Writer's Life - Blog Posts

The dreadful path from "Omg I love this chapter so much" to "If I read it once again and find yet another thing to change, I might as well set it on fire"

The time you finally let go and post it should definitely be somewhere in between 😂

The holy texts

MASTERPOST (PT. 2)

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

For romance writing prompts, plotting tips & more, check out: MASTERPOST PT. 1

⭐Dialogue

Writing Dialogue 101

Crying-Yelling Dialogue Prompts

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⛰️Words to Use Instead Of...

Synonyms for "Walk"

Synonyms for “feeling like”

Words To Use Instead of "Look"

Words to Use Instead Of...(beautiful, interesting, good, awesome, cute, shy)

Said is dead

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🔠Vocab Lists

Nervous Tension Vocab

Kiss Scene Vocab

Fight Scene Vocab

Haunted House Inspo & Vocab

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👁️‍🗨️Setting & Description

Common Scenery Description Tips

2012 School Setting Vibes - follower question

Describing Food in Writing

Describing Cuts, Bruises and Scrapes

Using Description and Setting Meaningfully

How Different Types of Death Feel

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🗡️Weapons & Fighting Series:

Writing Swords

Writing knives and daggers

Writing Weapons (3): Staffs, Spears and Polearms

Writing Weapons (4): Clubs, Maces, Axes, Slings and Arrows

Writing Weapons (5): Improvised Weapons

Writing Weapons (6): Magical Weapons and Warfare

Writing Weapons (7): Unarmed Combat

Writing Female Fighters

Writing Male Fighters

Writing Armour

Writing Group Fights

Writing Battles At Sea

Erotic Tension in Fight Scenes

Pacing for Fight Scenes

Writing a Siege Warfare

Different Genres, Different Fight Scenes.

Making Fight Scenes Sound Nicer

Fight Scenes For Disabled Characters

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🌎Worldbuilding

Constructing a Fictional Economy

Homosexuality in Historical Fiction

Writing Nine Circles of Hell

Writing Seven Levels of Heaven

Master List of Superpowers

Magic System Ideas 

A Guide to Writing Cozy Fantasy

Dark Fantasy How-To

Dark Fantasy Writing Prompts

Dark, Twisted Fairytale Prompts

Fantasy World Cultural Quirks 

Fantasy Nobel Ranks: A List

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🌠Symbolism in Writing

Plant Symbolisms 

Weather Symbolisms

Symbols of Death

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🪄Writing Magic

Writing Magicians - the basics

Writing Magic Systems

Magical Training Options for Your Characters

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📋Other!

List of Fantasy Subgenres

Beauty is Terror: A List

The Pirate's Glossary

Storyediting Questions to Ask

Writing Multiple WIPs Simultaneously

Idea Generation Exercises for the Writer

Book Title Ideas

Picking the Right Story For You

What If God Dies in Your Story 

International Slang, Slang, Slang!

10 Great Love Opening Lines 

How to Insult Like Shakespeare

Serial Killer Escape Manual

Best Picrew Character Generators for Your Characters!

How to Write Faster

Gonna hold onto this

Writing Weapons (1): Swords

The Thrusting Sword

Type of fight scene: entertaining, duels, non-lethal fights, non-gory deaths, swashbuckling adventure

Mostly used in: Europe, including Renaissance and Regency periods

Typical User: silm, male or female, good aerobic fitness

Main action: thrust, pierce, stab

Main motion: horizontal with the tip forward

Shape: straight, often thin, may be lightweight

Typical Injury: seeping blood, blood stains spreading

Strategy: target gaps in the armous, pierce a vital organ

Disadvantage: cannot slice through bone or armour

Examples: foil, epee, rapier, gladius

The Cleaving Sword

Type of fight scene: gritty, brutal, battles, cutting through armour

Typical user: tall brawny male with broad shulders and bulging biceps

Mostly used in: Medieval Europe

Main action: cleave, hack, chop, cut, split

Main motion: downwards

Shape: broad, straight, heavy, solid, sometime huge, sometimes need to be held in both hands, both sides sharpened

Typical Injury: severed large limbs

Strategy: hack off a leg, them decapitate; or split the skull

Disadvantage: too big to carry concealed, too heavy to carry in daily lifem too slow to draw for spontaneous action

Examples: Medieval greatsword, Scottish claymore, machete, falchion

The Slashing Sword

Type of fight scene: gritty or entertaining, executions, cavalry charge, on board a ship

Mostly used in: Asia, Middle East

Typical user: male (female is plausible), any body shape, Arab, Asian, mounted warrior, cavalryman, sailor, pirate

Main action: slash, cut, slice

Main motion: fluid, continuous, curving, eg.figure-eight

Shape: curved, often slender, extremely sharp on the outer edge

Typical Injury: severed limbs, lots of spurting blood

Strategy: first disable opponent's sword hand (cut it off or slice into tendons inside the elbow)

Disadvantage: unable to cut thorugh hard objects (e.g. metal armor)

Examples: scimitar, sabre, saif, shamshir, cutlass, katana

Blunders to Avoid:

Weapons performing what they shouldn't be able to do (e.g. a foil slashing metal armour)

Protagonists fighting with weapons for which they don't have the strength or build to handle

The hero carrying a huge sword all the time as if it's a wallet

Drawing a big sword form a sheath on the back (a physical impossiblity, unless your hero is a giant...)

Generic sword which can slash, stab, cleave, slash, block, pierce, thrust, whirl through the air, cut a few limbs, etc...as if that's plausible

adapted from <Writer's Craft> by Rayne Hall

The life cycle of a chronically ill aspiring author

Aka: me rn 👁💧👄💧👁

the holy grail types of fanfic

You are a dynamic character in the story of your life.  You are complex and multi-dimensional.  Don’t give up.  Your story isn’t over!

about a quarter through writing the first draft for the third book in my series!

it’s been my fav book to write so far because of all the storylines i have planned, but it’s also been the most complicated to write for the same reason😭

there’s just so much that has to happen — between the main storyline *and* the side plot that it’s literally making my brain feel like this: 🫠

it’s so fun yet so stressful at the same time but hey i love writing!!!!!!😁

Necessity of Creativity

Writing Embellishments?

Once you have a finished fanfiction/novel (assuming its fully edited for basic things like grammar mistakes, plot holes, POV consistency, etc.) what is the next step to making it more literary? I'm talking about extra embellishments for way beyond a first draft. Here's what I usually (try to) add:

Plot twists Uniqueness to character voices Improved description and heightened stakes

More meaningful philosophical dilemma and moral conflict

What else do you think would be a nice extra embellishment to add, assuming you had all the time in the world to do anything you wanted to make a masterpiece? Let's say you wanted to make it read like an absolute literary classic. Let's say your goal is to shock and impress people with how good it is. What are some extra amazing qualities to add in a story that would take it to another level?

Besides the Lorax and Wish, what are some other animated movies that people think could be rewritten better? (Or would just be interesting to expand upon as a novel?) Idk how many rewrites I'll be able to do this summer, but I'm having a lot of fun learning about storytelling from this experiment!

Writers when they finally finish their first draft after months of hard work, blood, sweat and tears 🥹

Screaming relief 😩

I don't even do outlines anymore, but this still happens. Planning means nothing; never has.

Snippet from The Ithaca Mandate

The shuttle door opened, and Judith’s breath shuddered out of her lungs. She expected officers, maybe commanders and ensigns. But the first officer she spotted was the last one she expected to see.

The uniform was familiar.

Command red.

Grey eyes darted around the chamber, mouth gaping a bit in some kind of startled awe. Then they landed on Judith and Lyris, and the face morphed into a scowl.

“Of course.”

Captain Elara Becketts strode forward, combat boots thunking on the debris coating the floor. She came to a stop before them, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You two are like goddamned roaches."

I'm 129,000 words in and my flashbacks are misaligned with my present day scenes and now the main characters rekindle in the present before they breakup in the past gahhhhhh

How did I do this to myself >.<

There is nothing better than walking the dog and managing to come up with a breakthrough for your original fic plot.

Good thing the Godolphin Arabian has a murky origin story...

Sitting here, trying to finish up my new chapter with Ira chilling on my shoulder. Then I notice he's looking at something.

What's he looking at?

THAT IS THE WORLD'S BIGGEST HARVESTMAN SPIDER ON MY BED CRAWLING RIGHT AT ME.

Now, mind you, I'm a farm girl, and I do have a lease agreement with the spiders in my house. If I can see they are paying rent by eating bugs, they can stay. BUT NOW THERE IS A STIPULATION THAT THEY MAY NOT RELOCATE TO MY BED.

Annnnnnyway. I scooped up said spider with the remote and not-so-graciously relocated it to the floor and then tracked it with a flashlight for the next 5 minutes until it was an acceptable distance from my bed.

Happy Friday??

Saw a debate about using s' or s's at the end of a character's name whose name ends in s to show possessive.

My conclusion: it depends on the style guide you're using, and whether you are an ancient prophet (???) holding a stick that belongs to Moses or a friend of Moses holding a stick that belongs to Moses. Also, just be consistent.

I will only use s' and I will die on this hill.

You ever write a really awesome sentence and then just stare at it for a while like, "Damn. I wrote that?!"

And then every other sentence ends up looking like a drunk text and you realize you've somehow offended yourself.

Every time...

IT'S ALL FOR THE PLOT!!!!!

After all, writing isn’t the whole damn world. Fuck this writer’s block.

I’ll walk around, watch Béla Tarr or Andrei. I’ll call Joyce she never runs out of words.

Or I’ll sleep it off, because I refuse to let a blank page make me consider the unthinkable.

Writing Tip #8

Write every day. That’s right, every day. You may have heard this before, maybe you haven’t. It’s a lot easier to eliminate writer’s block and to get pages dished out in a day. If this seems daunting and you don’t believe you have the time, make time. In between work, or studying, or even before class (which is what I do), just start off with what you can get and then go from there.

Don’t worry about the quality of your writing, just write what you can. That’s what editing is for later. Keep at it until you are writing at least three paragraphs or more everyday. It should be easier to start when the time comes to just sit and start typing (or writing in a notebooks) for a whole hour or more.

i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times

im so in love with how my characters love each other that i always have to find and then swap the word tender/tenderly like a hundred times when im writing fluff

me when i write: hold on, how many times have i used this word? i've used it 27 times in the last 1000 words

A Single Word Written is Better Than None

I took a few months off from writing. Not voluntarily. I just couldn’t seem to write a single word. Whenever I would open up a new document, I would simply shut down and freeze up.

I’m a writer who hasn’t written anything in months.

Even writing in my journal became difficult. If someone were to unbury my journal after the apocalypse, they might think I took a four-month hibernation. I was shut off from the world, adding nothing to the world. Not even a single word.

For the past couple of weeks, however, it feels like I’ve gotten a little bit of that writing bug back. Nothing like Stephen King’s two thousand words a day. About five to seven hundred words on a good day.

Even though I’m writing, it feels more like a slow crawl. I look at these low word counts and put myself down for not doing more. I know I’m not the only writer who focuses too much on their word counts and feels bad when we can’t reach the professional levels.

So to you out there who are in the same position, telling yourself you’re not a real writer because you’re not writing a full novel each month. I have a message for you that I need to do a better job of remembering myself.

You Are a Writer Even if You’re Not Published

This holds back a lot of writers. I write mainly short stories, but the fact that none of them have been chosen for a publication journal does weigh heavily on my head.

Still, just because they haven’t been published doesn’t mean they haven’t been written. I wrote those stories, and I am still a writer because of it.

If you’ve finished a story or a whole novel but it hasn’t been published, don’t beat yourself up! You are a writer! Write another one and another one till the world finally acknowledges you!

Having Moments of Writer’s Block Doesn’t Mean You Are Failing

I struggle with this a lot. The idea that if my writer’s block lasts more than a few days, I have somehow failed as a writer and the title should be stripped from me.

Just because I had a few bad months doesn’t mean I’m no longer a writer. And if you’ve had a few bad months too, or even a few bad years of writing, that doesn’t mean you’re not a writer anymore either!

When a pitcher strains his wrist and has to take a hiatus while it heals, is he no longer a pitcher?

A Single Word Written is Better Than None

Don’t feel bad if you’re coming out of a writing slump and it feels like you’re coming out of it very slowly. The pitcher who returns from his injury won’t be throwing shutouts the minute he steps onto the mound. He eases into it.

And so should you!

If you’re only writing a few words a day and you’re feeling disappointed that it’s not at the high word count standard that most professionals hold themselves to, just remind yourself that progress is progress! Whether you’ve written one, two, or a thousand words. It is still more than the absolute zero you wrote during your slump.

Feel proud of your progress!

And remember, no matter what, you are still a writer.

Sparking Chemistry Between Characters #1

⇢ Emotional Timing ( When One Opens Up and the Other Isn’t Ready, Yet)

There’s something so devastatingly real about when characters miss each other, not physically, but emotionally. One’s finally ready to be honest, to be seen… and the other? Still hiding. Still pretending. That emotional dissonance creates a whole different kind of electricity: one rooted in vulnerability, silence, and the ache of almost.

“I trust you,” she said, voice low, eyes steady. He looked at her, and for a second, he almost said it back. But then his smile cracked, soft and sad, and he looked away like the words were burning holes in his throat.

This isn’t the moment they fall into each other’s arms. This is the moment they could have. And those moments still haunt.

Use this when:

You want slow burn that hurts a little

Your characters are stubborn, scared, or emotionally constipated (bless them)

The closeness builds from not-quite-connecting, until one of them finally breaks

⇢  Silent Support ( When They Don’t Say It, But They Show It)

Sometimes the most romantic thing a character can do is just… be there. No speeches. No dramatic gestures. Just showing up, quiet, consistent, unwavering. The kind of person who notices when your laugh sounds tired.

He didn’t say anything when he found her curled up on the kitchen floor. He just sat next to her, their shoulders barely touching, and slid his hoodie off without a word. A minute later, she was wearing it. Five minutes later, she was breathing again.

This isn’t about grand declarations. It’s about the kind of love that doesn’t demand to be acknowledged. The kind that waits. That steadies. That speaks fluent silence.

Use this when:

You want to show love without “I love you”

You’re building intimacy through actions, not words

Your characters aren’t the touchy-feely, talk-it-out types

⇢ Emotional Whiplash (When Conflict Turns Intimate Too Fast)

This is the classic “We were fighting five seconds ago and now I want to kiss you” moment. Because nothing stirs up feelings like frustration mixed with closeness. When characters clash, especially if there’s emotional history or denial involved, it creates heat. They’re already fired up. Already in each other’s space. Now throw in a little vulnerability and BAM, you’ve got magnetic chaos.

“Why do you care what I do?” she snapped, stepping closer. “Because I...” He bit the word back, jaw tight. His fists clenched at his sides. She stared, breath caught in her throat. “Because I do,” he said finally, quieter this time. “More than I should.”

Enemies to lovers. Friends to what even are we. That line-blurring, heart-pounding tension where the air is thick and the truth almost slips out, that’s where this trope lives (I Love It).

Use this when:

You want chaos, angst, and chemistry all at once

Your characters are in denial and one good argument away from kissing

You want something to break open and then immediately regret it

Forgive and forget

Realistic Procrastination Tips

Intro

Ah, procrastination, also known as the bane of writers everywhere. It’s the easiest trap to fall into as a writer. You don’t feel like writing, so you just...don’t. Or maybe you completely forget about it when you’re watching TV or scrolling through social media, and by the time you remember you’re like, “Eh, it’s too late to write anyway.”

Procrastination is most likely always going to be an issue for all writers in some way. However, there are ways to counteract it. Today I’ll be sharing some realistic tips for procrastination that have actually helped me!

1. Make writing a habit

When I say to make writing a habit, I don’t mean you have to write every day. You can write every other day, every two days--whatever works for your schedule. What I mean is that you have to get used to the idea of writing.

A lot of the time, we hesitate to write because we get into the mindset that writing is an arduous task. But in reality? When you just sit down and start writing, you’re more likely to continue than you are to stop. Starting is the hardest part of writing. Once you begin, you’ll find it’s much easier to keep going. Train yourself out of that “writing = hard” mindset and in the words of a certain shoe company, just do it. And if you’re having trouble disciplining yourself, have someone else to hold you accountable. It’ll make you more likely to finish your goals.

One thing I do to form a writing habit is to write in my spare time. Usually, that means I write during school, in the earliest hours of the day (when my classes are easier and I have less homework). Tip: little things accumulate. If you can spare even half an hour or so to write--or think about writing--every single day, it adds up!

2. The “Room Rule”

Okay, so I just made this up, but it still applies. Basically, it means that you should keep as many unneeded electronic devices as possible at least one room away from you--whether that means moving yourself away from your phone, or putting your phone somewhere that you can’t see it. Pretend you’re in a classroom where if the teacher catches you with your phone, it’ll immediately be confiscated and you’ll be kept after school (which honestly, is probably pretty realistic for some of my followers who are students). Seriously, though. Social media is one of the best ways to procrastinate, so the best solution is to just get it out of sight. Once you start scrolling, it takes a really long time to stop.

If you still have distractions on whatever device you write on, you can clear your distracting tabs. Alternatively, you can put them in another window out of sight or do all your research before you start writing. Another option is to use an app to restrict what sites you can access, like Forest.

3. You have time

I’ve mentioned many times already that writers often think that they don’t have time to write. Well, I've got good news for you: you definitely do still have time to write. Every word counts! Even if you don't have enough time today, you'll have more chances tomorrow.

A similar trap procrastinating writers fall into is convincing themselves that they can't make the time to write. For example, I'm a student, and for the longest time I would tell myself I had too much homework to write. But then when I finished my homework, I would have plenty of free time...which I spent on my phone. Yeah, I know. Eventually I figured out that if I was going to make any progress at all in my WIPs, I was going to have to make myself do it.

If you really want to write, you should carve out the time to write in your schedule. Don't give yourself an excuse! Obviously, this doesn't apply to people who genuinely don't have time to write--you shouldn't burn yourself out trying to juggle a busy schedule and your WIPs.

Honestly, the best way to deal with procrastination is to deal with yourself. Examining your feelings toward writing and finding time to write are steps toward figuring out your own best method of productivity. It's a very personal journey that I wish you luck on. Finally, to all of the procrastinating writers reading this post...go write! I believe in you!

This is me bruh^

Every writing advice ever: If you’re having trouble with a scene, skip it and write a different part of the story.

Me: If I don’t write in chronological order, I will die