Fanfiction Resources - Tumblr Posts
WOAH! I can't wait to check these out 🤩
Writing Tip Blogs Rec List!
Just a short list of some of my favorite blogs for writing tips and advice!
@aquestionofcharacter – character building
@asexualadvice – asexual resources
@authors-haven
@clevergirlhelps
@daddigabi
@disabilityinkidlit – disabilitiesÂ
@diversitycrosscheck – diversity
@elumish
@fictionwritingtips
@fixyourwritinghabits
@fuckyeahasexual – asexual resources
@fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment – character building
@heywriters
@howtofightwrite – combat and fighting
@howtowritelgbtfiction – LGBT+
@its-a-writer-thing
@kyla-writes
@letswritesomenovels
@lizard-is-writing
@plotlinehotline
@simplyoriginalcharacters – character building
@slitheringink
@thecharactercomma – character building
@thewritershandbook
@writersrelief
@writersyoga
@writerlydays
@writingdotcoffee
@writingquestionsanswered – specific questions
@writingwithcolor – diversity
@yourbookcouldbegayer – LGBT+
WOAH! I can't wait to check these out 🤩
Writing Tip Blogs Rec List!
Just a short list of some of my favorite blogs for writing tips and advice!
@aquestionofcharacter – character building
@asexualadvice – asexual resources
@authors-haven
@clevergirlhelps
@daddigabi
@disabilityinkidlit – disabilitiesÂ
@diversitycrosscheck – diversity
@elumish
@fictionwritingtips
@fixyourwritinghabits
@fuckyeahasexual – asexual resources
@fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment – character building
@heywriters
@howtofightwrite – combat and fighting
@howtowritelgbtfiction – LGBT+
@its-a-writer-thing
@kyla-writes
@letswritesomenovels
@lizard-is-writing
@plotlinehotline
@simplyoriginalcharacters – character building
@slitheringink
@thecharactercomma – character building
@thewritershandbook
@writersrelief
@writersyoga
@writerlydays
@writingdotcoffee
@writingquestionsanswered – specific questions
@writingwithcolor – diversity
@yourbookcouldbegayer – LGBT+
WOAH! I can't wait to check these out 🤩
Writing Tip Blogs Rec List!
Just a short list of some of my favorite blogs for writing tips and advice!
@aquestionofcharacter – character building
@asexualadvice – asexual resources
@authors-haven
@clevergirlhelps
@daddigabi
@disabilityinkidlit – disabilitiesÂ
@diversitycrosscheck – diversity
@elumish
@fictionwritingtips
@fixyourwritinghabits
@fuckyeahasexual – asexual resources
@fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment – character building
@heywriters
@howtofightwrite – combat and fighting
@howtowritelgbtfiction – LGBT+
@its-a-writer-thing
@kyla-writes
@letswritesomenovels
@lizard-is-writing
@plotlinehotline
@simplyoriginalcharacters – character building
@slitheringink
@thecharactercomma – character building
@thewritershandbook
@writersrelief
@writersyoga
@writerlydays
@writingdotcoffee
@writingquestionsanswered – specific questions
@writingwithcolor – diversity
@yourbookcouldbegayer – LGBT+
WOAH! I can't wait to check these out 🤩
Writing Tip Blogs Rec List!
Just a short list of some of my favorite blogs for writing tips and advice!
@aquestionofcharacter – character building
@asexualadvice – asexual resources
@authors-haven
@clevergirlhelps
@daddigabi
@disabilityinkidlit – disabilitiesÂ
@diversitycrosscheck – diversity
@elumish
@fictionwritingtips
@fixyourwritinghabits
@fuckyeahasexual – asexual resources
@fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment – character building
@heywriters
@howtofightwrite – combat and fighting
@howtowritelgbtfiction – LGBT+
@its-a-writer-thing
@kyla-writes
@letswritesomenovels
@lizard-is-writing
@plotlinehotline
@simplyoriginalcharacters – character building
@slitheringink
@thecharactercomma – character building
@thewritershandbook
@writersrelief
@writersyoga
@writerlydays
@writingdotcoffee
@writingquestionsanswered – specific questions
@writingwithcolor – diversity
@yourbookcouldbegayer – LGBT+
Country vs. Adjective - a Dragon Age Fanfic Resource
I read fanfiction. I get that generally, fanfiction is done for fun and love of the fandom (and believe me, that is A-OK). To that end, it’s not always the most researched thing, and typos and the like can abound, and I really shouldn’t let it get to me. I get this.
At the same time, I have this platform on which to ramble about stuff! And maybe someone might find this useful. Plus someone whose fic I’m following mentioned I should do this.
Today’s topic: proper noun vs. proper adjective within the world of Dragon Age (with a side jaunt into somewhat related stuff).
Frequently in DA fanfic I see spelling confusion when writing the name of a place vs. using that name as a proper adjective (which is when you take a proper noun and use it as an adjective). Some of the names are easier to do this with than others, and one in particular stands out (and is at the top of my list).
In short: [Country] is a location. You can be from [Country], or live in [Country], or visit [Country]. [Proper Adjective], on the other hand, is a descriptor. You can be [Adjective], wear [Adjective] clothing, eat [Adjective] food, etc.
Here are some real-world examples to demonstrate:
America — American France — French Finland — Finnish Egypt — Egyptian
You can see the different ways the proper noun shifts when being used as a proper adjective. So in this vein, here are the locales in Dragon Age and their proper adjective counterparts. These were sourced largely by scrolling through the fan wiki and making note of the internal style guide (or what evidence there was of one).
Ferelden — Fereldan Orlais — Orlesian Nevarra — Nevarran Antiva — Antivan Rivain — Rivaini Tevinter — Tevinter Anderfels — Anders Seheron — Seheron The Dales — Dalish
So if you’re from Ferelden, then you are Fereldan. It makes sense that this is the one that trips people up, since it’s one letter off.
There are outliers, of course. I can’t find an adjective form for Par Vollen. Everyone there is in the Qun, and is either Qunari or Viddathari. Avvar, meanwhile, describes the people and the culture that live in the Frostbacks but is not the name of a location. Same for Alamarri and Chasind. Similarly, I can’t find an adjective form for Orzammar; most things there are simply dwarven. Meanwhile, when it comes to elves, modern elves are “elven,” but ancient elves are “elvhen” (meaning “the People”). You can get away with the Dalish calling themselves “elvhen” (as both the proper noun and the adjective) but probably not city elves.
While we’re at it, remember that Qunari is capitalized, but human, elf/elven, elvhen, and dwarf are not. An outdated term for the precursors to the Qunari would be “kossith,” and it’s unclear if it refers to the race or the culture (note it is also not capitalized). If one of the horned humanoids has left the Qun, they become Tal-Vashoth (capitalized), but if they were never part of the Qun in the first place, they are Vashoth (capitalized).
There you go. That has been your lecture for today on how to spell things properly for your DA fic.
My only complaint about this map is the labeling of the Western Approach as “Hot Arid.” It’s actually a cold desert, like the Atacama and Gobi deserts (there are other cold deserts in our world too, and they even look sandy, arid, and warm in color tone). The color palette in the game can be confusing, as it’s warm oranges and browns, but there are clues within the lore and even in the game itself.
The novel Asunder describes the Western Approach as cold:
The Approach had a strange sort of beauty to it even so. It was a desert, but not a warm desert with glowing yellow sand. It was a cold desert, mottled purple like an unhealed bruise. Rocky pillars jutted out of the sand like brittle, twisted bones; there was a sense that the howling winds had long covered everything else. Even so, it didn't seem forbidding and horrible . . . just stark, and perhaps even a little sad. It was as if the world mourned a mortal injury inflicted long ago.
It’s important to note that the Approach’s desertification is due to a Blight.
Within the game itself, you actually can hear area banter from Dorian that confirms that the Approach is meant to be cold. Credit to DAIHell for finding the voice clip here: "I thought deserts were supposed to be hot.” Similarly, he complains in the Hissing Wastes that it’s freezing, and “Why is a desert freezing?” The Iron Bull also comments on the climate of the Wastes, referring to it as a “dry cold.”
When in doubt, remember that Thedas is actually in the southern hemisphere of its planet, and thus temperatures increase the further north you go, not south. The Arbor Wilds may be an exception due to the amount of magic there, as it’s much more difficult to explain why there are jungle creatures in a very southerly zone. As for the Frostback Basin...I got nothin’. Something something god of winter imprisoned something?
The Climates of Thedas
Weiterlesen
Posting Fic - How to prep your writing to display correctly on AO3 (via LibreOffice)
So I've seen guides online about how to convert your fanfic for AO3 after writing it in Google Docs, because a lot of people use GDocs to do their writing (which is a decent option, since it saves it in the cloud and all that). I'm not planning on repeating that here.
But I don't do my writing in GDocs, I do my writing in LibreOffice Writer, because it emulates an older version of Word (which is what I grew up on and am most used to), and because I can have more robust spellchecking than on GDocs. And when I was first considering finally posting my work to AO3, I'd heard lots of commentary about how often pasting into the rich text editor sometimes loses formatting, or what hoops people had to jump through to make sure everything looked good.
So I'm here with the actually-pretty-darn-simple method I use to post to AO3 for anyone who needs this, because I want to be helpful.
Please note: this is largely for the basic formatting one might use on AO3. I haven't tested it with fancier things (not even smallcaps yet, though I'm hoping that won't prove too difficult when I finally get around to a chapter that needs that functionality). Also, these instructions are for Windows, which is what I use.
The first step is, obviously, to write up your story in LibreOffice Writer. I have some formatting standards I prefer because it makes my works look like they're publication-ready, which helps me stay in the "I'm actually writing fiction here" groove.
Once you're done writing, you need to make sure the file is ready to save for AO3. With how I write, the only thing I change is that I remove that first-line indent across the whole document. This is easy enough. Select everything, and then go to Format > Paragraph.
Once in that dialog, change the first line indent to 0. If you don't see a number there at all, just enter the number in there.
Then press "OK." This will realign all the paragraphs, including their first lines, to the left margin.
Note that I haven't changed the spacing between paragraphs at all. It's still single-spaced, and that's fine, because the next step can handle that.
DON'T SAVE OVER THE ORIGINAL.
What you want to do at this point is select "Save As" and make sure to save it as an html file, not whatever file format you normally use. LibreOffice will probably ask if you want to do that or use its native format, and you can just tell it "use html format."
You should now have an html file wherever you saved it. If you double-click it, it will open in your default browser, and you can check that the formatting carried over properly if you want. It should look ready for posting, complete with the internet-standard single empty line between paragraphs. LibreOffice knows to wrap each paragraph in html paragraph tags, which is what AO3 likes, and AO3 (and generally the rest of the internet) reads that as the extra empty space between paragraphs, just like you should see here on Tumblr.
Now you need to navigate to where you have the file on your computer via your file manager of choice (I'm on Windows, so I use File Explorer, which I can reach just by right-clicking on the Start button, but I also have a shortcut to it on my taskbar). Right-click on the file, and "open with" Notepad. You can also just open Notepad and open the file from within the program.
You should see the html code for the file.
This is all set and ready to go. Copy everything between the "body" tags in the file (I also skip the lines that are for the chapter title, because I can enter that in a different spot on AO3).
Copy the selected code and paste it into the HTML editor on AO3. If you want AO3 to do a bit of cleanup for you, you can click over to the Rich Text editor, then back to HTML, and it will clean up extra carriage returns and such, but this isn't necessary. Double-check that everything looks good by clicking "Preview," and if you're happy, click "Post."
This even preserves smart quotes, which I don't bother to change to straight quotes, though I suppose you could do so if you wanted.
But honestly, that's how easy it is. Save the file as html, copy the html over to AO3, and done. No scripts, no file converters, no worrying if your formatting is going to survive being pasted into the Rich Text editor. Just LibreOffice and Notepad.