break up your paragraphs. big paragraphs are scary, your readers will get scared
fuuuuck epithets. “the other man got up” “the taller woman sat down” “the blonde walked away” nahhh. call them by their names or rework the sentence. you can do so much better than this (exception: if the reader doesn’t know the character(s) you’re referring to yet, it’s a-okay to refer to them by an identifying trait)
blunette is not a thing
new speaker, new paragraph. please.
“said” is such a great word. use it. make sweet love to it. but don’t kill it
use “said” more than you use synonyms for it. that way the use of synonyms gets more exciting. getting a sudden description of how a character is saying something (screaming, mumbling, sighing) is more interesting that way.
if your summary says “I suck at summaries” or “story better than summary” you’re turning off the reader, my dude. your summary is supposed to be your hook. you gotta own it, just like you’re gonna own the story they’re about to read
follow long sentences w short ones and short ones w long ones. same goes for paragraphs
your writing is always better than you think it is. you just think it’s bad because the story’s always gonna be predicable to the one who’s writing it
I need to talk about this scene because it’s so different from the typical way pep talks go.
Moana has just suffered a tremendous defeat and been abandoned by Maui, her demi-god ally. She’s understandably upset- the heart of Te Fiti has to be restored or decay will consume her island. And yet she’s just one teenage girl on a damaged canoe- how is she supposed to face down Te Ka, actual vengeful Lava monster?
Her fairy godmother grandmother’s spirit doesn’t come in with a magical fix, insist her doubts are baseless and/or bluster that she should just get on with the impossible. She comforts her and tells her it was too big a task to expect of her (all true!) and then tells her it’s okay to give up, that she will be there with unconditional support to help her go home, no guilt or shame.
THIS. NEVER. HAPPENS. IN. STORIES.
And it should. “Encouragement” is so often a lot like bullying in narratives, even towards characters that are children. “I know you have it in you (even though you were just soundly beaten)! Now get back out there (even though you’re miserable)!”
Instead, Gramma waits until Moana herself realizes that she’s not ready to give up, through self reflection. She wasn’t there to insist that Moana “suck it up”, but simply to “remind [her] that come what may, [she] know[s] the way”.
It was only by a stroke of luck that Jack happened to look at his phone just as he exits the lecture hall. The group chat was blowing up – the group chat was always blowing up these days – but the lack of all-caps or exclamation marks caught his attention right away.
Eric Bittle: Guys, I wouldn’t ask this of y’all if I really didn’t need this, but I have to ask a HUGE favor of one of you.
Shitty Knight: brah are you dying
Justin Oluransi: You can have my kidney, Bits.
Adam Birkholtz: u aren’t gonna save that for me just in CASE, JUSTIN?
Larissa Duan: shit, bitty, r u ok
Eric Bittle: Um, yeah, mostly, I just…..need someone to pretend to be my boyfriend.
