You Glance At The Boy On Your Way To School. You Stop When You See His Brother Standing Next To Him,

You glance at the boy on your way to school. You stop when you see his brother standing next to him, talking. It's been a week since you started your project with his brother. You've managed to make him your grudging friend, which you're excited about. You walk over to them and his brother breaks off whatever he was saying and looks at you. You smile, "hey. What's up?" He shrugs, "nothing. Just saying by to Junior." You blink, "Your names Junior?" Junior glares at his brother, who immediately shrinks, cheeks burning red, "s-s-sorry...." Junior looks at you, "So? It's none of your business." You shrug, "There's nothing wrong with it. I was just surprised." Junior glares, "it's still none of your business." You sigh and look at his brother, "Come on. We're gonna be late." He hesitates, glancing at Jr. Jr nods at him and he hurries over. You walk to school, shaking your head. Why does he have to be such a jerk?

Me, reading most of a piece: Outstanding! I love! Fabulous!

Me, reading said piece’s dialogue: That’s not- that’s not how people… talk. 

Few tips for anyone writing something very difficult: dialogue.

1. Awkward people do not confidently proclaim heavy statements.

       If your character is awkward, anxious, or easily gets nervous, they will not smoothly declare “I love you with all my heart, and I have family issues”. If they’re uncomfortable in social situations, they won’t magically turn confident. Now don’t get me wrong, I love love love a well-portrayed outspoken, confident character. And those characters can probably state emotions easier. But an awkward character cannot.

2. Nervous stuttering (unrelated to a speech impediment) d-does not s-s-sound like t-this.

Try talking to yourself (I’m not crazy) and seeing how this would really sound. A good way to do an aggressive stutter is to fall back and repeat a couple of words. Ex. “What if- what if we- what if we just…” Another trick is to remember that there are varying level to a nervous stutter. If you’re hardly nervous you won’t have an aggressive stutter like that.

3: It’s okay to say “said” every once in a while.

Good god, please don’t avoid it like the plague. It shouldn’t be common, but it shouldn’t be your worst fear. We don’t want another case of “Slughorn ejaculated,”

Feel free to reblog with any corrections, or your own tips!

Edit: Dear god please check the notes. They’re SO helpful.

You're walking home from school when you see the boy looking out into the crowd. His face lights up. You freeze. You've never seen him look genuinely happy before.... A boy breaks away from the crowd and heads over to him. He's shorter than him, also blond, but with gold eyes. He has a small frame, very similar to the boy's. He stops in front of him, head down, facing away from you, so you can't see his expression, but the boy's eyes soften and he pulls him into a hug. The smaller boy grabs his shirt tightly and his shoulders shudder, as though he's crying. The boy watches him fondly, then his lips move. He's too far away for you to hear what he's saying, but he pulls the smaller boy away from him and slides his shirt off his shoulder, revealing the bandage over his bullet wound. His lips move again. You catch the, "see? I'm fine..." The smaller boy grabs his shirt again hides his face in it. The other laughs, pulling him away again and saying something to him. The smaller boy nods and he ruffles his hair. The smaller boy ducks his head. The other says something else and the smaller boy hugs him tightly, then runs off. You wonder over to the boy, "I didn't know you had a brother...." The boy looks at you, suddenly guarded again, "......Yeah...... so?" You shrug, "It's just surprising...." You don't know why you're even here. You don't like him. But something about seeing him soft and caring makes you more curious about him. "He's not really mafia material is he?" You blurt it out without thinking. The boy bristles, "So what? Just cuz you're born into a mafia doesn't mean you HAVE to be one. If he decides to do something else I'm fine with it." You nod quickly, "Ok. I'm sorry. That was stupid of me to say..." "yeah. It was." He brushes past you and stalks off, leaving you, once again, wishing you would have never approached him....

I think the most challenging part of piano tiles is the self controle it takes to not scratch the sudden itches you get everywhere as soon as you start playing....

You leave school and immediately search out Jr, dragging his brother along with you. Once you find him, hanging out near a club, you grab his arm. He jerks away immediately, snapping, "The Hell do you want?" You glare and say back sternly, "Me and your brother are friends. That means me and you are at least going to have to get along. So I'm FORCING us to hang out. Come on." He glares, "Why should I?" "What if me and your brother get close? What if we start DATING? Don't you wanna atleast half know his girlfriend?" You're actually pretty sure there's zero chance of that, but you fire it off anyway. His brother goes beat red and Jr is suddenly interested, "Dating huh? I didnt know there was a chance...", eyeing his brother. His brother shrinks under his gaze. You nod, "Yeah. So come on." He hesitates, but eventually gives in, following you to a cafe…

Also! As you're studying creative and professional writing: do you have any writing advice? Anything you picked up along the way that's incredibly helpful with your original fiction and fanfic?

alright, i’m gonna try and culminate the last three years of my degree into the most helpful advice i received that i can remember and it might be completely useless to you all but who cares:

adverbs are the enemy. if you can say she smiled prettily you can sure as hell take another four words to describe what was pretty about her smile instead. (if you gotta keep 1 or 2 adverbs in, fine, but purge the rest.)

kill your darlings is usually relevant but only because that one sentence you love so much is usually only loved because it doesn’t actually fit in with everything else. if your darling fits and works, don’t go killing it - raise everything surrounding it to that standard.

when posting articles/content online (especially on websites like medium), post towards the back end of the week, in the second half of the day. wednesday and thursday are the best ones for it. the algorithms of medium and other websites will make sure the article ends up trickling into friday, when bored employees go online during their breaks, and if enough of them read it, it’ll be especially popular over the weekend. (case in point, i did exactly this for this essay on depression.)

be warned though, popularity can be down to your tagging system, your title, any featured image and subtitle. just because you post at the exact right time doesn’t mean you’ll get the reads. here’s a masterlist of free stock images you can use, just because i’m nice.

read everything you can

read where we came from as much as new books. i don’t like classics but even i have to admit that reading ray bradbury can provide important and helpful tips and tricks, as much as reading the hunger games can.

try as many genres as you can, but if you know what genre you want to write in, focus your energy on that. a teacher of mine once said that he regrets dividing his energy between literary fiction and horror. he reads and writes both, but because he spent his time split, he never mastered either of them. if he had focused on one over the other, his talents with it would be much more than they are. (though, note, if you want to focus on multiple genres, do it anyway. i can’t decide between sci fi and fantasy, so i’m willing to master neither so i can enjoy them both.)

write everyday if possible. my teachers all recommend morning pages - you write a page in the morning before you get up and leave. do it during breakfast or when you’re still in bed. it can be about anything - word association, prose, poetry, whatever. it also does not have to be good. here’s a good book we were recommended on the subject if you want help with this.

for fan fic specifically: write in third person. unless you’ve got something super Artsy and Forward Thinking going on, your readers will only find themselves uncomfortable with first person, as we’re already trained to consider these characters as outside ourselves. putting first person in makes us the same person as the character, and whether readers are aware of it or not, that’s not the experience they came to fan fic for.

try to observe the trends of fan fiction when you can. i did this when i wrote for the 100 (i noticed that more people wrote during the hiatus between seasons, but more people were reading during the season airing and immediately after it finished) - you’ll find you’ll get more reads than you expect.

on tagging, just because it’s relevant to me: tag however you want on ao3, but tumblr only pays attention to the first 5, so make them the most important ones that are most likely to be read. from 6 onwards, tumblr won’t put your post in that listing when searched, so don’t bother.

don’t make the same mistakes i did with the prose around dialogue. it’s not:

“Hey there,” Jackson said. Emily smiled.

“Hey!”

as soon as your prose stops relating to the dialogue and jackson, you gotta start a new paragraph. even if you’re going into exposition or description - it doesn’t belong on the same line as the dialogue and it’ll start confusing the reader. especially when you stop saying things like “jackson said” and the reader starts attributing the dialogue to incorrect characters. try:

“Hey there,” Jackson said.

Emily smiled. “Hey!”

be as economical in your writing as possible. seriously. i love purple prose but we don’t need it everywhere. sometimes the reader just needs the facts and not three paragraphs of adjacent information. (sometimes, however, the reader wants that information, so it’s about being economical with how often you’re economical.)

for correct formatting for scripts, use the BBC writer’s room. they also have contests and open submissions. very occasionally, the people who submit can get hired to the BBC.

let yourself be shit at writing. it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Reading List:

here’s the best books i can offer you for writing. some may be helpful, some not so much for you - but these are the books my teachers recommended and i connected with.

The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler is a staple, okay? it was the first book we were told to buy, because it breaks apart a story into so many pieces and shows you how they’re to be employed. it’s not an enjoyable read, but it’s a really good place to be starting from.

The Elements of Style, Strunk and White. Another staple. Very short and apparently, very important.

if you want help with novel writing, Thomas Emson’s How To Write a Novel in Six Months is my go-to. he came in and delivered a lecture, the book takes only 40 minutes to read, and it comes with a lot of great advice you can pick and choose from. i reference him every time y’all ask for writing advice and it’s because the things i took from his book are the most helpful to my process.

Stephen King’s On Writing is pretty good. I was bored as heck through the first half, where he writes his life story, but the second half is all writing advice and super helpful.

as mentioned in the morning pages point: The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron.

The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting, Syd Field.

The Ode Less Travelled, Stephen Fry. if you’re interested in writing poetry, this is a very good one to use.

On Writing Well, William Zinsser. if you want to write non-fiction, this is the one for you. get the most recent edition you can, the edits are worth it. (for example, zinsser originally wrote ‘he’ when talking of the writer, and eventually changed to ‘they’ and ‘he or she’, because he learned feminism lmao.)

my playwriting teacher recommends The Art of Writing Drama, Michelene Wandor which i haven’t actually read yet but i plan to.

Heussner, Tobias, et al. The Game Narrative Toolbox is good (though a lil expensive) for when it comes to writing for games.

so is Rusch, Doris C. Making Deep Games: Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose, but again, recommended for games.

sources: i’m a third year creative and professional writing undergrad, consistently top of my class, taught by professional writers in fiction, experimental literature, poetry, non-fiction, playwriting, young adult and children’s literature and game design.