slow build that secret sickness! feverish people can be irritable, maybe a bit of sass followed by some hurt/comfort. never hurt anybody.

ALSO about fevers - they absolutely can cause hallucinations. Sometimes these alter memory and future memory processing. they're scary shit guys.

fevers are a big deal! bad shit can happen! milk that till its dry (chill out) and get some good hurt/comfort whumpee shit.

keep writing u sadistic nerds xox love you

ALSO I FORGOT LEMME ADD ON:

YOU DIE AT 85F

sorry I forgot. at that point for a sustained period of time you're too cold to survive.

pt 2

plot twist: my main character is actually just me with better hair and more dramatic life choices

Batman has a very specific code that's on everyone's communicator that he warns the JL to 'Never tap into it unless I'm indisposed and the world is 2 seconds away from ending'

Fast forward a few years and batman is knocked out cold and the world is 2 seconds away from ending when one JL member rmbers batman's 'very important do not tap unless absolutely necessary' button

So obviously the JL taps it expecting some god or smth and who else picks up but a woman who's simultaneously yelling commands,tapping aggressively at what they assume to be a keyboard and calmly telling them that she's Oracle,that she's already linked every person on the battlefield's comms to the 'batfamily comms'(direct wording) and that she's sending reinforcements as they speak

Then,while the JL is still in shock,Red Hood the fucking drug lord lands beside them and starts shooting up enemies,Nightwing is futher back backflipping,Red Robin is doing his shit

A mysterious black cowled girl pops up beside them and starts gently telling(ordering) them to specific parts of the battlefield(Hal gets so spooked he screams),a fully purple girl is beating enemies up next to them,a guy in neon yellow is punting enemies to the ground.

And some random ass 10 y/o is screaming bloody murder as he incapcitates enemies thrice his size

A late (or early) STS for you: I spy a mention of pirates in your intro post. Would any of them care to introduce themselves, or would you mind talking about some of your favorite elements of their story?

oooh ok yes piracy I can do let's go

(STS is a state of mind and I am making a nest there) (this is getting long and rambly and maybe disjointed I am so sorry but not really? pirates be upon ye)

Short answer; the Nightgale clan and their meteoric rise to ruling the archipelago within two generations of being created, the uh. the destruction of the islands and their rebirth as dragon riders then slow slide into nature-reserve-for-the-weird-and-magical. (specific shout out to Jay, daughter of dragons and giver of no fucks, creator of the whole thing by accident because she only ever wanted a ship of her own not... This)

Long answer;

So! Pirates! They originate in Leritheyar which is like. the most fleshed out of the Mist Worlds because it was my only story world for the longest time and then I got too attached to some of the characters (like the pirates) and then everything exploded

but that's not what we're here for!

So the pirates as a whole are The dominant culture of the archipelago that may or may not make up. a large amount of landmass in Leritheyar. I can't do distances well but it's fine it works

this means that I have a wholeass timeline/history of their rise to power, various pirate kings, shifts in families etc etc but the important stuff here;

each family has An Island that they originate on. That's Theirs. and at least one ship, maybe more depending on how big they are! how much power they have! There are absolutely other people that live on these islands but if they are not Pirate Family they do not get on the ships (exceptions being for like. fishers ig. the K'sean are not an exception they are rogue from Anther and the pirates would like them out of their islands thank you but they are small and fast and hard to track)

there is a vague sort of truce that means mostly they don't go in for Big battles but also there are so many skirmishes etc

by far and away my favourite pirates are the Nightgales bc Jay was one of The OG OCs and I will always love her

Jay is not pirate family. She is an orphan on the ruling clan's island, friends with their heir, but she's nothing. Her friend says that once she is queen she will change things, she will take Jay with her

Jay's not about to wait for that, she's got plans. Plans that involve stealing a small skiff and sailing north into the night

Promptly washes up on Riyan, the forgotten continent, where the NightGale lives with her offspring of weird little fucked up creatures. The NightGale adopts Jay because this child Amuses her and everything is fine and dandy until the Sanders pirates come looking for her (possibly at behest of the pirate heir actually. She isn't queen yet but it's been a solid few years and she's worried)

Jay and her not-quite-sister Erris go with them, shenanigans ensue, Jay takes control of the clan. That's her ship now, her pirates. No one's really gonna argue with the teen who bested their captain in single combat and has a dragon on her shoulder and also whatever-the-fuck Erris is at her side.

Her friend (now queen) is delighted by this turn of events and together they are An Unholy Menace. jury's out on whether or not they were A Thing. the queen's son certainly thinks so and has an honest-to-god grudge against Jay, because he thinks she's gunning for rule of the islands

Jay does not give a fuck about ruling the islands. She has a ship, she has a pygmy dragon, she has Erris. All is good with the world. She adopts some of the Sanders kids to be her heirs and they take her name.

She gets herself a mage! She has a treaty with the mages(? I think?), actually, which more or less makes her ships untouchable in the shipping lanes. Her grandson marries the heir to the pirate throne (the king is not impressed with this actually. He's hating life. He tries to kill her and his own mother. He does not succeed (his own daughter may kill him? maybe it's his mother. who can say!))

People say she's still out there. people say they've seen her ship late at night, out in the mist where the eldrii and the akaha play, because for all that the NightGale is the dragon of forgotten things, there are some things that just can't stay unknown.

[her great-grandson is king when the islands are lost and so are the ships but they transition to riding dragons during the war and that's what punts them sideways into another world, where they have... some number of years to set themselves up before their dragons also disappear but by that time they have swathes of land on a sky island that they turn into a sort of reserve for Mythics and Magics to come and heal and rest, and they become another powerhouse to be feared]

This looks like an awesome way to lay everything out and see how it all overlaps! I may need to try this

so I've like finished one of the presents (not typed it up yet) and the other is - I've got three weeks today to finish it by and I've got it started! I have done some! I just need to check some notes and work out a few things that I couldn't do at work because I didn't have the files

(I did) (I just didn't read down far enough)

so now I'm back home and rather than getting straight to playing DA:I like I have been for the past week I was gonna write but uh

yeah anyway I'm working out the dnd shenans timeline with post-it notes on the floor and there is one hell of a draught down here. Wild.

hi hello STS for you! what can you tell me about your vibey fantasy wip? (the vibes sound *excellent* honestly) are we just roadtripping about it or do they have a Quest going on?

Thanks for asking!

Yes, so I'm thinking it'll be a fairly episodic story with them taking various shepherd type jobs transporting heards of stock across long distances. This'll be cows, sheep, maybe horses or deer ect that you'd find around the globe. But I'm planning to play around with slightly magical or fantasy versions as well.

Think deer with antlers that grow valuable plants and are a sought after material when they naturally shed each year, or your more typical Pegasus.

The vibes I'm going for are high fantasy with a focus on exploring the world and its natural wonder rather than having to save it from some great catastrophe or do war. If that makes sense.

I'm more of a character driven person when it comes to writing, so I've given myself Reya Teran (26f) and her friend/younger brother figure Syon Klau (21m) to explore the world through. Neither of them have a home by this point, and both are fairly happy wandering from place to place so long as they get a bit of adventure along the way. They'll both probably also have some type of powers.

But yeah, it's mostly characters taking once off remote cattle driving jobs with whoever needs some extra hands, visiting small towns, and exploring the land.

I'm having fun with the worldbuilding and plan to play around with the common language being similar to our sign language, with dialect or accent differences depending on your occupation. For example, busy shops in the main parts of town have rapid and small movements to keep up with the noise and pace of their work, while the faming jobs in large open plains or in high wind/bad weather have big clear motions to be understood when shouting is tiresome or can't be heard.

That's most of what I have at the moment, but it's been a heap of fun to brainstorm and worldbuild for even though I haven't worked on it much or had it in mind for very long!

Scratch that, I think I just needed to drink water. The tree was nice tho, 9/10 would recommend.

brb gonna go sit in a tree and look at the sky until the wind blows this sleepy fog from my mind.

brb gonna go sit in a tree and look at the sky until the wind blows this sleepy fog from my mind.

High key love everything about 'humans are space orcs' posts because they are celebrations of human-ness and I really think that's special

Can’t figure out why this scene still isn’t working?

You’ve written and rewritten the same scene five times and convinced yourself to move on to fix it later but it’s still there, still broken, and you can’t put a finger on what the problem is.

You’re in the wrong POV (if applicable)

Your narrator isn’t the best choice here, maybe they’re overshadowing a more important character or their commentary on what’s happening isn’t compelling enough by nature of their relationship with the story.

Your refuse to kill your darlings

You’ve worked so damn hard trying to fit a square peg of this really cool idea in isolation into the round hole that your narrative became. No matter how hard you shove or how many angles you try, it’s not going to work. Delete it, or move it.

This scene occurs at the wrong time

Maybe it’s a revelation that hits too early or too late, either in the physical timeline or within a character’s arc. Maybe it messes up the pacing, leaving characters either rushing or waiting around for the next scene to hit because the placement of your story beats has left clumps and gaps of action.

This scene throws somebody OOC

It might be a darling that needs sacrifice. Maybe it’s the wrong character to have that monologue or to say that cool quip you thought of, or they’re weirdly passionate about a thing that shouldn’t matter to them/nonplussed about something that should be very important to them. It’s something X would never do but you wrote anyway for the sake of the plot.

—

Or some combination of these. My deleted scenes for ENNS’s sequel is officially longer than the existing manuscript purely due to trial and error with my plot.

storyteller saturday!

I remember when this was a big thing on writeblr, but it seems to have died down a lot so

reblog this post if you'd like STS asks about your story and characters! send an ask back to the people who send an ask to you.... and look through the notes and pick some people to send asks to as well!

you can ask anything you like! how someone came up with their ideas, how their characters would fare in a haunted house, what kinds of symbolism is present in their work... get creative! get silly if you'd like!

I'll be reblogging this post every saturday and sending out asks to people who share it :]

“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!

“you’re a writer, can you explain your process?” yes. first, i panic. then i procrastinate. then, in a fit of productivity at 3 a.m., i create chaos.

Aggggh this is giving me flashbacks to my high school drama class a few years ago. Girl I feel you and it's a nightmare.

If you want to vent/chat about it feel free to dm me, I'm happy to commiserate and potentially offer tips if you wants some and I remember any?

Idk, good luck with that mess and congrats on writing the whole play you guys are doing! That's awesome!

I'm making a lil play thing at school and my group is driving me fucking insane

I wrote the entire script and storyline, as well as creating all the characters. I literally just want them to learn their lines and to get through one singular rehearsal without someone interrupting or joking or arguing

There is a scene in a preschool that lasts like a minute and everyone's like "WE SHOULD BRING IN PRESCHOOL TOYS AND KIDS ARTWORK"

There are 5 of us and 1 person hasn't even tried to learn her lines (+ she gets mad at us when we tell her to) despite us having to perform it in ab three weeks. This is for our gcse grades too and the idea of failing drama makes me feel nauseous

This girl literally ignores everything I say too, I got mad and said "do you just forget everything as soon as you leave the classroom" and she said she did. And she isn't even trying, she has a script (but she lost it so I have to go print another one) and she finds it really funny

And every single lesson one guy literally lies on the floor and refuses to do anything. We have to either drag him into place or just pretend he's there and talk at the ground. One lesson he said he felt sick and refused to do anything (more than normal) and then in that same lesson said we'd be doing better if I wasn't sick a few months ago (I had fucking surgery and couldn't walk). I don't even like this guy but he's friends with my friend so

And another girl can't get through 2 scenes without doing an entire (joking) speech and she jokes through every scene she's in (and some she isn't)

And lastly, my friend. They're generally okay but they get really pissy when I tell them to do something different. The difference was "I don't think your character would wear a suit". And I said their character isn't the main villain (we don't even have a villain it's a play about grief), it took like a month for them to stop arguing that he actually is.

And there's a clusterfuck of other stuff but yeahh fuck this. Btw I think I'm going to post the story at some point bc I'm really proud of it

Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.