5-18-17 // An Ode.

Bone Charms, a sailors blessing, they say.

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I’ve been enjoying this excellent colouring book this weekend!

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lakshmi menon in vanity fair italy, 2011

i just want to look like her

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Dolce and Gabbana Alta Moda spring 2016 part 1

In memory of some of the amazing, talented and beautiful people we have lost this year. May they rest in peace.

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When I was beginning to discover languages, I had a romanticized view of words like “speak” and “fluency”. But then I realized that you can be nominally fluent in a language and still struggle to understand parts of it. English is my first language, but what I really spoke was a hybrid of teenage slang and Manhattan-ese. When I listen to my father, a lawyer, talk to other lawyers, his words sound as foreign to me as Finnish. I certainly couldn’t read Shakespeare without a dictionary, and I’d be equally helpless in a room with Jamaicans or Cajuns. Yet all of us “speak English.” My linguistics teacher, a native of Poland, speaks better English than I do and seems right at home peppering his speech with terms like “epenthetic schwa” and “voiceless alveolar stops”. Yet the other day, it came up that he’d never heard the word “tethered”. Does that mean he doesn’t “speak” English? If the standard of speaking a language is to know every word — to feel equally at home debating nuclear fission and classical music — then hardly anyone is fluent in their own native tongues.

Tim Doner (

x

(via laurencombeferre)

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Yatagan Sword from the Court of Süleyman the Magnificent (reigned 1520–66)

Dated: circa 1525–30

Sword maker: Workshop of Ahmed Tekelü (possibly Iranian, active Istanbul, ca. 1520–30)

Geography: Istanbul

Culture: Ottoman, Istanbul

Medium: steel, gold, ivory (walrus), silver, turquoise, pearls, rubies

Measurements: overall length 23 3/8 inches (59.3 cm); blade length 18 3/8 inches (46.7 cm); weight 1 lb. 8 oz. (691 g)

Exquisite workmanship and lavish use of precious materials distinguish this sword as a princely weapon and exemplifies the opulence and refinement of Ottoman luxury arts. Almost identical to a yatagan (now in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul) made in 1526–27 by the court jeweller Ahmed Tekel, for the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66), this sword was undoubtedly made in the same imperial workshop.

The gold incrustation on the blade depicts a combat between a dragon and a phoenix against a background of foliage scrolls. These figures, like the gold-inlaid cloud bands and foliage scrolls on the ivory grips, are Chinese in inspiration, and were probably introduced into Ottoman art through contacts with Persia.

This sword is one of the earliest known yatagans, distinctly Turkish weapons characterised by a double-curved blade and a hilt without a guard. Yatagans were commonplace in Turkey and the Balkans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and served as sidearms for the elite troops known as Janissaries.

Source: Copyright © 2016 Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

          → Empress Phoenix’s Wardrobe

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100 Resources to Help You Write Your Novel

The biggest challenge to writing a novel is enduring to the final two words—THE END. Between the first line and the last are questions, choices, doubts. Sometimes they get the better of us, sometimes and we quit before the draft is complete.

The following articles contain insights, inspiration, maps and methods, answers to questions, and myriad tools to get unstuck.

The Idea

Story arises from the impetus that starts the imagination on a quest to create a world in which the idea can grow in a movement toward meaning. Learn how to generate, recognize, and test your story ideas.

The Idea

Where Ideas Come From

Follow the Story

Keeping Confidence When Sails Deflate

What If?

What’s In A Title?

Storm Clouds

Wrong Turn

Obsession

Turn A Taboo

Cerebral Cinema

Heard It Through the Grapevine

Enter Stranger

Mad, Mad World

The Myth of Marital Bliss

A Picture’s Worth 1000 Words

Quotes for Writers

Photo Gallery Prompts

Theme & Premise

Theme is the tangential force that unifies story elements and instills those elements with meaning. From theme, the writer weighs in with a premise, and the story gains its philosophical, psychological, or spiritual spine. A well-crafted premise forces the writer to identify a main character, a central conflict, and a general plot. Like a mini-outline, the premise illuminates the story’s best course.

Understand the dynamics of theme and premise, learn how to differentiate and utilize the two.

Every Story Needs a Theme

Two Sides To Every Story

All-American Theme

How to Write a Story Premise

Plot Structure & Development

Story is a record of years, weeks, days, while plot derives and conveys meaning from a span of years, weeks, days. A hero wants something, goes after it despite opposition, and arrives at a win, lose, or draw. Unlike a chronicle of events (when someone says this happened, then this, then that) plot is dynamic. Plot is an interplay of forces coming together, pushing against each other, incrementally advancing while simultaneously coming to a boil, and ultimately achieving equilibrium.

Discover how to maximize the physics of drama.

The Physics of Drama

Plot Structure in Three Acts

Plot: The Inciting Incident

Plotting Your Novel’s Middle

Plotting the End of the Middle

Plotting the End

Something Happened

The Moment of Clarity

Filling the Emotional Void

Balancing the Plot Triad

Balancing the Plot Triad Part II

Creativity Abhors a Box

The Outline

An outline provides milestones along a story’s route and makes sure the writer hits his plot points while steering clear of detours. Of course, some wrong turns amount to genius, but an outline can help to identify what is genius and what is superfluous.

To Outline or Not To Outline

The Outline as Plot Development

Outline in Three Acts

Outlining The Ten Story Elements

Outlining The Ten Story Elements Cont’d

Creating Characters

Knowing what your characters need from you to take on a distinctive persona is integral to their creation and the success of your novel.

What goes into a great first line—a line so promising that readers commit to the next two chapters?

Characters & Plot

Memorable Characters

Identifiable Characters

Test of Time

The Character Profile

From Backstory to Front

The Heart of Character

Prince By Palace

Thoughts

Body Language

As A Man Speaks

Words Portray Character

Opinions

Actions

Through Another’s Eyes

Pressure

Character Check

A Unique Brand of Nice

Creating Funny Characters

The Fatal Flaw

Fatal Flaws in Literature, Film, & Television Characters

The Character Arc

The Enneagram Personalities

The Enneagram in Literature

By Any Other Name

Fiction’s Best Characters

Joseph Heller’s Yossarian from Catch-22

Anne Tyler’s Maggie Moran from Breathing Lessons: A Novel

The Lead

What goes into a great first line—a line so promising that readers commit to the next two chapters?

Your Novel’s All-Important Lead

Begin With Character

Begin With Place

Begin With Questions

Begin With Answers

Begin With The Problem

Begin With The Unprecedented

Pencil In a Title

7 Ways NOT to Begin Your Novel

100 Best Opening Lines

The Ending

What goes into a great ending—an ending so satisfying that readers commit to buying your next novel?

Endings Part I

Endings Part II

100 Best Novel Endings

Dialogue

The dos and don’ts of writing dialogue that will move your story forward while establishing characters.

Dialogue Part I

Write Between the Lines

Dialogue Is Adversarial

Internal Monologue

He Said, She Said

Dialogue Checklist

Humor

Everyone enjoys a laugh, but some writers are better than others when it comes to getting a chuckle from their readers. As E.B. White wrote, “Humor has a certain fragility, an evasiveness which one had best respect.” But understanding the patterns and repetitions that breach expectations, writers are able to craft the benign violations that tickle the brain and add to the texture of any genre piece.

Humor in Literature

The 1, 2, 3 of Humor

Humorous Imagery

Humorous Word Choice and Arrangement

Words With a Humorous Ring

Characters That Get Us Laughing

Humor Writing Exercises

Edits & Revisions

Editing is everything. Know what to look for and how to self-edit your novel.

Editing Your Manuscript

Editing Your Manuscript Part II

Re-Vision

Re-Vision Part II

Editing Checklist

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The Outsider’s Mark (x)

Another one that has been a long time coming! I LOVE the Dishonored games, so it had to be done at some point ;)

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