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Latest Posts by the-writer-muse - Page 4
love when authors get so into the story they’re writing that they end up just being like yeah this is twice what i originally planned, gonna add a whole new story arc, gonna add a whole new book to the series
how to write the second draft
@writingwithacutlass on instagram
source: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-second-draft#why-do-you-need-a-second-draft
hello and welcome back to my page! this post was requested some time ago and i finally got around to making it. second drafts are arguably the hardest draft to write, since you are taking your jumbled mess of a first draft and rewriting it to be more cohesive and organized. although picking apart your novel is a painstaking process, it’s a necessary step that will improve your novel and make you a better writer in the process. here are five tips on how to write the second draft!
take a break, then return to your draft with fresh eyes
especially if this is your first novel, only start your second draft after you’ve had adequate time away from it. creating distance between you and personal work can give your mind time to reset and detach from particular ideas. certain story elements may feel necessary but don’t actually fit into the story, or your story may need something, but you’re not sure how to implement it. taking a break can help you view your writing from a previously unseen angle that can bring more refreshing ideas to the table and help you get through your second draft. take some distance from your writing to brainstorm new scenes.
understand your chaos
your first draft got your ideas down and, hopefully, created a loosely structured beginning, middle, and end. however, the first time you go through the whole thing, it will probably feel overwhelming—and it should. go into your first chapter knowing there will be big changes and improvements to be made. you’ll cut some things and add others, but don’t be afraid. if it starts to go off into a direction you’re not happy with, or if you have no idea how to continue forward from what you’ve rewritten, you can always reconfigure. that’s what second drafts are for.
break it up into separate goals
you don’t have to comb through your second draft beginning to end and address everything along the way. setting goals to address each element of your first draft, like working on emotional character arcs first, or solidifying the bare bones of your plot through each chapter can help you divide and conquer each necessary aspect of your story that needs to come together in a cohesive manner. once all these elements have been solidified individually, you can piece them together in a way that makes your second draft feel more manageable.
track your narrative
read through each plot point or chapter and see if the narrative tracks. make notes on anything that stands out to you or doesn’t feel as smooth. are events moving logically or sequentially into the next? are character goals clearly defined? does each new chapter feel connected to the last? it may be a rough version you’re going through, but these elements should be in place in order for you to analyze it accurately. your subplots should feel natural to the central story and characters you’ve created—they should just be added fodder to take up space. ensure there aren’t any redundant scenes or a repeat of information that doesn’t need to be explained again.
don’t proofread until the end
it’s tempting to go back and fix all your errors, but unless you’re in your third stage or fourth stage, this may end up being a waste of time. correcting typos and grammar should be saved for your final draft, as the entire writing process will entail rewriting, restructuring, and reorganizing until the moment you’re ready to publish.
Reblog, click the picture, and prepare for battle.
i LOVE the idea of "i can't win, but you can lose" in fictional confrontations it is SO fucking tasty. the human nature to self destruct and the human nature to survive by any means necessary combined at its finest.
y’know for me it straight up doesn’t even occur to me to unfollow someone when they stop posting whatever it is i followed them for. unless the thing they’re posting about now is somehow actually actively upsetting to me i just accept it as a part of my life now. i’ll just scroll past it like i’m driving a car and dodging an obstacle on the road. and that part of the road is my daily commute and the thing stays on the road forever and i swerve around it every day for months instead of ever taking the initiative to get it removed. it just adds flavor i guess
local public library fandom
i mean this so seriously if you have any sort of creative project you can and should be a little obsessed with it. you should reread your own writing and look at your own art and brag about your ocs its literally good for your health
Ok so the thing about reading like books which are "predictable" is that I, a story enjoyer, go completely bonkers about it bc its like Enrichment in my Enclosure. A scene parallels another earlier scene between different characters thus serving to highlight the differences in their views and priorities???? A line makes me think "hmmm I bet that's gonna be relevant later" ends up being relevant later????? I am a tiger chewing ice cubes out of a pumpkin. I'm so so happy. Please foreshadow more things. Throw the completely anticipateable plot beats at me like catnip mousies!!!!!
“What is a personal website even FOR?“
When making a personal website for the first time, you may ask yourself this!
The answer is: fucking anything. Personal websites don’t have to be “presentable” if they’re not tied to your IRL identity or whatever. Look at old captures of geocities, tripod, angelfire sites. You had dedicated single-topic sites, sure, but you also had sites that were arbitrary, slapdash little hoards of the website owner’s Favorite Things, no matter how unrelated they were.
Some suggestions:
links to your 3 favorite other websites.
an essay about how cool hydraulic engines are
a sanctuary for all your favorite images, such as memes, that you’ve collected over the years
facts about centipedes you think everyone should know
competitive hardcore sims 2 speedrunning strategies
a portfolio of your artwork, or links to other people’s artwork you enjoy
elaborate lies and hoaxes (maybe even a whole arg)
useful survival tips specific to where you come from (personal recipes, trustworthy doctors, good music venues, eats that are both good and affordable, hot goss on who’s up to what horseshit on your city council/school board/university faculty/whatever)
original fiction that noone on social media cares about because people only like and reblog about what they already know. explain your entire fictional country that you wanna put in a real novel one day.
making people not have to dig through your tags to know where to find all your dracula meta (including the shipping manifesto you wrote 10 years ago)
speaking of fandom, you know that one piece of media you love that nobody else seems to have heard of? you post into the void and nobody reblogs or likes? nothing in the tags? Yea. Built a shrine to that explaining why EVERYONE should care about it. tell me how that pirated copy of Telefang made you the human being you are today
explaining your personal philosophies on life without worrying that you will get reblogged by randos calling you cringe
just generally being fucking a weird, unrelatable, unmarketable, extremely specific ass human being
is there any flowers/plants that symbolize or relate to discomfort and dissatisfaction? im trying to draw something for an art project and i wanted to draw plants/flowers in it that hold symbolism to them
Hey kookoojellyfish! Most of these mean either directly, but allow potential association because neither discomfort nor dissastifaction exist as single meanings here.
agnus castus – coldness, indifference
aloe – bitterness and pain, bitterness, grief, religious superstition
balsam (red) – impatient resolved, touch me not
bee ophrys – error
belvedere – I declare against you
bindweed (great) – insinuation, importunity
burdock – importunity, touch me not
convolvulus (major) – extinguished hopes
corchorus – impatient of absence
eglantine – I wound to heal, poetry
geranium (fish) – disappointed expectations
henbane – imperfection, fault, for males to attract love from females
hogbean – defect
hortensia – you are cold, carelessness
humble plant – despondency
ice plant – your looks freeze me, rejected addresses
lint – I feel my obligations
love-lies-bleeding – hopeless not heartless, deserted love, desertion
meadow sweet – uselessness
mimosa – sensitiveness, sensitivity
ranunculus (wild) – ingratitude
sorrel (wild) – wit ill-timed
straw (a single, broken) – dissension, rupture of a contract
sweetbrier (european) – I wound to heal, poetry, imagination
tiger-flower – for once may pride befriend me, cruelty
Discomfort could be represented by poisonous plants in art. They don’t mean it, but they most certainly cause it.
– Mod Jana
Disclaimer
This blog is intended as writing advice only. This blog and its mods are not responsible for accidents, injuries or other consequences of using this advice for real world situations or in any way that said advice was not intended.
So what's the point of living if you don't dance in the rain, if you don't take yourself on dates or sit silently in your room binge watching or reading or literally doing anything you love. Remember, no one other than you can heal and love and complete yourself
having a meltdown over what i’m gonna do when i’m not seventeen and songs don’t mention me
If you're reading this...
go write three sentences on your current writing project.
Me, sitting down to write: And in this chapter, the characters figure out a solution to this big annoying problem!
Me:
Me, paling: I…have to figure out a solution to this big annoying problem.
when you’re out at a restaurant or a coffee shop or a target or whatever with your friends and you overhear/eavesdrop the same snippet of some stranger’s conversation, and you look at each other for a second to check that you both heard this stranger say the same weird/funny/baffling thing and just break out in knowing grins and quiet laughter… that’s a love language
reblog this if you think books should have trigger warnings. I’m trying to prove something.
ah yes the five love languages: arson, murder, betrayal, torture, and knives.
Let the world be saved by darkness, for once. Instead of blazing light - too bright and infinitely cold to comprehend even as it gives the illusion of warmth, let it be an all-consuming dark that snuffs out the calamity approaching. Fire or ice, the rage of a superstorm, some horror adrift in the vastness of space - whatever this supposed apocalyptic event might be, let it reach what it believes to be it’s victory only to be devoured in a lightless gulf.
There are things in the dark we will never know. Never have a name for. Things that have watched and waited from beyond the reaches of our limited memory as a species and will doubtless watch us go, in the end.
Let it be that dark which gives the battered heroine/hero their relief. The tingling rush of the end filling their veins, the weighty hopelessness, now left to hang in the air as all else is swallowed by an impenetrable abyss.
Let the air ring - for silence, true silence - has descended. Let the weapon in the savior’s grasp quiver, because it was never supposed to be over so quickly. Not like that. Not before they’d ever had a chance to fight at all.
Let them sense, just for an extended, weightless moment, the presence of something huge and dark and deep all around them. How they are not alone and never have been, not even in those comforting instances of the womb.
Let the one who’d been prepared to fight put aside their weapon, breathe in the thick air with a shaky inhale, and go home.
The light has demanded enough sacrifices. How many have burned themselves alive in its pyre, desperate and willing to throw themselves into the blaze if it meant others could benefit from the flicker of warmth? Of hope?
Let the champion of the tale go home, shed their armor, and crawl into bed. Let them look out into the darkness of sudden night and see, distant and strange, the glitter of delicate stars beyond their reach.
The dark has always been. When the last flicker of light goes, it will still remain.
The dark has always kept us safe.
a new concept: idiot academia
where u have book smarts but have absolutely no common sense
There are not enough hours in the day; how am I supposed to go to work AND read AND draw AND sew AND write AND stay up to date on all the tv people tell me I should watch AND scroll endlessly through tumblr and expect to actually get anything accomplished. I call bullshit on the entire concept of time
I’m a knitter. I sometimes knit socks.
I have recently got back into doing some writing. This writing has been multi-chaptered.
So, here is a trick I am going to share that I learned from knitting socks. There is a thing called “second sock syndrome” which is when you finish one sock but can’t seem to get around to starting the second. So, when I finish a sock I IMMEDIATELY cast on the second sock and just knit a few rows.
So, when you finish that chapter, IMMEDIATELY just write one sentence of the next chapter. Trust me.
we don’t talk abt how stressful buying new glasses frames is. ur shopping for your whole personality there. life on the line. do or die. all for two pieces of glass and some sticks
omg this is so useful, tysm for the tag!
calling all authors!!
i have just stumbled upon the most beautiful public document i have ever laid eyes on. this also goes for anyone whose pastimes include any sort of character creation. may i present, the HOLY GRAIL:
https://www.fbiic.gov/public/2008/nov/Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006.pdf
this wonderful 88-page piece has step by step breakdowns of how names work in different cultures! i needed to know how to name a Muslim character it has already helped me SO MUCH and i’ve known about it for all of 15 minutes!! i am thoroughly amazed and i just needed to share with you guys
writers will really have a doc titled ‘fic planning’ and then it’s just blank