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#writingadvice — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #writingadvice, aggregated by home.social.

  1. It was either sit down and write something, or wander around tripping over ten thousand shoppers.

    Check out my weekday daily #blog & read more in one of my latest posts: Keyboard Less

    #Blog #WritingAdvice #Opportunity #FittingInCreativity

    8clicks.8r4d.com/2026/08/keybo

  2. It was either sit down and write something, or wander around tripping over ten thousand shoppers.

    Check out my weekday daily #blog & read more in one of my latest posts: Keyboard Less

    #Blog #WritingAdvice #Opportunity #FittingInCreativity

    8clicks.8r4d.com/2026/08/keybo

  3. It was either sit down and write something, or wander around tripping over ten thousand shoppers.

    Check out my weekday daily #blog & read more in one of my latest posts: Keyboard Less

    #Blog #WritingAdvice #Opportunity #FittingInCreativity

    8clicks.8r4d.com/2026/08/keybo

  4. It was either sit down and write something, or wander around tripping over ten thousand shoppers.

    Check out my weekday daily #blog & read more in one of my latest posts: Keyboard Less

    #Blog #WritingAdvice #Opportunity #FittingInCreativity

    8clicks.8r4d.com/2026/08/keybo

  5. Why AI Detectors Misidentify Neurodivergent Voices

    Neurodivergent writing often gets flagged as AI-generated due to AI detectors' reliance on patterns and norms, overlooking authentic voices. This bias results in neurodivergent writers feeling invalidated, as their unique styles contrast starkly with typical writing. The article emphasizes advocating for better tools and supporting diverse voices to address this issue.

    dreamspacestudio.net/why-ai-de

  6. #WritersCoffeeClub Ch 16 Nbr 13 — What’s your favourite trope? Do you lean into it for your work or shy away?

    I've little interest in tropes, which I see as cliched bits of plot found frequently enough that a critic (read: not an author) decided could be well summarized in a few words. In my opinion, every plot has been written before, as has every character archetype.

    As authors, we should feel no shame, no angst, no fear borrowing ideas wherever we find them. We need combine our discovered treasures with whatever message and character moves us, and write. The self-harm of measuring against tropes, other authors, or critics needs be discarded for what it is: procrastination and insecurity. It stifles us from writing, it prevents us from realizing our characters' dreams when that's what we truly desire.

    [Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

    #BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

    #gender #fiction #writer #author
    #WritingAdvice
    #writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
    #RSdiscussion #Trope #Tropes

  7. He's some #writingadvice: Writing a fight scene (and to a certain degree a sex scene) is not about describing the movement of limbs, jaws, and bodies. You are not writing choreography. You are writing about people who are attempting to do something with other people who have a totally different idea of the outcome they want.

    First and foremost, describe what your POV sees, feels, hears, and if applicable tastes and smells. Blood has a distinctive ferric taste and smell, and no one appreciates the range of scent perceived having their nose mashed into a sweaty chest.

    Remember there's propriosception. Humans or beasts move through space, making or missing contact, sweeping limbs, snapping nasal cartilage. Keep in mind the physics of launching oneself or limbs through space. Vectors. Momentum. Expected or unexpected trajectory changes.

    Impacts on armor and flesh sound totally different. So does the whistle of sweeping swords, the hiss of javelins in the air, arrows springing from bows, or the metallic click of gun misfiring. If you plan to use armor or weapons, play with objects and fling them around for yourself, bashing and banging with abandon. Make your reader be there.

    Contrary to Hollywood, a good hit can be fatal or knock an opponent down. Prizefighters make contact and defend well. Regular folk miss a lot, stumble, bounce off when they make glancing blows (which is most of the time), and have lots of trouble managing momentum. Defense often means taking damage like cracked bones, cut skin, or bruises; nothing is clean.

    Damage always hurts, and different people have wildly different pain thresholds that have no relationship to gender. Expect screaming and crying, grunts and hysterical laughing. Or silence, painful and ominous. The bruises and bashes, along with torn clothing, will persist into subsequent scenes. A little blood goes a long way, and it doesn't take much to make it look like a horror scene. Worse, it is hard to clean on the spot, and really hard to hide. After just a few minutes, damage interferes with movement, the bounce in one's step, and makes further fighting more difficult and more dangerous.

    On the highest level, there's the aspect of what the character thinks they are doing, admits that happened, and how they justify their choices of strategy or running/not running. Most people don't fight and don't want to; that's why it is what fascinates readers most: The why and the how? Is it fun? Or is the fighter deluding themself? What does the fighter fear: loss, the opponent, or weakness? Do they deride the other, making fun, or do they have a running horror movie playing in their head as they rocket toward dismemberment? Everyone has an opinion, and being able to effectively fight requires judgements that the reader should hear, will want to hear. Make them snarky or zen; just don't make them ordinary.

    Describe judgements and opinions, feelings, more than any "move"—and certainly never name a move! Naming a move is like calling a milkshake a dessert, or worse, food—instead of a reward earmed as a child specifically for knocking down the quarterback to win the football game. Sticking with the sports theme, a good fight scene is what happened, the history it evokes, and the prize (cup or ring) that inspired the announcer go on and on about.

    Physical description has a place, but eluding and implying by giving meaning is the key to greatness—for the fight scene or the sex scene. In both cases, it is animal. Aim for the book of poetry, primal or sublime, not the book of anatomy.

    (Boost if you like to share it with others.)

    #writing #fightscene #writinglife #character #battle #adventure #sf #scifi #mystery #action #fantasy