catwinchester:

Merman. MerTom? MerLoki? … Merkin? 😉 

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niobiumao3:

“Instead of tall, say he’s 6 foot 7″

Nothing pulls me out of a story faster than this kind of specificity. If there’s a POV character in play who can tell those things because it’s a trait of theirs–they’re a tailor, they’re a physical trainer, whatever–that works, but otherwise, it’s the kind of hyperdetail which is best not used unless it’s relevant to the story.

If a character’s extreme height is relevant, talk about it in other ways and sprinkle it around. Don’t say they’re 6′7 and expect that to be sufficient; it’s not. Describe them ducking through average doorways, sitting awkwardly in short furniture, complaining about their feet dangling off the end of the bed, about needing to shop at the extreme end of Big’n’Tall. Maybe the actual height comes up in dialogue or something, but it should be a facet of the story, not the way you tell people the character is tall.

“Instead of walk, try shuffle of amble or lope.”

None of those words means walking. None of those words means walk.

“Instead of flower, say daffodil.”

If the POV character would know it this makes sense–but they might not. This is an important thing to keep in mind when describing just about anything. Is your character ignorant of flowers? Maybe they have no idea what Amaryllis are, they just know them as “those huge trumpet-shaped flowers their parents always got around Easter and put in transparent vases with gaudy glass beads and a little water like a plant-themed science experiment”. Or a Lancer Evolution is ‘the neighbor boy’s absurdly loud, bright blue, thrumming car that crept over the neighborhood speedbumps’.

People might not know things, and it’s really important to their characterization to think about how they view those things they don’t know.

doodlesanddandelions:

allthingslinguistic:

ladysparklefists:

idk I just love how we Young People Today use ~improper~ punctuation/grammar in actually really defined ways to express tone without having to explicitly state tone like that’s just really fucking cool, like

no    =    “No,” she said. 

no.    =    "No,” she said sharply.

No    =    “No,” she

stated

firmly.

No.    =    “No,” she snapped.

NO    =    “No!” she shouted.

noooooo    =    “No,” she moaned.

no~    =    “No,” she said with a drawn-out sing-song.

~no~    =    “No,” she drawled sarcastically.

NOOOOO    =    “No!” she screamed dramatically.

no?!    =    “No,” she said incredulously.

I’ve been calling this “typographical nuance” and I have a few more to add: 

*no* = “No,” she said emphatically. 

*nopes on out of here* = “No,” she said of herself in the third person, with a touch of humorous emphasis.

~*~noooo~*~ = “No,” she moaned in stylized pseudo-desperation.

#no = “No,” she added as a side comment.

“no” = “No,” she scare-quoted.

wtf are you kidding no = “No,” she said flatly. “And I can’t believe I have to say this.”

no no No No NO NO NO NO = "No,” she repeated over and over again, growing louder and more emphatic. 

nooOOOO = “No,” she said, starting out quietly and turning into a scream.

*no = “Oops, I meant ‘no,’” she corrected, “Sorry for the typo in my previous message.”

I cannot express how strongly I absolutely love language and writing and communication but if anyone asks why I will be showing them this post from now on

the-brightest-witch-studies:

image

Word Counter – Not only does it count the number of words you’ve written, it tells you which words are used most often and how many times they appear.

Tip Of My Tongue – Have you ever had a word on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t figure out what it is? This site searches words by letters, length, definition, and more to alleviate that.

Readability Score – This calculates a multitude of text statistics, including character, syllable, word, and sentence count, characters and syllables per word, words per sentence, and average grade level.

Writer’s Block (Desktop Application) – This free application for your computer will block out everything on your computer until you meet a certain word count or spend a certain amount of time writing.

Cliche Finder – It does what the name says.

Write Rhymes – It’ll find rhymes for words as you write.

Verbix – This site conjugates verbs, because English is a weird language.

Graviax – This grammar checker is much more comprehensive than Microsoft Word, again, because English is a weird language.

Sorry for how short this is! I wanted to only include things I genuinely find useful.

Beware of Crimson Peak

eatbiscuitdrinkflip:

We briefly interrupt our regularly scheduled Hannibal posting to bring you, Crimson Peak Cocktails! Holy crap, you guys, I just saw this big ol’ heap of gothic loveliness this weekend and I cannot recommend it enough. Do you enjoy gothic romance? Guillermo Del Toro-style ghouls? Big, creepy haunted houses that do not even try to hide their creep-factor? Billowing sleeves and enormous shoulder poofs? Stories that contain the phrase “but you musn’t go to the basement”? A female protagonist that can figure stuff out for herself? Then run (down a staircase, with a candelabra) out to see this film.

[I think I successfully avoided anything spoilery below the cut. I refrained from any discussion of the film because I encourage you all to see it!]

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