Dreams

Alright, guys, it's J here. I would like to discuss dreams. No, I'm not talking about the cliche "Hopes and dreams." I'm talking about literal dreams. The weird movies you watch when you go to sleep. You know what I mean, right? Yes, you're a smart person. Brownie points all around.

Anyway. Dreams are widely known for being weird. Many people went crazy over Inception because it "portrayed dreams accurately." Well, I protest this. If Inception actually portrayed dreams accurately: DiCaprio would have morphed between an elephant and a monkey several times while his dead wife wouldn't actually kill anyone, she would just almost kill everybody but then just start laughing at the last second and disappear. Don't forget Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be fighting the entire movie screaming "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH BATMAN!" and even this wouldn't be an accurate portrayal of dreams. Dreams are weird people.

Now, I must assure you, I'm not here just to rip on dreams and Inception (a movie I actually really like). I am here to talk about how helpful dreams actually can be to a writer. They are so full of odd ideas that one of  them might actually be good. If you've been stuck on what to do for your next scene/book sometimes sleeping is really the best option. Even if you never use any of your dreams in your actual work, paying attention to them at least gets you creatively thinking again.

I've found a lot of inspiration from my dreams, even though I don't think I've ever actually used my dreams in my stories directly, I still ponder my dreams that get the creative juices flowing.

So, yeah. Listen to your dreams. Literally. There's a lot of good stuff that you can replay in your mind and then do what you want with it.

That's all I've got today, guys. Be sure to follow us! The more followers we have, the more likely we are to post fun stuffs.

Be sure to laugh often.
 

Worlds

Hey. It's A.

I've always wanted to be able to speak another language. I think that'd be interesting and educational, and you'd have all these new words to use! Learning a new language is like discovering a new world. (I didn't know that I've been speaking another language this entire time; snobbish, was it?)

I've also always wanted to travel.

Iceland

Italy

France

China

Germany

Who doesn't want to travel?

The point is...there is so much to discover in the world. There is so much different from what you know. There is so much to learn. To hear. To see. To taste. To feel.

Don't forget this when writing your story. Just because it's fantasy doesn't mean there is no humidity. Just because it's historical fiction doesn't mean the buildings aren't rough. Just because it's sci-fi, or romance, or whatever the heck other genre doesn't mean your world isn't a concrete one.

It should feel real. Make it feel real. Pick a real place and describe it, go beyond the obvious, dig deep and really tell what's true.

Firework by Katy Perry is stuck in my head now, thanks for asking.

The tales of fairies

J here.

Before we get started, I'd like to straighten out a couple of things that I feel you have been misled about. Obviously, I do write blog posts and also: I can read cursive. I just don't speak Snobbish.
Now that we've got that cleared up, on to the good stuff.

Fairy tales. We've all heard them. For some of us it’s a major part of our childhood; there are some who think they are silly; some simply don’t care; and then there’s me. I look at fairy tales and see the options: what if Rapunzel was actually a man? Would the long hair actually be his hair or a really unkempt beard? Perhaps Belle is only manipulating the beast to gain his great wealth? Who knows? Maybe Rumpelstiltskin eventually fell in love with the queen and had compassion so he hired a snitch to "find" out his name so she could keep her child and he supposedly dies mysteriously....

These are things that I might be posting about in the future. Short stories. Just tidbits for your enjoyment. Who knows? Maybe I’ll become famous and get a deal with Hollywood.

Stay cool y’all.

Failure

J doesn't write blog posts anymore. You should talk to him about that. Get on it. Gosh.

Today you get two things from me (A, in case you didn't figure), so don't miss him too horribly. First I'll start with some words of sort of encouragement:

You fail only if you stop writing. 

-Ray Bradbury 

This isn't to say that you fail at life if you stop writing (though gosh...wouldn't you kind of?) but rather: you fail as a writer if you stop writing. Just because your first draft is crap, your second draft is crap, your fifty-third draft is crap...that doesn't mean you've failed. Some people never finish stories; some people finish stories that no one ever reads; some people publish stories that no one ever reads.

This doesn't make you a failure because writing isn't about the pages or the word count or the poetic prose. Writing isn't about what other people can see and measure. Writing isn't even about always becoming a better writer.

It's about writing.

It's about thinking. It's about creating. It's about living, escaping, embracing, discovering, developing, learning. Writing is just about writing. Stop worrying about the rest.


The second thing you get from me (I did say there were two, didn't I? Pay attention) is a writing prompt. Even if you don't base a 150k word novel on a writing prompt, you can at least base one page on a writing prompt.

Here it is:

He tended that rosebush every single day that he was alive.

No one knows what to do with it now.

By the way, and not that you care, but I have Riptide stuck in my head (by Vance Joy). "...I gotta lump in my throat cuz your gonna sing the words wrong...." Don't know why. Get it out.

Oh. And note that it's a *black* rose. They do exists.

Wishful Thinking

A here.

J not here.

Writing prompt?

Okeeeeeeey:

Write about the accidental wish that came true.

Nobody

J never writes posts when I tell him to. He's probably thinking something like, "It's yooooour tuuuurn."

What a jerk.

Whateves, though. Let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns, yes, I know). Today's topic:

For those of you who can't read cursive (*cough* J *cough*), this translates to:
WRITE LIKE NO ONE'S READING YOUR STINKING STUFF

Okay. Something I would love is if I could inspire people to just write. Stop worrying that it isn't perfect; stop worrying that you can't write what you want because your mom's going to read it; stop worrying about the whole editing ordeal. The moment I realized that it's okay to write bad first drafts was the moment my writing excelled. Which is why I really like today's quote.

Stop writing for a crowd. Stop trying to write a bestseller that is just like all those other bestsellers. Close the door, close Facebook, *gasp!* open your manuscript...and write like there's nothing holding you back. Because honestly, the only thing holding you back is you and the "backspace" key. I think you can get on top of this.

There are no limits to where you can take your manuscript, so go where you want to go (or where the characters take you - but that's another post).


Not that you care, but now I have that song from Mulan stuck in my head. (...DID they SEND me daughTERS...when I asked....for SONS?) Wonderful.

Salt

I (A, that is) just decided. Prompts, inspiration, starting points. Pictures, sentences, a clip of a scene. I'm going to post some (when I feel like it, of course), providing you with a snippet of what could be. I'm offering you a match (the prompt) and you have to light it, you have to start the fire (the story), you have to feed it until it's blazing.

So go for it. Read the prompt sentence, then write one hundred-ish words about where takes you. Give your imagination a chance to breathe and write about the place and time where

everything tasted like salt

The humor of it all

Hey all, what’s up? It’s J here. I was just thinking about certain things that make stories compelling. You know: story, conflict, dialogue, that sort of thing. One of my favorites is humor. For me, humor is a big impact on whether or not I’ll like the book or not. I’m not saying your book has to be a comedy, I just mean that if your characters are funny, legitimately funny, they’ll be likable, guaranteed.

Now that’s kind of tricky, isn't it? There’s a big difference between movie humor and book humor. Things that could be hilarious in a movie often fall flat when read, whereas some humor that is comical in written form can just be plain lame when put on the big screen.

I try to tinker with it, see what works, what doesn't. In my experience, physical humor is not something that works. It takes too long to explain and by the time you do explain, the joke has gone on too long with little actual comedy involved. My solution? There are a couple of ways to do it. One is witty one-liners. Sarcasm is another one, especially in the case of a story written in first-person. My personal favorite, however, is arrogance. You take this and sprinkle a healthy dosage of that sarcasm on there, and you’re ordinarily un-remarkable character becomes your favorite. (Tony Stark, anybody?)

I may come up with a few finer points to say on humor in the future. No reason wasting your arsenal on the first go of it, am I right?

Take it easy, or…whatever it is you like to do.

The Idea

Hey. This is A.

An author once said, "If you wish to be a writer, write." Nerd points to whoever guesses who the author is that I'm talking about (I don't get any points because I don't remember, hence I'm not a nerd--did you even read our intros?), but the POINT is...writers write. It's that simple.

And that impossible.

I can't make this magically possible for you, seeing as I don't understand any more about writing than the next not-nerd, but what I can do is give you bits and pieces of how I make it less impossible for myself.

Step 1: the idea.

Duh. You can't write if you don't have any idea what you're writing about. No, you don't need to know everything before you start typing away (or scribbling, if you have the patience for the ol' pen and paper), but you do need to know something. You need to know different things depending on what you write (I happen to write fiction, because, as a friend told me, "Reality.Whose idea was that, anyway?"), but you will basically always need that spark of idea. You know (or do you?). That spark that starts as one idea, but then another idea catches on, and another, and another.

To write, you need ideas.

To get ideas, you need to think.

So are you thinking?