Apocalypsewriters - I Think Im Lost - Tumblr Blog

how to outline a story:

write a bullet point list of everything that happens

realize it doesn’t make sense

cry

start writing anyway

the writer’s urge to ask your friends “do you wanna see a little somethin’ i’ve been working on?” when the little somethin’ you’ve been working on is 800 words and ends in the middle of a sentence

something i see a lot on here, that i have come to hate, is self deprecation. and i don’t mean the “im a little loser guy” type of posts. i mean straight out saying “im not a good writer/no one likes my work/everything i make sucks”

STOP IT!! stop it right now. it’s not cute. it’s not endearing. and at some point, people stop feeling bad for you.

if you constantly say you’re not a good writer, you never will be. if you always say that you can’t write anything good, you never will. if you keep saying that people don’t want to read your work, they won’t.

imagine you’re set up in a booth at a bookstore, trying to sell your book, but to everyone that passes or shows interest, you go “oh this isn’t good. you won’t want to read this” so they won’t. they won’t read it because you told them that it sucks.

you have to be your own fan first. you have to like your own work if you expect anyone else to. i know it’s hard. i know it’s easier said than done. but we have to stop being so mean to ourselves. we’re writers, and we’re damn good ones. act like it.

writer’s block isn’t real, it’s just your characters deciding to go on strike because they’re mad about how you’ve been treating them

I just think Levi's neat

Ppl are heavily recommending scavengers reign and I fully have to agree that it is so so 100% worth the watch it actually changed me as a person. I have NOT seen enough people give explicit enough warnings about the gore and death in it (including towards animals/animal adjacent creatures). I say this as someone who's never gotten uncomfortable with animated gore, I was genuinely triggered by the details of a few scenes. There are also incredibly realistic depictions of some forms of abuse and mental breakdowns/mind breaks. This is not to say it's bad at all, it's so so beautiful and the way it animates these things is immaculate. It handles all of its topics with such precision and care and it's just so good. Just please go into it with the expectation that it WILL make you more than a little uncomfortable and prepare accordingly. If you don't end up that upset, at least you were prepared for it if you did. Be safe while watching I love you all mwa mwa.

the transition from people needing each other to wanting each other is literally one of my greatest weaknesses that shit makes me want to walk into the sea and sit on the ocean floor for a thousand years

goddamn it.

Would you like to enter my gay and stupid maze

blows my mind that i have little online friends who mildly care about me. it’s really nice

PSA: SAID IS NOT DEAD. Said is not an overused word you need to cull out of your drafts. Said is not the devil. Said is a dialogue tag that your reader's eyes glaze over, barely noticed, allowing your dialogue to shine. Allowing your characters to speak without the narration overshadowing them. Said is doing a wonderful, thankless job! Said is not dead, you take that back—

Rats rats rats!

yayyyy mutuals hiiiiiiiii reblog if you love your mutualssssssss hiii mutuals

wdym an average platonic bond cant be deep and meaningful do none of you remember the power of friendship

every day I open up Tumblr and think - I should post some of my writing. and every day, I don't and just scroll and reblog posts instead.

Concept: Depressing dystopian factory where everything is gray and samey and the workers are called by their employee numbers by an ominous deep voice.

But it's a really great place to work with high salaries, excellent benefits, and a flexible working schedule with plenty of paid leave. They just like the dystopian aesthetic.

It’s very simple, you wake up and you are entirely free because god died before he could give you any purpose and so there is no string pulling you in any one direction. The stars unfurl in front and behind and above and below (as much as there is an in front and behind, or, for that matter, an above and below, when you do not know where you might be headed) and they’re singing some silly song between them but just as you try to make out the tune a stranger asks you who you might be. You tell them you don’t know, on account of you were born today - or maybe yesterday just around midnight, maybe you were alive for about a minute before yesterday tipped over into now and anyway time is relative and you haven’t been around for long and god died before he could give you any instructions so you don’t really have the hang of anything yet. They ask you if you have a name of any kind and when you say you don’t they ask if you’d want one. You say you haven’t really figured out what wanting feels like yet but you’d give a name a try, just to see how one would fit. They offer you some but they’re all just words - pretty words, Azrael and Uziel and Abaddon, but none of those sound like something that would have a you attached to it, whoever you might end up being. The stranger asks if you are an angel or something else (it might help with the naming, they say, to figure out at least what you are if not who) and you say you don’t know on account god dying right after making you, and you don’t see how this would matter much seeing how whatever you are you are not driven to any grand purpose, not part of a great plan any more than the stars or the dust between them or anything else there might be, you’d just like to listen to the stars sing, wander and look for questions to look for answers to - like what else there might be besides stars and dust - and maybe talk to the stranger if they wouldn’t mind. It occurs to you to ask the stranger if they have a name and they say they’re between names, between many things really. That they had a name but then everyone who knew them by it died so the name seemed obsolete and then there was a name they were given over and over so that it seemed easier to take than refuse even though it didn't really fit and then when they did choose a name they weren't at their best and it's intertwined with too many ghosts to wear it for too long. They are thinking of Sun not because it's how they feel but because how they want to feel, what they want to be like - a name doesn't have to be a statement of fact, it can also be a memory, or a hope. So you can call them Sun but they do like stranger, and they aren't sure they're a they either but stranger is too long to say every time and nothing else fits better and they is appropriately in between of certainties and just outside of knowing. Your first worry reaches you and you ask if god dying right after making you is cause and effect or correlation rather than causation and the stranger says they don't know but either way you cannot bear the blame for other people’s choices, the actions of those that came before you shape the world and yourself but do not decide your fate, let alone your guilt. You say okay, okay. You ask the stranger where they're going and they say wherever they feel like going, and at the moment that's about here. You ask them if they could listen to the stars with you for a bit and they smile and say why not and you're not sure what a sun is but if the stranger is one of those you would really like to see them. 

snippet from The Noble Prince (placeholder title for easy reference on here)

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If he’s going to make any progress, though, he has to start now. So Kieran makes a conscious effort to stop thinking about his old life and start thinking about his new one. He’s been invited to breakfast with some of the other guards once his overnight shift is over. After that, he plans to go down to the shops and buy a few things to make his new barren house feel more like a home. He didn’t bring much from Hostettler since –

Wake up.

Kieran shoots to his feet as the grating voice pierces through his thoughts. It scrapes against his brain like a blade on stone, drawing a shiver up his spine and making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He looks around for the source of the voice, but he’s still alone in the hallway. The door to the rest of the prison is still shut. The door to the cell is still locked three times over.

It sounded like a woman’s voice that he heard. The prisoner’s?

Kieran slowly makes his way to the iron door, his heart fluttering nervously. Another shiver rocks through him when he presses his hand against the cold iron, and it feels like it draws the heat out of his body through his palm. Kieran peers through the small window, not much bigger than his own head, and lined up and down with thick iron bars.

“Are you alright?” he asks as his eyes begin to adjust to the darkness of the windowless cell. But after a few blinks, he can see the shape of a person still lying on the bed at the back of the room. It looks like she’s on her side with her back towards the door. Exactly as she was before.

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taglist buddies :) @starsoughtfrost @acertainmoshke

Hey you ever think about The Characters so much to the point where

the transition from people needing each other to wanting each other is literally one of my greatest weaknesses that shit makes me want to walk into the sea and sit on the ocean floor for a thousand years

[sits up suddenly in a cold sweat] what if my corpse doesn't rot

sofia content sofia content

this is mostly hypothetical scenario but also plausible. it would take place after the narrative of not my magical destiny

The sky was inky and freckled with stars. Disturbed by their climbing, a rock clinked down the cliffside. It took ten seconds for its tumbling to stop. Another chunk of the mountain, this one divoted out by Sofia’s pick, bounced down. It landed by Gabriel, making him shriek where he sat, sketching. 

“Hurry up,” hollered Sofia. His breathing was slow and easy despite the weighty tool he wielded.

Gabe groaned but snapped the book shut. He turned to the cliff face and wheedled, “It’s still dark. We have time.”

“I’m not missing this,” I said, finding Sofia’s old handhold and hauling myself up. “And I don’t want to leave you behind.”

“But the view of the constellations here is so good,” whined Gabe, climbing all the same.”

“It will be better from the top,” promised Sofia.

Air plants and moss nestled in the cliff face. The mossy rocks made for crumbling handholds, pulling away from the rock and the slightest pressure. It saddened me, knowing how long it took for the moss to grow and how fast it was removed by the slip of a hand. I couldn’t smell the city from up here. The pre-dawn chill made the air fresh and clear. My hands started to cramp. Sofia had taken me climbing many times before but only on pre-traversed rock walls. He was carving this one out as he went.

“Are we there yet?” asked Gabe. His hands were surely hurting more than mine. They were soft from years of flipping through old books. At least I played frisbee and climbed semi-regularly with Sofia – I had some callouses built up.

Sofia scoffed. “What are you, five?”

I took pity on my childhood friend. Holding myself away from the mountainside, I caught a glimpse of the top. “Almost,” I reassured him. “Only thirty metres to go.”

Gabe groaned. I heard the thunk of his forehead against the rock. I snickered.

Moving another ten metres up, the burn in my legs started. I tried to distract myself, focusing on the rubbing of my canvas shorts between the rock and my skin. Birdsong was starting, ringing out across the canyon below. It carried beautifully in the young morning air. A blue jay flitted past my peripheral vision. Instinctively, I whipped my head around to catch another glimpse. The movement unbalanced me. My heart ricocheted between my throat and my feet. Undignified squeaks left my mouth.

“Kodi, love?” called Sofia from above. “Are you okay?”

“Mhm!” I managed. “Just give me a minute.”

My foot scrabbled for purchase. The drop yawned below me. My pulse was a brigade in my ears. The only thing I could feel was my accelerating breathing.

Finally, finally, my toe found a divot in the rock. I wiggled it further in. I didn’t care if it got stuck. Resting my head against the cliff face, I waited for my breathing to slow.

I opened my eyes. I didn’t even realise I closed them. A ladybug crawled across the nook of moss my face landed in. Smiling weakly, I watched it amble towards the mouth of the cranny. It used a stalk of grass for a launch pad, crawling to the tip and leaping off it into the rapidly brightening sky.

Something tapped against my ankle. I shrieked.

“Feeling better?” asked Gabe.

“Not if you scare me like that,” I said, extricating my foot from the rock. Heart rate closer to normal, I started climbing again.

My muscles were quivering when I finally hauled myself over the top. I at least managed to collapse into a seated position gracefully. Gabe, on the other hand, collapsed like a dropped marionette in a heap. He looked up from his face full of gravel. A pebble or two stuck to his cheek, matching the indents on his forehead. I chuckled. Sofia laughed, too. Gabe rolled his eyes.

He was quick to scramble up, though, when I patted the ground next to me. We sat with our backs to the cross signifying the peak. It was wood and weathered to velvet. Thankfully it had a sturdy foundation, making it a perfect place to rest against.

Our trio sat in silence, bathing in victory and growing sunlight. The sun washed the valley in shifting hues, going from hazy purple to rusty red. Bees flitted up, blocking the view with their adorable fuzzy bodies. They disappeared against the zesty orange light as the sun rose higher. Ever prepared, Sofia whipped out a pair of sunglasses. He put them on top of his head for later, wanting to enjoy the sunrise unobscured for now.

The valley was bright with white sunlight when we stood up. Gabe snapped his notebook shut, hiding his artistry until he polished it later. He retrieved two pairs of sunglasses and handed one to me. There was no need to be blinded as we headed down the mountain.

(psst if you want more content with these lovely characters check out my ao3)