People Talk A Lot About How Reading Is Necessary For Writing, But When You Really Want To Improve Your

People talk a lot about how reading is necessary for writing, but when you really want to improve your writing, it’s important to go beyond just simple reading. Here are some things to do when reading:

Note how they begin and end the story. There are a ton of rather contradictory pieces of advice about starting stories, so see how they do it in the stories you enjoy. Don’t only look at the most popular stories, but look at your more obscure favorites.

See what strikes you. Is it fast or complicated scenes with a lot of emotions? Is it stark lines? Pithy dialogue? What do you remember the next day?

Pay attention to different styles. It’s not just whether they use past or present tense, first or third person. It’s whether the writing is more neutral or deeper inside character’s heads. Do they use italics? Parentheses? Other interesting stylistic choices? Take the ones you like and try them out in your own writing. See what works and what doesn’t.

Keep track of how they deal with other characters. Do we see a lot of secondary character each for very brief periods of time or are there a couple that show up a lot? How much information do we get about secondary characters? Do they have their own plots or do their plots revolve entirely around the main characters?

Count how many plots there are. Is there just one main plot or are there multiple subplots? Are the storylines mostly plot-based or character-based?

Pay attention to what you don’t like. If you don’t like what’s going on in a book or even just a scene, note what it is. Does the dialogue feel awkward? Are the characters inconsistent? Does the plot feel too convenient or cobbled together? Does the wording just feel off? See if you can spot those issues in your own writing, especially when reading a completed draft or beginning a later draft.

Resources For Worldbuilding

Culture & Society

Creating Fictional Holidays

Music For Your Fantasy World

Creating Religions & Belief Systems

How to Design Your Diabolical Cult

Historically Accurate Sexism in Fantasy: Let’s Unpack That

Debate with the Squirrels: Sexism in Fantasy

Feudalism

Using Politics In Fantasy Fiction

Mythic Justice – Crime and Punishment in Your Fantasy World

Government Worldbuilding

Realistic Political Strife

A Politics Of Worldbuilding

Language

Creating a Language

The Language Construction Kit

The International Phonetic Alphabet – Audio Illustrations

Fantasy Name Generator

Geographic Names

Medieval Names Archive

Squid Name Generator

Model Languages

Xenolinguistics

History

Prehistory

Mythos

History

Today

Myths, Creatures, and Folklore

Encyclopedia Mythica

The Ancient History Encyclopedia

Using History as Inspiration for Fantasy

Victorian Era Family Day Life in England

Peasant Life in the Middle Ages

Everyday Life in the Middle Ages

English Monarchs

Feudal Japan

The Story and Structure of the Iroquois Confederacy

Science + Geography

Dimensions

Solar Bodies

Climatology

Planetary Geography

Water Geography

Cartography, Maps, Star Charts, and Writing

Fundamentals of Physical Geography

Dating of Middle-earth events, using Precession of the Equinoxes and Tidal Friction

Orbital Operations in Science Fiction

Planet Designer

Artificial gravity calculator

Natural gravity calculator

Selden’s Catalogs of Objects for Celestia

Medieval Technology

Defining the Source, Effects, and Cost of Magic

How to Create a Rational Magic System

Miscellaneous

/r/worldbuilding

Fantasy World Generator

SciFi World Generator

Focused Ambiguity: Using Metaphor in Fantasy Writing

Space Engine

Terragen

The Five foundations of Worldbuilding

Setting the Fantastic in the Everyday World

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16K notes View Post

lrs35

2 years ago

When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.

There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

I will soothe you and heal you
I will bring you roses
I too have been covered with thorns

Pylades: I'll take care of you.
Orestes: It's rotten work.
Pylades: Not to me, Not if it's you.

Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.

Love is insane you feel like you're always subtly asking "do you still love me even though i'm flawed" and the answer just keeps being yes

H of H:
I cannot rise. Too heavy with filth and sin.
Th:
Give me your hand.
H of H:
I'll stain you.
Th:
I'll take it.

Love alters not with his brief hours
and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of
doom.

I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.

I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind.

Love as Acceptance

Caitlyn Siehl // Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" // Rumi, "Bitterweet" // trans. Anne Carson, "Euripides" // Sade Andria Zabala, "Coffee and Cigarettes" // tumblr acct @/gayassnatural // Anne Carson, "H of H Playbook" // William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116" // Clementine von Radics, "Mouthful of Forevers" // Toni Morrison, "Jazz"