cruisin for a boozin

theskywaslookingback

This isnt a joke my favorite piece of writing advice that I’ve ever seen is someone that said if you were stuck with a fic and couldn’t figure out why or what was wrong, your problem is actually usually about ten sentences back. Maybe there was something wonky about the tone or the dialogue or you added something that didn’t fit but it’s usually ten sentences back. And every single time I get stuck in a fic I count back ten sentences and it’s always fucking there

cwritesfiction

If you write yourself into a corner, back out of the corner.

rainstorminsilver

Ok but before you go throwing random stuff into your story to spice it up or get it un-stuck, consider doing the following:

• Grab a few events (minor or major doesn’t matter) from earlier or later in the story and trace out the causal chains. What caused it and what did it cause? Can the domino effect lead to a new event?
  
• Trace out the “story” of the main cast’s motivation. How does the motivation interact with the story and how does the motivation change over time?
  
• Go hunt for story elements you put in earlier that could be escalated into subplots.
  
• Take a few characters who have different levels of information (or are more or less close to antagonists) and go through the story from their perspective. Perhaps you don’t know what should come next for your main character, but it might be obvious what comes next for a different character.
• When you throw in new characters, first try to repurpose old characters. This makes them feel less cheap and gives them a better chance at developing depth. And when you do want to use a totally new one, consider someone who’s related to an existing character or a causal chain. The reader might already be wondering where X character’s parents are, after all. 

radiofreederry

huffylemon

thiswaycomessomethingwicked

i love looking at cringe couples shirts and man

man

people realy don’t need to be this bad but they are, somehow

I hate all of this honestly 

non-finance related but still wtf worthy: 

people apparently choose to wear these things?

like

no one is holding a gun to their heads? 

yet people choose to dress this way 

kisari-vibes

There is one win:

sweetiepie08

Step 1: Stay in bed as long as you possibly can. 

Step 2: Speed run. 

escuerzoresucitado

rainstorminsilver

Ok but before you go throwing random stuff into your story to spice it up or get it un-stuck, consider doing the following:

• Grab a few events (minor or major doesn’t matter) from earlier or later in the story and trace out the causal chains. What caused it and what did it cause? Can the domino effect lead to a new event?
  
• Trace out the “story” of the main cast’s motivation. How does the motivation interact with the story and how does the motivation change over time?
  
• Go hunt for story elements you put in earlier that could be escalated into subplots.
  
• Take a few characters who have different levels of information (or are more or less close to antagonists) and go through the story from their perspective. Perhaps you don’t know what should come next for your main character, but it might be obvious what comes next for a different character.
• When you throw in new characters, first try to repurpose old characters. This makes them feel less cheap and gives them a better chance at developing depth. And when you do want to use a totally new one, consider someone who’s related to an existing character or a causal chain. The reader might already be wondering where X character’s parents are, after all. 

tainbocuailnge

whenever someone is like "[X] is so good but you can't just recommend it casually bc it has every trigger warning under the sun" that in itself is a recommendation. all the truly good shit needs a minimum of 5 disclaimers or it can't possibly reach the level of visceral catharsis necessary to be classified as a masterpiece. the funnier variant of this is when you come across a callout post for a piece of media that ends up reading like a recommendation instead

emeryleewho

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got payed to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.