WRITING TIP: Grammar. Good God.

WRITING TIP: grammar. good god.

just because it's tumblr doesn't mean you can throw grammar and spelling out the window.

COMMON MISTAKES:

Not indenting for paragraphs. I know tumblr doesn't have the 'tab' function, but at least do a paragraph break. When?

If someone new is speaking

If the setting/action has changed

a new thought

think of it like the camera angle changing in a movie. Would the camera break to another room? or would you watch five minutes of bouncing and spinning while the camera moves to the right location. (Hint: it's the first one)

Big blocks of text make me homicidal. Knock it off.

Apostrophes!

It's: it is

Its: belongs to 'it'. We think it can also be it's, but it's not (see what I did there huh huh hee hee hooo boy)

Possession: Jenna's, Jess', The Twins'. NOT Jennas', Jess's, The Twin's. If there is a group, put the apostrophe after the plural 's'. PLURALS DO NOT HAVE APOSTROPHES IF I SEE THAT AGAIN I WILL REVOKE YOUR LITERATURE LICENSE AAAAAH.

Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. "Like this." "Not this".

Dialogue punctuation.

"If you're talking and something happens," she said, dodging past a car, "you'd punctuate with a comma and lowercase." See how I didn't capitalize the bold word, or put a period after 'happens?'

Don't do this:

"If you're talking and something happens." She said, dodging past a car, "You'd punctuate with a comma and lowercase."

bad. wrong. booo.

MISUSING SEMICOLONS.

; this baby. makes a cute face ;) but is also useful!

it explains a clause, like so (an excerpt from my drabble 'Deal With It, pls read xoxoxo): "it was cozy; you'd pulled a blanket over your head and your music played gently." I said something was cozy, and then I explained how after a semicolon. It's not just a fancy comma. Don't use it like a fancy comma. it's like commentary of the actual writing. Professional parentheses.

PARENTHESES.

Don't use them. It doesn't make any fucking sense. use a semicolon or a colon or a comma or hyphens or literally anything else. underscores, even. just not parentheses. it's so weird.

WRITING STYLISTICALLY

Bold, italic, all lowercase, that stuff. use it consistently! you don't have to follow the rules if you make it seem intentional and consistent.

Bold.

emphasis, intense, eye-catching. good for a groundbreaking revelation. not the strongest choice for anger. has a staccato feel to it. punctual, concise.

Italic

wistfulness, pause, contemplation, haunting emphasis. good for flashbacks, whispering, angsty emphasis. If you overuse it, it'll feel kinda weird. i know we love her but give her some space. Otherwise it feels like pumping the gas and slamming the breaks really fast during the sentence.

all lowercase.

she's cute, she's aesthetic, she can get confusing sometimes. we need Capitals so that we can identify the Important Things. names, places, proper nouns, I know you know 'em. if you wanna start ur sentence lowercase, okay sure, but it gets muddy if you do it everywhere.

ok byeee xox

words to use instead of ________

"Mad"

aggravated, angry, annoyed, boiling, cross, enraged, exasperated, fuming, furious, heated, incensed, indignant, irate, irritable, livid, offended, outraged, riled, steamed, storming, upset

"Nice"

amiable, charming, cordial, courteous, delightful, favorable, friendly, genial, gentle, gracious, helpful. inviting, kind, lovely, obliging, peaceful, peachy, pleasant, polite, swell, sympathetic, tender, welcoming, well-mannered, winning

"Pretty"

alluring, appealing, attractive, beautiful, charming, cute, delightful, desirable, elegant, eye-catching, fair, fascinating, gorgeous, graceful, intriguing, lovely, pleasing, striking, stunning, sweet

"Said"

alleged, argued, asked, asserted, babbled, bellowed, bragged, commented, complained, cried, declined, demanded, denied, encouraged, expressed, giggled, growled, inquired, moaned, nagged, rebuked, rebutted, replied, rejected, retorted, roared, scolded, shrieked, shrugged, stated, taunted, vowed, warned, whined, whispered, yelled

"Went"

avoid, bolt, bound, depart, exit, escape, flee, fly, hike, hop, jaunt, jolt, journey, leap, leave, lurch, march, mosey, move, pace, parade, pass, progress, retreat, saunter, scoot, skip, split, step, stride, stroll, tour, travel, vanish

more words to use instead other words to use instead another list of words to use instead

Writing tips: how do I add tension?

plenty of favorite tropes have tension. almost all of them. and, non-romantically, tension adds atmosphere. tension is the not knowing, the road block to the happy ending.

NOT TO DO:

don't make your characters stupid. don't dumb down their decisions to get them in 'difficult' situations. the audience will be bored and annoyed. (the audience is me. this is so irritating.)

don't make shit up. keep it consistent, don't throw something out of left field just for the sake of it. If the plot doesn't have enough material for tension, revise.

don't overdo it. tension is great at the penultimate moment, right before success. if you add tension at every point of conflict, readers will get bored and the story will be slow. put it every once in a while, not at every available opportunity.

GOOD CHOICES:

Push and Pull. give and take. let your characters win some and lose some. if they lose all the time, nobody wants to root for them. give them some strengths with their faults.

target strength and weakness. weaknesses are commonly targeted because duh, and it is a good chance for angst, but a really strong choice is targeting strength. the one thing they were good at and they couldn't even do that right? hooo boy.

unpredictable. if the reader can see it coming, it won't be as nail-biting. but as I said above, too unpredictable makes it campy and dumb.

last minute. Does it go well until the last minute? or is it a shit show until the final save? either are good choices, and have some pretty tense moments.

TECHNIQUE

POV. pov is suchhh a helping hand with tension. switch POVs right at the pivotal moment, keep the audience guessing. Unreliable narrators are great too, maybe peek into the villain's head for a bit.

don't be too descriptive. overexplaining ruins the tension. setting description vs character mindset is what i'm talking about. as the narrator/author, you can describe via exposition or external commentary what is actually going on, but the characters don't know. It's like in a horror movie, when the audience knows the killer is around the corner, but the MC is oblivious.

keep the stakes high! conflict builds until the ultimate plot point. so should the tension. maybe there's a secret or a secondary motive that is slowly coming to light.

it doesn't always have to be a huge plot point. The MC is hiding a terrible illness that will strike at the worst moment. One of the characters is secretly a spy and doesn't say anything until the end.

Hit 'em where it hurts! suprises are great. not crazy surprises, keep it consistent, but a holy shit! moment does terrible things to the blood pressure (which in this case is what you want)

hope this helps! xox

Deal With It

Nathan Bateman x reader, fluff no smut, bickering, Nathan being an ass but cute about it, cuddles

genderless reader, no description

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

All day, you'd been pestering.

In the morning, after you'd dragged yourself out of bed a comfortable 2 hours after your alarm, you'd immediately gone to find him. Asking inane questions about the newest project, peeking over his shoulder at his newest website. He gruffly told you to fuck off, read the email I sent, but you preferred to listen to his voice.

After milking that opportunity dry, you lingered around his doorway or found excuses to enter his office. The first couple of times, he raised his eyebrows over the rims of his glasses, but now he merely sighed irritably.

You knew you were pissing him off, but you couldn't help it. Knowing that if you were lucky, he might give you a half-smile or a kiss on the cheek was enough for you to keep pushing for attention.

You caught the hint when he placed an extra desk in front of his door so you couldn't enter.

Instead, you wandered down the halls surrounding his office, laptop in hand. He caught glimpses of your quick pace out of the corner of his eye. He liked knowing where you were, always. Which wall you leaned against, how often you peeked through the glass to watch him work.

He understood your blind devotion. Few people get to witness a god at work, why wouldn't you take every opportunity?

Eventually you settled in the Pollock lounge. Bothering your favorite person had gotten tiring, and you'd become absorbed in your coding. It was soothing, poring over scads of green code and figuring out the puzzle, getting the little aha! rush of adrenaline when you cracked it. It was 'busy work', Nathan called it, easy for him, but too tedious to warrant his effort. So he shoved it all to you.

You didn't mind. Probably because your usefulness was the only thing stopping him from abandoning you in the woods.

Realizing you hadn't scampered past his windows in a while, Nathan's jaw ticked. He didn't like you poking and prodding him while he was in the zone, but he liked knowing you were there. You couldn't disappear that way.

He grunted and flicked through his camera feed, trying to find you in his maze of hallways and secret rooms. Rembrandt? nope. Bedrooms empty, kitchen empty...gym locked. Pollock...also no.

Had you gone outside?

Huffing, Nathan pushed away his tinkering and stalked out, shoving aside the desk he'd put up to block your efforts. He hated when you played these games. Why couldn't you pick an office and stay there, so he could watch you when he got bored? Pesky, pesky, pesky.

You were enjoying this. Of course you hadn't gone outside, it was raining like a bitch and you were dressed in a t-shirt. You'd curled behind the grey couch in the Pollock lounge, one of the few dead spots where the camera couldn't see. It was cozy; you'd pulled a decorative afghan around your shoulders and your music was playing gently. Still, it was fun to watch your genius get outmaneuvered by a camera placement.

Nathan was jogging in circles. This is stupid, just go back to work. He had hours of backlog to work through, a result of the last time you got under his skin. Can't say he didn't enjoy that, though.

But the game was starting to lose its fun. His eyebrows were pulled low and bushy over his glasses, his pace determined and strong. Where the fuck did you wander off to? You couldn't have left him cold turkey, he had way too much fun with you.

"Hey," he barked to the cold, fluorescent silence, "come on out now, it's not fucking funny."

Nothing.

Seething, Nathan scrubbed his hand over his scalp. Were you mad at him? Nah. Couldn't be. You weren't a snowflake, him rejecting your attention wouldn't drive you to isolation. He was too enigmatic, too intriguing for you to ignore.

Right?

Fuck, this was making him insecure.

"Fucking bullshit," he muttered, stomping back to his office. He wouldn't give you the satisfaction of giving in. He wasn't a lovesick pussy, he could go an afternoon without seeing you.

So he went back to his glass emporium and sat. And sat. His brain whirred, but your absence was heavy in his mind. Focus. But he'd had found a new thought to toy with; all the reasons you'd be ignoring him.

He was too mean. Did he yell at you? Maybe he'd forgotten to make you a snack in the fridge.

Hunching lower in his seat, Nathan glared at his reflection in the front window. Insecurity was for losers, idiots without the brainpower to thing about anything better. He was above this.

you were probably so mad at him.

He growled in annoyance and flung his coffee cup across the floor. It shattered, and he pursed his lips. That was one of the mugs you'd bought him.

Fuck.

☆☆☆☆

Still in your cozy cave, you'd begun to nod off. The repetitive clicking of your keys, soothing classical and the softest blanket ever was a lethal combination. a distant crash! made you stir, but you giggled quietly, imagining whatever tech Nathan got pissed at on the floor in a heap.

You closed your laptop and curled into your blanket. You'd crunched a good day's worth of code in an hour, you deserved a nap.

Apparently God Nathan had other plans.

Your slumber was rudely interrupted at a sharp tug, your drowsy mind spinning as you were hoisted into the air.

"Found you," a gravelly voice growled in your ear. You blinked, irritated that your nap had been stolen.

"Go 'way, I'm sleepin," you grumbled, pushing away his bushy face.

He held you tighter, forearms braced like a cage around you. You squirmed, feet tucked too tight under his biceps.

"Yeah? Does my attention bother you?" His sneer was audible. "Funny, you didn't have the same courtesy when I was actually trying to work-"

"I was working-"

"Shut up." He strode out of the lounge, your cheek bouncing gently on his shoulder. The way you were grasped to his chest was crushing your hands, and you fought to get away. He didn't budge.

"You want down? Is that it? Wanna break? Too fucking bad, you wanted attention, now deal with it." His grip did loosen a little, allowing you to comfortably nestle against him.

He meandered around the kitchen, grabbing another coffee mug and humming Beethoven while the espresso poured. Shifting you to his hip, he mindlessly rocked you as he waited. You nudged your nose into his sternum and he begrudgingly allowed you a sip, but not too much, because he needed to be in top performing condition.

Which, apparently included carrying you back to his office and sitting down for the next three hours, clutching you tight. You weren't complaining, you dozed right off.

☆☆☆☆☆

"Nathan."

"Hush."

You poked his cheek, wriggling away from where you'd been napping against his shoulder. He pulled you right back, smushing your cheek onto his rough beard.

"I need to piss, Nathan, lemme up."

He was quiet for a minute, and you were preparing to jab him in the groin, but he finally stood, still carrying you like a baby. The working out was paying off, evidently, because he showed now sign of weariness. You weren't the smallest person ever.

You rolled your eyes. "Nathan, I can walk myself to the bathroom, chrissakes-"

"Shut. It."

Dropping you in the restroom, he shut the door and waited outside, foot tapping impatiently. His chest was cold without you bundled up tight, and he told himself he didn't miss it. As soon as you peeked out of the stall, he swept you back into his arms and made his way back to his office.

"Nate-"

"Deal with it, baby."

Writing Tips: flowery words

yeah, vocab is important. but having big words isn't always better. The important thing to remember about writing is that it's a realistic description of a scenario. You need to use sentences and words that make sense for that character to use.

Like, "The sky was a divine shade of turquoise,' the man said exuberantly," and "Look how lovely the sky is, like robins' eggs!" she gushed," both mean the same thing. the first one uses more developed vocab, but it sounds fucking weird. Don't go overboard. It's okay to sound basic sometimes; not everything needs to be Shakespeare.

Balance is key!!! Synonyms don't always mean the exact same thing as the original word. they have their own affects, but overall their similar.

SIMILAR. NOT THE SAME. CLOSE.

It's realllllly important to understand that.

In my fluff advice post, I mentioned 'fluffy' words. Words have a feeling to them. "Chortle" and "chuckle" mean "laugh heartily", but you associate a different sound with each word, right?

Pick words that have the right feel. Read it out loud. If a word jumps out at you in a way that feels weird, try a different one. It may be the right definition, but it isn't the right tone. This takes practice. Pick up a book and read aloud for a bit. Get a feel for how the words flow with each other, try to mimic that.

xox love you, keep writing!

*has a character i wanna write a fic abt bc y'all inspire me*

yay writing time :D

*realizes the only information i have of them is from fanfiction bc i just thought the actor was hot*

:/