Today’s writing tip? Change the scene before you change the story. I was stuck on a conversation until I moved the location. Suddenly it flowed. Writers block? Outsmarted again. (Until next time.)

How to write a fanfic summary:

When I was a kid, my mum taught me to summarize using a simple Q&A method, and I still use that technique to structure all kind of writing.

Since, I come across many fanfics where the author says: I'm bad at making summaries; I decided to share some questions that can guide you in writing fanfic summaries; it doesn't work for all stories, but I hope it gives you a solid starting point!

Three main questions:

What is happening? Who is it happening to? Why should the reader care?

Additional questions:

PSA: stuttering in fics

as someone with a speech impediment, all of the people saying that only one type of stuttering is valid are wrong.

stuttering CAN look like this: "t-this is a-an example s-s-sentence"

OR this: "this-this is an example sen-sentence."

OR this: "t-t-t-th-..t-ttttthis is an example sentence."

OR this: "this is, uhm, an example, uh, sentence."

OR this: "this is an example sssssss-sentence."

OR this: "this is an examp-...this an example sentence."

sometimes the sentence won't even come out of your mouth at all.

there are probably many examples i'm forgetting, but that's the point! it usually is a mix of a few of these, but some people do one of them more often than others! some people with speech impediments have certain sounds that they almost consistently have trouble with (for me it's "st").

people with speech impediments also rarely-if ever-stutter whilst they're singing or whispering.

most importantly!!!! people with speech impediments are capable of saying a sentence without stuttering!! it can just be a gamble sometimes.

and if more people could portray the frustration that comes with stuttering and not being able to get words out, i'd be a very happy girl.

(fun fact: sometimes when my mouth won't let me say what i want to say, i get so annoyed that i just yell or grumble out "WORDS.")

this was your speech impediment PSA!!!!

on “the blond,” “the older man,” and other crimes against third-person limited

You know that thing where a story is written in tight third person limited — we’re meant to be inside someone’s head, seeing the world through their thoughts — and then suddenly the narration says “the blond frowned” or “the shorter woman sighed” about a person the POV character knows really well?

That’s called antonomasia — using a descriptive label instead of a name. And it’s fine when we’re talking about strangers: “the cashier handed her the receipt,” “the tall guy blocked the door.” The POV character doesn’t know their names, and we just need a quick way to tell people apart.

But the moment it’s used for someone the POV character already knows, it breaks immersion. Because that’s not how our minds work. We don’t think “the older man smiled at me.” We think “Mark smiled.” Or maybe “my boss” if that relationship matters in the moment.

Third person limited means the narration sits inside someone’s perception. Their inner monologue is the story’s voice. So when you switch from “Mark smiled” to “the blond smiled,” you’ve pulled the camera away from their mind and turned it into an outside shot.

If you want to create distance or irritation, you can do it on purpose —

“The idiot from accounting emailed again.”

That’s character voice. That’s judgment. That works.

But otherwise?

As soon as your POV character knows someone’s name, use it. While we do tend to worry about repetitions, names rarely register as such to the readers.

If you need variety for rhythm, use relational or emotional identifiers that make sense in their head: her friend, his partner, their teacher, the person they loved.

Because inside someone’s thoughts, there are no “blonds” or “brunettes.”

There are only people they know.

Writing life hack: Make a separate document to store all the loose scenes you want to include in your story, but you aren't sure quite where to put them. It's a lot easier than the footnote pile of doom.

An Interview with Richard Siken

[ Begin ID: Screenshot of text that reads "Curiosity is fundamental. Always has been and always will be. We think art comes from trauma because we're most curious when we're devastated or in danger and we're curious for an answer. You can be desperately curious. It doesn't have to be a mild feeling. Some people say they can't write when they're happy. That's because they write pain out of habit. They just aren't curious about joy. Joy can be just as intense, profound, and even terrifying. Recover is a side-effect of curiosity. Knowledge is a side-effect of curiosity. The opposite of curiosity is an insularity that leads to self-isolation and a solitary death." / End ID ]

a scene can start wherever you want it to

writing isn't real life. You don't need to set up a character walking into a room or two characters greeting each other and talking about the weather or what-have-you in order to lead into the conversation you actually want them to have. just start at the conversation.

hell, start in the middle of the conversation. you could even start at the end and then have one of them leave and the other one left behind to reflect back on what just happened.

writing gets easier when you open yourself up to writing the parts that are interesting, to starting where it's easy instead of where you think you should start.

if it ends up not working? that's okay. you tried it, and sometimes just getting something out of your head is a necessary first step to getting the words right

Piece of advice I've often been given (but don't necessarily agree with broadly) is "if you're bored, the reader's bored", so while I don't think you should use your personal interests singly as the driving force behind what appears on the page, I *do* think this is very useful first draft advice. Write what intrigues you. Write what excites you. Then, when your beta readers or agent or best friend tells you they feel like something's missing, go back and fill in the parts that are needed to connect the dots. But don't think "this filler is always there, so I must write it!" because I PROMISE you will end up with way more than you need and everyone will be bored, including you.

sometimes the best thing we can do isn't to try and make it easier for ourselves; it's to make it more enjoyable. if you are doing something that you are used to 'powering through' becuase it's hard and necessary but you hate it -- answering emails, working out, drinking water, etc -- try to see if you can find unexpected joy. can you listen to your favorite playlist while you work out? can you listen to asmr or a podcast while you answer emails? put fun ice in your water? you deserve joy, and you can create it for yourself :))

Honestly just experiment and see what works best foe the story you want to write. Some stories feel like they flow better in one or the other, in my experience.

Also, some stories actually do work best with tense swapping in specific segments (flashbacks or dream sequences, for example, sometimes work best if they're in a different tense--the key is be consistent.)

Random thoughts, most of them just opinions. Hope they help a little, anon.

Ok, as a writer who ALSO loves using em dashes to denote a sudden cessation of speech, and as an editor, I am BEGGING whoever typesets the files for JLA's physical books:

Use nonbreaking spaces between an em dashes and closing double quotation marks. PLEASE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. I cannot handle multiple instances of an em dash at the end of one line and the closing quotation marks at the beginning of the next.

This is torture and I hate it.

...This.

I have never heard of a non-breaking space. What is this?

Nonbreaking spaces are basically special characters in word processors that keep two things together so they don't break over a line. I see it most commonly with things like numbers and units, and it helps enhance the readability of a text.

I've taken computer classes in the late 90's and early 2000's, as well as various writing classes in college in the 2010's, and this has never been taught to me. I was today years old when I learned this was even a thing.

Some truths about the publishing industry because I certainly got blindsided when going in. Now I'm so broken by this industry I struggle to encourage aspiring writers lmao

Interesting to see the traditional publishing side since I usually see the indie struggles from @thebibliosphere

As someone who worked in trad-pub on the editing side and chose to go self-pub for my work because of how trad-pub works and dictates the market, yeah. All of this.

I was told point blank Hunger Pangs would be unmarketable without major changes. The book trad-pub wanted to turn it into was unrecognizable from the one I pitched. And frankly? It wouldn’t have sold as well.

It would have been another cookie-cutter love triangle with zero staying power in the market. And the publisher would have turned around and made that my fault, despite the fact that what they wanted me to do was ableist, bi-phobic and honestly dull as dishwater.

My book as is, is true to my style, my voice and the story I want to tell. And it’s good. (It also continues to sell well after five years on the market, which I’m sure grinds the gears of certain people at my former publishing house who told me it’d be lucky to sell a handful at most, so lol.)

I don’t need a trad-pub seal of approval to know that, and neither do a lot of others who are continually thinking their rejection letters are about the quality of their work and not the perceived marketability by the industry.

Is self pub and indie pub easy? Fuck no. It’s a shit ton of work. But personally the creative freedom is worth it for me. I would not be happy in trad-pub. I know this because I wasn’t happy in it as an editor and how we and the authors were treated but that’s a whole other rant outside of this one.

If you go with indie publishing, the quality of the writing won’t be as much a consideration as how much marketing you can do as you’ll be expected to do it all basically. Don’t be expecting the publisher to market the book, that’s your job. And if you’ve got either enough spoons to write or to market but not both? You’re going to struggle a bit. Though often if you send something good to enough places, *somewhere* will take it, but without you being able to do any marketing, it won’t make much money. Like, you’ll be getting royalties of about $5 a year for something you wrote your heart out on, after the first year.

That goes double if you write LGBTQ+ fic, on the whole, btw.

The Neurodivergent Writer’s Guide to Fun and Productivity

(Even when life beats you down)

Look, I’m a mom, I have ADHD, I’m a spoonie. To say that I don’t have heaps of energy to spare and I struggle with consistency is an understatement. For years, I tried to write consistently, but I couldn’t manage to keep up with habits I built and deadlines I set.

So fuck neurodivergent guides on building habits, fuck “eat the frog first”, fuck “it’s all in the grind”, and fuck “you just need time management”—here is how I manage to write often and a lot.

Focus on having fun, not on the outcome

This was the groundwork I had to lay before I could even start my streak. At an online writing conference, someone said: “If you push yourself and meet your goals, and you publish your book, but you haven’t enjoyed the process… What’s the point?” and hoo boy, that question hit me like a truck.

I was so caught up in the narrative of “You’ve got to show up for what’s important” and “Push through if you really want to get it done”. For a few years, I used to read all these productivity books about grinding your way to success, and along the way I started using the same language as they did. And I notice a lot of you do so, too.

But your brain doesn’t like to grind. No-one’s brain does, and especially no neurodivergent brain. If having to write gives you stress or if you put pressure on yourself for not writing (enough), your brain’s going to say: “Huh. Writing gives us stress, we’re going to try to avoid it in the future.”

So before I could even try to write regularly, I needed to teach my brain once again that writing is fun. I switched from countable goals like words or time to non-countable goals like “fun” and “flow”.

Rewire my brain: writing is fun and I’m good at it

I used everything I knew about neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences. These are some of the things I did before and during a writing session. Usually not all at once, and after a while I didn’t need these strategies anymore, although I sometimes go back to them when necessary.

It wasn’t until I could confidently say I enjoyed writing again, that I could start building up a consistent habit. No more pushing myself.

I lowered my definition for success

When I say that nowadays I write every day, that’s literally it. I don’t set out to write 1,000 or 500 or 10 words every day (tried it, failed to keep up with it every time)—the only marker for success when it comes to my streak is to write at least one word, even on the days when my brain goes “naaahhh”. On those days, it suffices to send myself a text with a few keywords or a snippet. It’s not “success on a technicality (derogatory)”, because most of those snippets and ideas get used in actual stories later. And if they don’t, they don’t. It’s still writing. No writing is ever wasted.

A side note on high expectations, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism

Obviously, “Setting a ridiculously low goal” isn’t something I invented. I actually got it from those productivity books, only I never got it to work. I used to tell myself: “It’s okay if I don’t write for an hour, because my goal is to write for 20 minutes and if I happen to keep going for, say, an hour, that’s a bonus.” Right? So I set the goal for 20 minutes, wrote for 35 minutes, and instead of feeling like I exceeded my goal, I felt disappointed because apparently I was still hoping for the bonus scenario to happen. I didn’t know how to set a goal so low and believe it.

I think the trick to making it work this time lies more in the groundwork of training my brain to enjoy writing again than in the fact that my daily goal is ridiculously low. I believe I’m a writer, because I prove it to myself every day. Every success I hit reinforces the idea that I’m a writer. It’s an extra ward against imposter syndrome.

Knowing that I can still come up with a few lines of dialogue on the Really Bad Days—days when I struggle to brush my teeth, the day when I had a panic attack in the supermarket, or the day my kid got hit by a car—teaches me that I can write on the mere Bad-ish Days.

The more I do it, the more I do it

The irony is that setting a ridiculously low goal almost immediately led to writing more and more often. The most difficult step is to start a new habit. After just a few weeks, I noticed that I needed less time and energy to get into the zone. I no longer needed all the strategies I listed above.

Another perk I noticed, was an increased writing speed. After just a few months of writing every day, my average speed went from 600 words per hour to 1,500 wph, regularly exceeding 2,000 wph without any loss of quality.

Talking about quality: I could see myself becoming a better writer with every passing month. Writing better dialogue, interiority, chemistry, humour, descriptions, whatever: they all improved noticeably, and I wasn’t a bad writer to begin with.

The increased speed means I get more done with the same amount of energy spent. I used to write around 2,000-5,000 words per month, some months none at all. Nowadays I effortlessly write 30,000 words per month. I didn’t set out to write more, it’s just a nice perk.

Look, I’m not saying you should write every day if it doesn’t work for you. My point is: the more often you write, the easier it will be.

No pressure

Yes, I’m still working on my novel, but I’m not racing through it. I produce two or three chapters per month, and the rest of my time goes to short stories my brain keeps projecting on the inside of my eyelids when I’m trying to sleep. I might as well write them down, right?

These short stories started out as self-indulgence, and even now that I take them more seriously, they are still just for me. I don’t intend to ever publish them, no-one will ever read them, they can suck if they suck. The unintended consequence was that my short stories are some of my best writing, because there’s no pressure, it’s pure fun.

Does it make sense to spend, say, 90% of my output on stories no-one else will ever read? Wouldn’t it be better to spend all that creative energy and time on my novel? Well, yes. If you find the magic trick, let me know, because I haven’t found it yet. The short stories don’t cannibalize on the novel, because they require different mindsets. If I stopped writing the short stories, I wouldn’t produce more chapters. (I tried. Maybe in the future? Fingers crossed.)

Don’t wait for inspiration to hit

There’s a quote by Picasso: “Inspiration hits, but it has to find you working.” I strongly agree. Writing is not some mystical, muse-y gift, it’s a skill and inspiration does exist, but usually it’s brought on by doing the work. So just get started and inspiration will come to you.

Accountability and community

Having social factors in your toolbox is invaluable. I have an offline writing friend I take long walks with, I host a monthly writing club on Discord, and I have another group on Discord that holds me accountable every day. They all motivate me in different ways and it’s such a nice thing to share my successes with people who truly understand how hard it can be.

The productivity books taught me that if you want to make a big change in your life or attitude, surrounding yourself with people who already embody your ideal or your goal huuuugely helps. The fact that I have these productive people around me who also prioritize writing, makes it easier for me to stick to my own priorities.

Your toolbox

The idea is to have several techniques at your disposal to help you stay consistent. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by focussing on just one technique. Keep all of them close, and if one stops working or doesn’t inspire you today, pivot and pick another one.

After a while, most “tools” run in the background once they are established. Things like surrounding myself with my writing friends, keeping up with my daily streak, and listening to the album I conditioned myself with don’t require any energy, and they still remain hugely beneficial.

Do you have any other techniques? I’d love to hear about them!

I hope this was useful. Happy writing!

“Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex” in Body Work by Melissa Febos

“Show Don’t Tell”? Not Always. Here’s When to Use Summary.

I was inspired to write this post after getting a great anonymous question in my Ask: “What’s your opinion on the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice? Do you have any tips for when to show and when to tell?”

Here’s my response:

I honestly think that “show don’t tell” is one of the most over-quoted and least-understood pieces of writing advice out there.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, “show don’t tell” means that instead of explaining or telling something to your reader (“Sheila was reckless and impulsive”), you should show Sheila’s impulsiveness through action or dialogue. For example, “Even though her rent was overdue, after she got her paycheck Sheila spent $400 on an antique toilet.” This would allow the reader to draw the conclusion that Sheila was impulsive for themselves, rather than being told.

Theoretically, this is great advice for new fiction writers, who, left to their own devices, tend to write their stories entirely in “telling” mode.

But summary (telling) has a place in fiction as well, and it’s an important one.

For one thing, summary allows you to pace your story. If everything is shown in the moment, a story can sometimes seem to be unfolding with breathtaking speed. Alternating with a bit of summary allows your reader to slow down for a break every once in a while.

Secondly, scene takes a lot longer to write than summary. In the earlier example, it might take several scenes or hundreds of words to thoroughly show and convince the reader of Sheila’s impulsiveness. Whereas the sentence “Sheila was impulsive” takes three words. So summary can allow you to fit more into your story or novel and keep it a reasonable length whereas if you wrote every single little thing that happened in scene your story might be prohibitively long.

So summary helps control the pacing of the story and also helps the writer moderate the story’s length.

Even the most fervent supporters of “show don’t tell,” as far as I know, do not dispute that every story can make use of and benefit from summary.

Try it yourself: Pick up your favorite story or book off of the shelf and see if you can locate parts of the story that are told, explained, or summarize to the reader. It’s there. It’s part of the package. Good writers use summary, and they know how to use it well.

So how do you decide when and where to use summary?

The answer is in itself another question and topic. But here’s a quick guideline:

Use summary to give the reader any information she needs which is not important enough to the story to warrant a scene, or to show the passing of time between important parts of the story.

Example #1 Using summary to quickly present inconsequential information.

If the fact that Sheila is reckless and impulsive is a central part of the story—maybe this is a story about how Sheila, your protagonist, learns to overcome her impulsiveness, for example, or maybe in this story it becomes a major issue in Sheila’s relationship that she is impulsive, etc.—then by all means show Sheila’s impulsiveness in scenes.

But if Sheila is, for example, a minor character who is only mentioned by two or three times in passing, and whose behavior doesn’t really affect the story one way or another, then go ahead and summarize Sheila’s behavior. For example, if Sheila is a distant cousin of the protagonist and is only mentioned in a few sentences when the protagonist bumps into her at a family reunion. She is not a central part of the story, but for whatever reason it’s important for the reader to know a few minor details about her.

Example #2: Using summary to show time passing between important scenes.

If your story is about a couple being trapped inside a cabin for a long winter, by all means show the bitter cold days in full scene. That’s the essence of your story, you wouldn’t want to summarize it and deny the reader the chance to experience it.

But if your story is about two friends who share a friendship at summer camp every year, you might want to recap the winter that passed between their visits in a paragraph or two.

Another time to quickly summarize time passing is to use a sentence or two when characters transition from one important location to another, e.g. “They left the movie, drove back to the house, and started dinner.” Again, check up on your favorite writers. I promise you they are not showing every single tiny action blow-by-blow. It would be tedious as hell and make it almost impossible for the reader to figure out what’s important and what’s not.

A few final words about “show don’t tell”:

/ / / / /

@theliteraryarchitect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler, a writer and developmental editor. For more writing help, download my Free Resource Library for Fiction Writers, join my email list, or check out my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

sometimes i need to remind myself that i'm writing fanfiction for free and i'm allowed to have a shitty sentence or two

so many of my fics have remained buried in my drafts because i wrote the cool scenes first and then didn’t have “connective tissue”. but i’m freeing myself from that and just adding shitty “and then a week passed” or “they got to their destination” connections and just posting them and it’s so! freeing! try it!

I can't tell you how many times I've agonized over a scene transition, only to fill in the missing space with, like, a sentence.

Write the parts you wanna write and then go in and slap scotch tape over the rest of it.

Sometimes when I’m feeling self conscious I’ll go and pull a book off my shelf to see how whichever author handled time transitions, and it’s really REALLY common that it’s just, like, “October came and went.” And that’s SO freeing. Just fast forward. Just do it.

sharing a very sage bit of advice from The Simpsons' own John Swartzwelder that i've been trying to hamper down in my writing and drawing alike. let your inner crappy little elf do his worst

[Image ID: An excerpt from an interview.

How much time and attention did you spend on these scripts? Another “Simpsons” writer once compared your scripts to finely tuned machines - if the wrong person mucked with them, the whole thing could blow up.

All of my time and all of my attention. It’s the only way I know how to write, darn it. But I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue - “Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.

/End ID]