writing

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mysharona1987:

 

thes3nator:

Try to do all of them. Here’s my take:

Prologue

Gregg Grimmsby, special agent Space FBI, stumbled out of his space cabin with a space mug of space whiskey in his robot hand. The sound of laser battles throughout the rocky landscape had woken him, and he put his hand up to block out the light from the binary suns as he squinted across the horizon.

The iridescent, crystalline landscape went on for miles, but he saw no sight of the battle. “Oh well,” he grumbled, “time to go get some space herbs.” He took a few steps forward, only to see the ricocheting light bounce off several canyons in the distance before turning through his torso. He fell to the ground, killed instantly.

Gregg shot up out of bed in a cold sweat.

“Agent Grimmsby.”

He looked out to the corner of the space cabin. It was Agent Slater, his longtime lover and boss. He was shirtless and standing in the light of the multiple moons that illuminated the room from the window.

“Come over here and kiss me, you son of a bitch.” Grimmsby growled, growlingly. And as Slater approached, Grimmsby woke up again. This time he was in a hydrotank, surrounded by doctors monitoring his vital signs.

“Fuck, not again,” he blubbered underwaterily, in the water.

Tags:

#storytime #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

carry-on-my-wayward-butt:

minementis:

carry-on-my-wayward-butt:

thaliaai:

carry-on-my-wayward-butt:

i always know when a fic writer has never experienced a hickey

How? It’s not like you’ve experienced one either.

“[Character A] licked and nibbled [Character B]’s collarbone, leaving dark purple spots along the way.”

either they’re tossing away the meaning of “nibbled” for the advancement of smut or they have a solid misunderstanding of hickeys. it takes like four or five straight seconds of hard suction to make a spot “dark purple”.

okay so two options here:

“[Character A] licked and nibbled [Character B]’s collarbone, leaving faint pink spots along the way.”

OR (and this one is better imo)

“[character A] sucked on the skin of [character B]’s collarbone harder than a vacuum on high power, leaving behind appropriately dark purple hickeys”

“[Character A] puckered their lips and absolutely Hoover™’d the life out of [Character B]’s entire neck. ‘You DirtDevil™’ [Character B] said with a breathy sigh.”

Tags:

#(oh right I was going to reblog this) #nsfw? #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

How to come up with names for your dystopian teen lit:

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

fierceawakening:

deducecanoe:

carry-on-my-wayward-wesley:

alice-moran:

alice-moran:

alice-moran:

Try to say regular names with a bunch of Oreos in your mouth!

Examples:  Jocelyn = Jorslun.  Elizabeth = Lisbit.  Daniel = Dannel.

You’re welcome.

Following up on this idea.  I tried this method with a hamburger in my mouth, in lieu of Oreos. Results:

Alice = Allit.   Mark = Marth.  Tommy = Domi.

Confirmed: a mouth full of President Choice White Mac and Cheese  produces a subset of names with a more badass tilt to them.  

Examples: Chris = Rith.  Brittany = Brickney.  Megan = Mayhem. 

I JUST CACKLED OUT LOUD IN PUBLIC

This is an amazing tool.

@mllemusketeer

Tags:

#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

misbehavingmaiar:

sebastian-bond:

but-the-library-of-alexandria:

the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise – what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that

Tolkien had the time apparently

LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted. 

Tags:

#language #yes this #I have been thinking lately about how much of the development of English comes down to sheer serendipity

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sdhs-rationalist:

disneysmermaids:

cherribalm:

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

i cannot overstate how much i need this

Tags:

#useful things #writing

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

fried-demon-potato:

dreyma-fyrstr:

xmoonlilyx:

andercas:

I feel like when you’re writing, organizing chapters and dialogue is easy

but jfc, the amount of time it takes to constantly keep people moving and make sure they’re in the right spaces and trying to come up with wording for it is always such a shock. 

Like, fuck, I made you pick up a coffee cup, you need to put it down at some point. also I can’t remember what I dressed you in, can you push up your sleeves? I don’t remember if you even have your shirt on.

and YOU. YOU OVER THERE, you got out of your chair earlier, but did you come back yet? Are you coming back? Where did you even go and why’d you get up? Fuck, I can’t make you sit down again already, you just stood up, go…over there. go get more coffee. Did you bring your mug with you? fine. bring the pot to the table and—wait, wasn’t the coffee pot already over here? shit, hold on, I need to go back and re-read and re-write

The worst decision I made in my current novel was to give my protagonist a back pack.

I’m laughing so hard, but this shit is so legit it hurts.

okay so you guys all need to get out of there, and go over here.

BUT HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GET THERE.
You just said something, is that like you? shit he already answered that question.
*IRRITATED WRITER SCREECH*

…the where-things-are problem always confuses me, because I see my stories like a movie in my head. Figuring out what emotions go with the actions, why somebody is leaving the room or whatever, that’s hard; remembering what they’re wearing and holding and drinking, that’s the easy part.

Does… nobody else write this way? O_O

Even amongst people who have mind’s eyes (not everyone), there’s a lot of variation in how detailed mental images are. Personally, my visual imagination is towards the low-detail end of the spectrum. Just because I’m watching a daydream unfold, it doesn’t mean I have any idea what the characters are wearing.

Tags:

#is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #someday I should use that tag for something other than mind’s eyes #I’m sure there’s plenty of other things that it would apply to #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mumblingsage:

this-disgusting-ribbon:

“LOOKS LIKE MEAT’S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS“ bellows the Orc to his Orc friends. Orcs know what menus are. Orcs know what restaurants are. are there bistros in Mordor? these are the questions i need answering

The moss-troll problem, or, Accidental Worldbuilding Through Metaphors

I read “the sea serpent had eyes the colour of NyQuil” and imagined them as being sky blue. When I got to the moss-troll bit, I thought “ah, so moss-troll ichor is light blue then”. It wasn’t until finishing the article that I remembered: I have no idea what NyQuil looks like.

This is probably some meaningful statement on metaphors in itself, but I’m not quite sure what.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

last-snowfall:

delphina2k:

The Crocodile Hunter style of writing involves chasing after cool-looking ideas that wander by and tackling them into submission.

I don’t recommend it for the long-term because it’s exhausting, but if there isn’t at least a LITTLE bit of Crocodile Hunter in your writing, I’m probably not going to read it.

Actually, I think by this sort of model I’m the crazy accidental rehabber.

You know, the one who seems like a normal person until you visit her house and realize she’s got things in there there’s no WAY are legal to keep as pets, as well as a house (which she had designed, pulling out most of the bottom floor and adding an extension) full of the more domestic types which are mostly well trained.

Mostly.

Plus the man-killer in the backyard she insists is an old softie really, plus the man-killer in the other half of the backyard that even she admits is a hell- beast.

And she didn’t really have room for that last rescue but it looked at her and was SO SAD, so she took it anyway.

…. Yep. That’s me.

Tags:

#writing #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

Diversity References For Writers

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://diversitycrosscheck.tumblr.com/ }}

diversitycrosscheck:

This began as a response to the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, where a commonly asked question was “Is it okay to write so-and-so characters if I’m not so-and-so?”

The answer is yes. BUT you have to be careful and respectful when doing so. A cool way to find out more about those cultures and identities would be to talk to people who are themselves a part of it. This is where this tumblr comes into the picture as part of the #DiversifyYourWriting initiative.

Basic premise: People willing to discuss aspects of their lives as marginalized people submit “profiles”. This blog utilizes a tagging system that enables writers to easily find suitable people to talk to about the very cultures they are trying to write about.

TO SUBMIT: Head on over to our submit page and follow the guidelines! Become a diversity reference!

This project will add on to our tag directory for identities as submissions come in. It’s constantly expanding! If you have any suggestions or ideas, send them our way!

Tags:

#interesting idea