Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (2022) Lana Del Rey, 2022.
a dude came into the library stoned out of his mind and was like, “do I need a library card to look at books?” And I said, “to take books home, yes. To look at them, no” and he looked so relieved. bro was staring at a fish encyclopedia for like an hour and then just left.
Tips for Writing a Scene
Whether you’ve been writing for a long time or want to start, everyone begins in the same place—with a scene.
Not an entire chapter.
A scene.
Here’s how you can make it happen on the page.
Step 1: Have Characters In Mind
Scenes can’t happen without characters. Sometimes you might have a place in mind for a scene, but no characters. Sometimes, it’s the opposite.
Pick at least two characters if you’ll have external conflict (more on that in step 4). One character can carry a scene with internal conflict, but things still have to happen around them to influence their thoughts/emotions.
Step 2: Give Them Goals
Short stories combine mini scenes into one plot with a beginning/middle/end. Longform manuscripts combine chapters to do the same thing, but with more detail and subplots.
You don’t need to know which form you’re writing to get started.
All you need are goals.
What should your scene do? What does your character(s) want? It will either use the moment to advance the plot or present a problem that the character solves in the same scene/short story.
Step 3: Include the Senses
If you’re recounting an experience to someone, you don’t say, “I had the worst day. My shoes got wet and I couldn’t get home for 10 hours.”
You’d probably say, “I had the worst day. I stepped in a puddle so my shoes got soaked, which made my socks and feet wet all day. Then I had to wait 10 hours to get home. It was miserable! And now my feet smell terrible.”
Okay, you might not use all of those descriptors, but you get the picture. The story is much more engaging if you’re talking about the feeling of wet socks, soaked shoes, and the smell of stinky feet. The other person in your conversation would probably go ugh, that’s horrible!
Your scene should accomplish the same thing. Use the five senses to make the moment real for the reader.
As a reminder, those senses are: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing.
You don’t need to use all of them at once, but include at least two of them to make your stories shine. You also don’t have to constantly use environmental or sensory descriptors. Once you establish the scene for your reader, they’ll place your characters and want to keep the plot moving.
Step 4: Identify the Conflict
Speaking of plot, scenes and stories can’t move forward without conflict. There are two types:
- Internal conflict: happens within a single character (may or may not affect their decisions at any given time; it can also be the reasoning for their goals and dreams)
- External conflict: happens outside of a character or between two characters (may or may not have to do with their internal conflict or personal goals; it always advances their character growth, relationship development, or plot development)
A scene could touch on either of these types of conflict or both! It depends on your story/plot/what you want your scene to accomplish.
Step 5: Pick a Point of View (POV)
Sometimes you’ll know you want to write a specific POV because you’ll have a character/plot in mind that requires it. Other times, you might not know.
It’s often easier to pick a POV after thinking through the previous steps. You’ll better understand how much time you want to spend in a character’s head (1st Person) or if you want to touch on multiple characters’ minds through 3rd Person.
Example of Setting a Scene
Step 1, Have Characters in Mind: Two sisters arrive back home from their first fall semester in different colleges.
Step 2, Give Them Goals: Sister A wants to ask for dating advice, but the sisters have never been that close. Sister B knows that Sister A wants a deeper conversation, but is doing anything to avoid it.
Step 3, Include the Senses: They’re in a living room with shag navy carpet and the worn leather couches have butt-shaped shadows on the cushions. The house smells of vanilla bean, the only scent their dads can agree on. Christmas lights hang on a fake tree that sheds plastic fir leaves on the floor. Their family cat purrs from within the metal branches.
Step 4, Identify the Conflict: Sister B will do anything to avoid talking about feelings. That includes trying to get the cat out of the tree (shaking the branches and reaching into them doesn’t work), checking to make sure the windows are closed against the winter air, and faking an obviously unreal phone call. This makes Sister A go from passively hoping for advice to chasing her through the house.
Step 5, Pick a POV: 3rd Person, so internal thoughts and feelings from both sisters are obvious to the reader and emphasize the scene’s comedy.
-----
These are also useful ways to rethink a scene you’ve already written. If something about it doesn’t seem to be working, consider if it’s missing one or more of these points. You don’t need to include all of them all the time, but weaving more sensory details or conflict into a short story/chapter could solve your problem.
Best of luck with your writing, as always 💛
ʀᴇᴍɪɴᴅᴇʀꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀꜱ <3
- it's okay to stray from your story. go write that short fic you can't take your mind off of! give you—and your characters—a break.
- you! won't! always! make! your! word! count! -- you don't need to keep stretching sentences because the scene you finally got right is a hundred words too short. sometimes it's better that way.
- the "rules" and "tips" are just ~guidelines~ (especially for people who like to swear by them) -- writing has no laws. especially first drafts. scrap the grammar, scrap the emotional tips, write it because it feels right, not because someone else says so.
- every writer procrastinates. it's not easy being a writer.
- take time off for yourself. the only thing harder than writing a story is to keep pushing it when you need a break the most. come back to it later. I promise there will be no dumpster fires when you're gone.
- all writing is "real" writing. I don't think there's an explanation here?? fiction writers are writers. nonfiction writers are writers. fanfic writers are writers. (like how all reading is real reading!! in every format, too!)
- it doesn't need to be perfect. honestly, it might never be. but it can be really close to it. if you're not satisfied with it, move on and come back when you're ready.
- you are just as skilled as any bestselling author. remember that everything you read has been heavily edited by teams of people! their first draft could not even be as good as yours is now.
- not using clichés is cliché. you will find one in any story. no one can bring you down for liking a certain trope. just because it's common doesn't mean it's bad!
- no writer is fully well-rounded. dialogue will be easier to write for some, and description for others.
- and, finally, no one knows what they're doing. trust me. we're all stumbling around blind here.
“In my youth,” reminisced the old man, scratching his beard thoughtfully, “I was quite the quirked up white boy. No one in the village could best me at busting it down sexual style.”
“And were you goated, sir?” the young boy queried.
“My dear boy, I most certainly was!” The old man chuckled, a merry twinkle in his eye. “With the sauce, I daresay.”
How will you look when you die? How about we find out? Lee Hak Joo as Jung Tae Joo in My Name 마이 네임 (2021)
1938
the amount of love emanating from that simple “our michael” is enough to heal all the wounds in my heart
[ID: A picture from October, 1938 of a cat sitting on a chair and squinting at the camera. It is captioned “Our Michael”. End ID]
theres like a guarantee that if someone’s url ends in “course” or “discourse” theyre an asshole
oh my god, oh my god im so sorry im so sorry please
please have these
Not to be rude, but the people you've hurt dont have to wait around while you become a better person
pink in the night
If there is a time I don’t reblog this it will be because the apocalypse got me
sweetjinxii
also the creator confirmed the brunette girl is trans!!
For a second I didn’t realize it meant “high” as in a stoner–I thought “High Geologist” was like a rank of geologist or something and he was insulted you would challenge him to naming stones
great poast every one👍
I have drawn him…. The High Geologist
Can’t believe he’s ace
He is now And here’s the photo evidence:
hey guys…https://twitter.com/MatthewLillard/status/1322648148364324864 so does this make it canon?
the high geologist has ascended
nonbinary-dean-winchester
every time i see this post it gets…. better? but also weirder.
I always gotta reblog the High Geologist once in a while.
I love this too much.
So are you going to tell us about the giant hyperpredatory sperm whales or do I have to go google some nightmares myself?
we’re all familiar with the Sperm Whale of our modern seas, largest of the Toothed Whales! it’s also completely specialized for eating squid and squid ONLY, a comfort to anyone who’s ever managed to get just a bit too close to those enormous razor jaws.
but this was very much not always the case! the earlier members of the Sperm Whale lineage were much less… discerning.
early Sperm Whales all resembled our friendly modern swimming school bus to some degree, but the main difference was in the jaws- early Sperm Whales like Acrophyseter and Zygophyseter all had wide, powerful jaws with ENORMOUS teeth suitable for snacking on fish, dolphins, aquatic sloths, and pretty much anything else they could fit down their enormous gullets, kind of like a modern Orca.
and from 12 to 7 million years ago, these things RULED the seas. Megalodon who?
but the greatest of these was Livyatan Melvillei, which was the size of our modern Sperm Whale.
reaching up to 60 feet long and weighing well over 60 tons, it this thing was a Sea Monster in every sense of the word.
it is so BONKERS huge that they named it after the Hebrew name for the Biblical Leviathan (and also Herman Melville, who would have gotten a real kick out of it). I cannot overstate how unsafe it would be to share an ocean with this thing. Moby Dick would have been an entirely different book if it was still around.
so what does a 60-feet hyperpredatory whale eat?
*Groucho Marx voice* WHY, ANYTHING IT WANTS.
(but mostly other whales.)
Livyatan spent most of its time cruising around looking for delicious smaller whales to shove into that nightmare maw up there, a lifestyle choice we call macroraptorial. though in a pinch, anything else would also do.
(basically, if you were a mid-sized baleen whale in the paleozoic seas you were just SHIT out of luck, between Megalodon and this thing.)
Livyatan may have died out as little as 5 million years ago, meaning it might even have been around to make the early ancestors of Orcas regret their life choices! (Livyatan is the only animal that could possibly make an Orca regret anything, but God, at what cost)
but die out they did, and that’s probably a good thing for us. why don’t we all just take a moment to really appreciate our modern hyperspecialized Sperm Whales, especially the part where they don’t eat us!
UNRESTRAINED SUMMER FUN
Aquatic sloths?
Thalassocnus. Got pretty big, between 2 and 3 meters long. Used their claws to walk across the sea floor.
See the monster whales eating the giant underwater sloths
why would you hide this in the tag?
blood sickens you, makes you swag on your feet, falling to your knees now in this sick manmade horror. the smell of metal presses into you like spikes, burning like a branding iron.
uh makes me what now
Anonymous asked:
I think you made a typo in your last post it says swag when that probably should be sway
herlp ,e i didjnt notice
let’s say, hypothetically, i did the mash. and, for the sake of debate, let’s say it was a monster mash. would that, hypothetically speaking, mean that it would be a graveyard sm
if you find bones in the forest, sit a bit and listen. they are old and have some good stories to tell. maybe they’ll teach you a spell or two, or explain where the water on our planet came from.
if you find bones by the ocean, run. don’t look back. run, faster, faster. the sea may love you but there are nights where she knows neither mercy nor science, and the bones warn you only once.
deseng
boi if you find bones call the police i hate this website so much
this is a piece of creative writing, in case you couldn’t tell from the fact that real bones don’t usually go hey lil’ mama lemme whisper bony secrets in your ear or warn you of the incoming tides like a calcified weather frog.