♡꒰believe In Me, A Mini Series꒱♡ -jh86

beginner writing tips!

hey! call me jae. are you a beginner writer or have an interest in writing? here’s some tips to help you start/get better.

i suggest you use ao3 as a writing platform. i find it usually gets you more views than wattpad or fanfiction.net. you can also post your writings here on tumblr if you don’t want to wait for an invite to ao3 (i have a few i can use so if you’d like one i can and will gladly send you one!)

do not- and i repeat- do not!!! put!!! author’s notes!!! in the middle of a chapter!!! it’s so unprofessional and your story comes out choppy! you want to keep your reader invested, and when you have an a/n in the middle of the chapter it just does no good for your chapter!

don’t use slang/dead words unless it’s dialogue! slang/dead words are something you’d use while texting, or for gen z, talking! or words that have been overused and have lost their punch. if you don’t have a large vocabulary, i’d suggest a dictionary or a synonym book. ex: if i wanted to use “love” in a sentence that goes “i love this book!” it doesn’t really pack a punch. instead, i’d use “i adore this book.”

do not overuse parentheses! for example- “You know parentheses? (Those little crescent-shaped thingies?) Well, sometimes they drive me crazy (overuse, lack of clarity, fuzzy writing).” that would be an example of overuse. if your trying to be passive, or put in a point in there that doesn’t necessarily flow with the context of the sentence, i suggest using commas or dashes. of course, you can overuse them too, but they don’t look as choppy.

try to make the flow of you’re story go smoothly. the reader gets confused when you jump from subject to subject!

don’t switch povs during a chapter (you can do it every other chapter). switching povs constantly causes mass chaos in the readers mind. now you can change point of views if your going for a more stylistic story, but i suggest you don’t do that until your intermediate at best.

USE PARAGRAPHS!!!!!! it irks me when writers don’t use paragraphs when they move on to another subject! you don’t have to indent, this isn’t an english paper, but please please hit “return” or “tab” (depending on whether you’re on mobile or computer) to create a new paragraph! a good way to remember this is when your characters are moving on to another action then you make a new paragraph, or when the dialogue switches from person to person.

that’s it for now, reblog if you’d like a part 2/intermediate writers.

Why limit yourself between choosing a pretty feminine aesthetic or a dark one? If Persephone can be the Goddess of Spring and the Queen of the Underworld at the same time so can you.

“I want us to have history, something longer than the small window of time we’re actually sharing, with an even longer future.” — mateo

i've read this book two years ago but i'm crying harder now ;(

"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

It’s good to grow and learn to be better. But that doesn’t mean your past self was bad or unworthy or anything like that.

Your past self got you through everything, no matter how hard that might have been. And no matter how much you might think you could have done better.

The important thing is you’re here now and even if your past self didn’t do their best, they still survived and got you here.

iris by goo goo dolls really is insane though. I'd give up forever to touch you? you're the closest to heaven I'll ever be? all I can breathe is your life? and I don't want the world to see me cause I don't think they'd understand? when everything's meant to be broken I just want you to know who I am? does anyone hear me.

I’m simultaneously the most obsessive most detached girl in the world

There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.

Elizabeth Berg (via sunsetquotes)

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.

-Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” from Refusing Heaven