#writingadvice — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #writingadvice, aggregated by home.social.
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How To Identify And Fix All The Places Where Telling - Or Exposition - Rears Up In Your Writing #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/194887234X
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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No problem on marketing. I've got several books about that.
How to Promote Your Book to Create More Sales
#amwriting #writingcommunity #indieauthors #writer #writingadvice www.amazon.com/Minutes-Prom... -
No problem on marketing. I've got several books about that.
How to Promote Your Book to Create More Sales
#amwriting #writingcommunity #indieauthors #writer #writingadvice www.amazon.com/Minutes-Prom... -
No problem on marketing. I've got several books about that.
How to Promote Your Book to Create More Sales
#amwriting #writingcommunity #indieauthors #writer #writingadvice www.amazon.com/Minutes-Prom... -
No problem on marketing. I've got several books about that.
How to Promote Your Book to Create More Sales
#amwriting #writingcommunity #indieauthors #writer #writingadvice www.amazon.com/Minutes-Prom... -
Short, skillful exercises that allow you to build a novel #amwriting #writingcommunity #writingadvice #writer #inventingreality www.amazon.com/Minutes-Your-B...
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Why You Should Try Writing by Hand
#WritingCommunity #WriterCommunity #Writer #Longhand #Writingtips #WritingAdvice
http://georgelthomas.com/2026/09/08/why-you-should-try-writing-by-hand/
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Why You Should Try Writing by Hand
#WritingCommunity #WriterCommunity #Writer #Longhand #Writingtips #WritingAdvice
http://georgelthomas.com/2026/09/08/why-you-should-try-writing-by-hand/
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Why You Should Try Writing by Hand
#WritingCommunity #WriterCommunity #Writer #Longhand #Writingtips #WritingAdvice
http://georgelthomas.com/2026/09/08/why-you-should-try-writing-by-hand/
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Why You Should Try Writing by Hand
Hi everyone, I hope you’re all well. Today I’m exploring the benefits of using that olden-day writing tool, the human hand.
So, without further preamble, let’s jump in.
Why You Should Try Writing by Hand
If you’ve ever sat in front of a blank screen with the cursor blinking at you, you’ll know how easy it is to get stuck. You write a sentence and instantly delete it. You click open a tab to look something up. An hour later, the page is still blank because you literally have the entire world at your fingertips.
Writing by hand can help. Here’s how:
You Stop Editing Yourself to Death
When you type, deleting is easy. Too easy. You can rewrite a sentence five times before you’ve finished the paragraph. That means you’re trying to draft and edit at the same time, and the two jobs pull against each other.When you write longhand, crossing out your work is irritating once you’ve got going, so you tend not to. You merely finish the sentence and move on. Later, when you type it up, you’ll naturally tidy it. That’s your first real edit — and it’s better than doing it as you draft, because by then you’ve got some distance from what you wrote.
You Slow Down (and that’s good)
You can type as fast as you can think, but you can’t write that fast by hand. That sounds like a disadvantage, but it’s really not.Slower writing gives you a moment to pick a better word. Instead of grabbing the first one that pops into your head, you’ve got time to think: is this what I actually mean? That’s where good prose comes from.
You’re More Creative
And, as well as helping you be mindful of your word choices, writing longhand also helps you to be more creative. The slower-paced nature of writing by hand allows your brain to explore ideas and develop new concepts. There’s real science behind it.You Can’t Get Distracted by the Internet
A laptop is a writing tool. But it is also email, social media and every Wikipedia rabbit hole you’ve ever fallen down. A notebook is merely a notebook.This sounds obvious, but it might be the biggest reason writing by hand works. You sit down, you open the notebook, and there’s nothing else to do. So you write.
You Remember What You’ve Written
There’s research showing that people remember things better when they’re written by hand, which matters for a long project. If you can hold the threads of your story in your head, you stop repeating yourself, and you start spotting connections you’d otherwise miss.You Build Something You Can Hold
A notebook fills up. You can flip through and see what you’ve done. Writing on a screen isn’t tangible unless, of course, you print it out—but then it loses a bit of personal physicality. Your notebook is full of your unique handwriting. A typed document looks formal and repetitive.On the days when writing feels impossible, looking at a stack of filled notebooks can be a nice little reminder that you’ve done this before, so you can do it again.
Now, it’s important to remember that while writing by hand can help with the distractions of modern life, it isn’t for every situation. It’s slower in raw word count. Typing it up afterwards takes time. And if you write a lot, your hand will ache until you build up some stamina.
Most writers I know who write longhand use it only for first drafts, then all their editing happens on the screen. I think that’s the sweet spot.
Give it a try.
You don’t need a fancy, perfect pen or a beautiful new notebook (but there is something joyful about shopping for stationery, am I right?… .no? just me then). Pick something you don’t mind carrying around and take it with you wherever you go. Whenever you have ten minutes- on the bus or before bed- write a few lines.
Try it for a week. That’s probably enough time to know whether or not it’s for you.
As ever, thank you for stopping by!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
#longhand #Technology #Writer #writing #writingAdvice #WritingTips -
Mastering Character Inner Life
Explore guidelines and principles for letting readers know the inner workings of your characters’ lives, plus more from Writer's Digest!
The post Mastering Character Inner Life appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/mastering-character-inner-life#Resources #buildingcharacter #writingadvice #writingcharacters #WritingConference
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Addicted To Books About Writing? Me Too
Once upon a time there was a writer… Continue reading on The Writing Cooperative »
https://writingcooperative.com/addicted-to-books-about-writing-me-too-769ceafb7b2#writingtips #booksaboutwriting #guiltypleasure #procrastination #writingadvice
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I have a website!
I don't talk about it much on Mastodon, since this account is more so for my art stuff, but I've been making content talking about how to write and draw better disability representation (e.g. how to design better disabled characters, how to write settings that are inclusive/accessible, talking about disability tropes, etc) over on Tumblr for a while but I decided to make a more formal website for the stuff I was writing too. I'm also planning to post my youtube videos and their transcripts there once I get back into making videos again.If any of that sounds interesting, feel free to take a look.
https://cycyborg.wixsite.com/writing-with-cy
#disability #disabled #queerAndDisabled #representation #disabilityRepresentation #writing #writingAdvice #artAdvice
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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
