Being Alive Is So Fucking Scary But God Do I Love To Love!!!! I Love To Love!!! I Was Put Here To Love.

YOU’RE NOT DEAD YET YOU’RE NOT DEAD YET GET THE FUCK UP YOU’RE NOT DEAD YET IT ISN’T FUCKING OVER DRAG YOUR CORPSE KICKING AND SCREAMING INTO TOMORROW ONE DAY YOU WILL STOP SURVIVING AND START LIVING YOU ARE NOT FUCKING DEAD YET.

Game-Changing Sites for Writers

A recent search for a specific type of site to help me build new characters led me down a rabbit hole. Normally, that would make me much less productive, but I have found a treasure trove of websites for writers.

Bring Characters/Places to Life

There are a few different places you can use to create a picture of something entirely new. I love this site for making character pictures as references, instead of stock photos or whatever pops up on Google Images.

thispersondoesnotexist: every time you reload the page, this site generates a headshot of someone who doesn't exist. This is great if you're thinking about a character's personality or age and don't have specifics for their facial features yet.

Night Cafe: this is an AI art generator that takes your text prompt and generates an image for it. I tried it for various scenery, like "forest" or "cottage." It takes a minute for your requested photo to load, but no more than maybe five for the program to finish the picture.

Art Breeder: this website has endless images of people, places, and general things. Users can blend photos to create something new and curious visitors can browse/download those images without creating an account. (But if you do want to make an account to create your own, it's free!)

Find Random Places on Earth

You might prefer to set a story in a real-life environment so you can reference that place's weather, seasons, small-town vibe, or whatever you like. If that's the case, try:

MapCrunch: the homepage generates a new location each day and gives the location/GPS info in the top left of the screen. To see more images from previous days, hit "Gallery" in the top left.

Atlas Obscura: hover over or tap the "Places" tab, then hit "Random Place." A new page will load with a randomly generated location on the planet, provide a Google Maps link, and tell you a little bit about the place.

Random World Cities: this site makes randomly selected lists of global cities. Six appear for each search, although you'll have to look them up to find more information about each place. You can also use the site to have it select countries, US cities or US states too.

Vary Your Wording

Thesauruses are great, but these websites have some pretty cool perspectives on finding just the right words for stories.

Describing Words: tell this website which word you want to stop repeating and it will give you tons of alternative words that mean the same thing. It typically has way more options than other sites I use.

Reverse Dictionary: type what you need a word for in Reverse Dictionary's search box and it will give you tons of words that closely match what you want. It also lists the words in order of relevancy, starting with a word that most accurately describes what you typed. (There's also an option to get definitions for search results!)

Tip of My Tongue: this website is phenomenal. It lets you search for that word you can't quite place by a letter in it, the definition, what it sounds like, or even its scrambled letters. A long list of potential options will appear on the right side of the screen for every search.

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Hope this helps when you need a hand during your next writing session 💛

When I first started writing, it took me a while to learn that writers, you don't need permission

you don't need permission to write a messy first draft

you don't need permission to add everything that makes you happy into your wips

you don't need permission to write in the way that suits you

you don't need permission to write a certain POV or a certain character or a certain trope

you don't need permission to write what you love, even if it isn't 'marketable'

Your English teachers lied to you.

Thought I'd post my old writing advice guides onto this blog since I deleted my old one. I hope it's helpful!

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Listen. I respect the hell out of teachers. The vast majority of them work crazy hard and most of the time, including the times they give you well-meaning ‘writing rules,’ only want to instill good and helpful habits into you.

That doesn’t change the fact that many of these rules are stupid.

Here are my top five ‘writing rule’ pet peeves, and five rules that should be followed.

✗ Don’t write ‘said.’

Okay, I know this is common knowledge by now, but it’s so important. The concept that you can never write ‘ so-and-so said’ is hurting novice writers’ narratives. Said is invisible. Said is powerful. Said is transformable. If every quote ends in a strong synonym, it is distracting. Sometimes, in an established repartee, quotes don’t need to be tagged at all. Or an adverb following ‘said’ might be better for the narrative than any single verb.

Eg. // “I hate the rain,” grumbled David.

“I love it,” Claire announced.

“You love everything,” he muttered.

“Including you!” she giggled.

versus.

“I hate the rain,” grumbled David.

“I love it,” said Claire.

“You love everything,” he said impatiently.

“Including you!”

✓ Don’t write ‘something.’

Cold hard truth, baby. ‘Something’ is a draft word. It’s what you write when you want to think of a replacement. I cringe when I see it in a sentence that would have been improved tenfold by a specific noun or descriptive phrase in its place. There are times when ‘something’ works or is the only option, but experiment by replacing that word with more description before deciding it’s necessary to keep.

Eg. // He pulled something shiny from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A metal flask. versus. A flash of light caught the metal he pulled from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A drinking flask.

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✗ Avoid adverbs.

This is true and false, but I’ll address the false part first. The concept that you can’t use adverbs at all is ridiculous. Don’t blindly (!) replace every adverb in your prose with a single verb because someone said you should. You want whatever you are writing to flow well and to deliver the best impact or imagery. Sometimes that means adverbs. Or you might want the verb to be discreet (such as when using ‘said’) but still want to invoke emotion. That also means adverbs.

Eg. // "Don't do that!" she spluttered, panicked by the urgency of the situation. versus. "Don't do that!" she said frantically, panicked by the urgency of the situation.

✓ Use strong verbs. At least consider them.

Verbs make the world go ‘round, people. Most of the time, a strong verb will make your writing flow well and deliver the best impact or imagery. Weigh a strong verb against an adverb + weaker verb and decide the one you want to keep in a scene. Don’t just stick with whichever you wrote first because you grew attached to the sentence.

Eg. // She held up her blood-slicked sword proudly, her other fist raised triumphantly. versus. She thrust her blood-slicked sword into the air, her other fist clenched high in triumph.

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✗ Don’t use a thesaurus.

I. HATE. This rule. I had an English teacher in middle school who marked any words she thought you had looked up as wrong. As a young reader with a large vocabulary, I was always needing to prove that I hadn’t just picked a random synonym from a thesaurus, that I knew and deliberately chose those words. (That sentence has a great example of a necessary adverb! Get BENT Mrs E. (She also hated adverbs.)) This is the same idiotic concept as telling artists not to use reference images. Use a thesaurus if a certain word is failing you or you hate every word you’ve come up with yourself. There’s nothing bad or shameful about it.

Eg. // There are no examples for this. I’m not sure how I would even do that. Insert stock photo of someone perusing a thesaurus here?

✓ Don’t use words you aren’t comfortable with.

Now, when you search the great wide web for a synonym to a word and then choose whichever one sounds nice because hey, the internet said it was interchangeable, so it must be! … Yeah. Don’t do that.

I use a thesaurus to find words that I can’t think of in the moment but they are always ones I still know. Every word has a subtle (or not so subtle) connotation that you need familiarity with before deciding it is the perfect replacement. Know your words before you start playing Mix n Match.

Eg. // Amusement in the profession puts transcendence in the performance. (Utter nonsense, written by me and thesaurus.com) versus. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. (Inspiring quote, written by Aristotle)

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✗ Don’t end sentences with a preposition.

Whoever made up this rule is an elitist hack. (I just googled it, and supposedly it began with a bunch of 17th century scholars who thought English should have Latin’s grammar, so. Yeah. Elitist hacks.) Ending sentences in prepositions sounds wayyyyy more natural than the alternative. If you don’t want to sound stilted, beat this rule into the dirt.

Eg. // They didn’t know of what she was capable. versus. They didn’t know what she was capable of.

✓ Be conscientious of your sentence construction.

A lot of grammar rules are bogus. Not ending a sentence with a preposition, not starting a sentence with a conjunction, not laying face down on the floor and screeching… Oh, right, that latter one isn’t a rule, it’s just what you want to do when you have to think about grammar.

But, regardless of bogus grammar rules, you need to put thought into your sentence construction. Editing (not writing) is the best time to do this. That’s when you can make sure the words flow together naturally as an individual sentence, as part of a paragraph, and within the chapter as a whole.

Another common construction faux pas that I see is disregarding the sequence of events because you believe it will have greater impact. In reality, if you avoid putting your narration out of order, it usually results in stronger sentences.

Eg. // "Tell me it's not true!" He stood in the doorway after bursting into Kyle's room, panting from his sprint up the stairs. versus. He sprinted up the stairs two at a time and burst into Kyle's room without knocking. "Tell me it's not true!" he demanded breathlessly.

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✗ If you break writing rules you’re a bad writer.

If anyone tries to convince you of this, kick them in the neck. (You heard it here folks, kick your DANG TEACHERS IN THE NECK.) (Not really, please don’t.) (If you do, though, don’t say that I encouraged it.) (I’m not encouraging it, I just want to make that clear. Please be nice to your teachers, they have hard jobs.)

Rules were made to be broken. You just need to know the rules in the first place in order to decide to break them, so it’s never a bad thing to educate yourself on general writing advice. Still, there is a fine line between creative liberty and bad writing, and sometimes a famous book or author turns the latter into the former. Know your stuff, but don’t be afraid to throw your stuff into the fire and watch it burn. (Figuratively. Don’t literally throw your possessions into fire, that’s irresponsible on so many levels.) (A lot of parentheses in this rule rant.) (Now that’s just bad writing.)

✓ Take writing rules and advice with a grain of salt, but don’t ignore them.

As a novice writer, or even an experienced one, it is hard to differentiate between which rules work best in your own prose. You may only realize it in hindsight. That doesn’t mean you should ignore every piece of writing advice or dismiss criticism of your work. Think critically about your own style, read books you enjoy and think about their styles, and deliberate– don’t dismiss. Maybe your writing style requires no dangling prepositions or never using an adverb. That’s your decision to make. Just… don’t make it because you’re too stubborn to see how you can improve.

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That’s all I’ve got! Do you have any pet peeves about common writing advice? Feel free to reblog and add your own!

Don’t forget to write a sentence of your story today! Thanks for reading~

still thinking about this youtube comment i screenshotted ages ago

if you’re ever in doubt about what pov to write a scene from, a good rule of thumb is to pick the person who knows the least about what’s going on. lots of pros!

you automatically have some level of tension in the scene, as they either struggle to figure out what’s happening or completely fail to notice it

if they know as much or barely more than the reader, the reader is learning things alongside them, which will help make exposition feel more natural

if they know less than the reader you now have dramatic irony! great for humor and/or agonizing tension

helps you keep secrets from the reader longer, since your pov character doesn’t know them either. (I mean you could also just carefully omit major info and pretend you thought it was obvious. see the Queen’s Thief series for several examples that span a whole novel!)

helps add a fun little mystery for the reader as they try to figure out those secrets (fun little mysteries are great attention hooks!)

“what’s going on” can mean anything btw, it could be the plot or the worldbuilding or another character’s motivation or the location of the buried treasure.

for best results, think about what each character in the scene wants to get out of this scene, and then pick the pov of the person who has least control over/knowledge of whether they get what they want. failing that, figure out which character has the most important secret that’s affecting the course of the scene, and write from the pov of someone who doesn’t know the secret. (the secret can be stuff like “I’m in love with you,” “I’m a spy for the spider queen,” “I’m the one who stole the muffins,” just whatever’s adding an undercurrent of tension to the conversation.)

this rule won’t be right for every occasion and you should trust your gut, but it’s served me well for years, so I encourage all you writers to consider it when figuring out how to approach a scene :)