Brúarfoss waterfall, Iceland
fashionably late? more like anxiously early
I will get to class 20 mins early and still be anxious
Because no one else is there yet & is this the right place?? are you here the wrong day??
Your DA love interest probably never brushed their teeth in their life.
Let that sink in.
Oh my god
I can’t believe it
All that obsessive research into medieval dental hygiene actually paid off
I was spending all this time thinking “Literally no one cares about Thedosian dental hygiene, Amy, why are you wasting your time on this” but HERE IT IS
So yeah, this isn’t actually true! While the toothbrush itself is a fairly modern invention, there’s a well recorded history of people in medieval Europe using a combination of various sweet-smelling mouth rinses and scrubbing their teeth clean with a cloth and a mild abrasive herb paste of some sort. Some common rinses included mint and wine or mint and vinegar, and pastes included things like marjoram and mint, rosemary and charcoal, and vinegar, pickling alum, white salt and honey.
So rest assured, your DA makeouts are probably reasonably minty fresh!
Also in N. Africa we use swak.(dried tree bark its actually proven to be more effective than toothpaste) I feel like some cultures in dragon age considered how they’re coded culturally
(Ripped from the wiki page other places tht use it ’ It is commonly used in the Arabian peninsula, the Horn of Africa, North Africa, parts of the Sahel, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, miswak is known as Kayu Sugi (Malay for ‘chewing stick’).)
#im just focusing on europe is so 😪😪😪╮(─▽─)╭#dental health#im the qunari totally use swak and mb tevinter does? yah#*imo#da meta#da
Excellent addition! I had never heard of this - thank you! I mostly focused on Europe because we spend most of our time in the Europe-coded areas but we definitely have LI’s from scattered areas of Thedas, and there’s definitely gotta be some swak usage in there. There definitely seems to be a good chunk of northern Tevinter that corresponds to the Indian subcontinent, if not also large areas of Southeast Asia, so I’d say Tevinter using swak is a pretty safe bet.
Probably also Rivain. Just saying.
Create a Plot in 3 Easy Questions
1) My story is about ___________.
This should be one word. It can be abstract or concrete: hope, revenge, magic, space, cats, computers, time, dinosaurs, cheese…pick a word. If you have no idea, use this website to generate some random nouns. Generate 10 and pick 1.
2) My character/s embody or interact with this by ____________.
If you chose something like hope, anger, regret, then explain how at least once character embodies this (My character embodies revenge because his dad was killed when he was two years old). If it’s something concrete like dinosaurs, explain how your character interacts with dinosaurs (it could be that you character is a dinosaur). This should be one sentence.
3) This matters because _____________.
If your character embodies revenge, why does it matter? How will her wanting revenge affect other people? Will she hurt or betray someone to get it? Will she push her friends and family away? Will she attempt to take down the government? Will she lose herself?
If your character is best friends with a dinosaur, why does it matter? How will his dinosaur affect other people? Are scientists trying to capture the dinosaur? Does the dinosaur have uncontrollable bouts of violence? Was the dinosaur brought through a time machine that needs to be repaired? Does your character need the dinosaur to learn something meaningful about himself? This should be at least one paragraph.
If you get this far and have a great idea for a story, keep going. If you hit a dead end, go back to step 1 and start over with a new word.
On Editing
This was forwarded to me by a former colleague who attended a course on how to publish/edit a book. You probably already know most of these tips, but there might be something you’ll find helpful, who knows…
QUESTIONS TO ASK DURING FIRST PHASE OF EDITING
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK (what the story is and how it is being told):
- What is the book about? What is the driving force behind the narrative?
- Who is the audience for this book?
- Is it based on real experience?
- Does the story work? Are there any parts that feel unconvincing or where the narrative drags?
- Are there any parts I don’t understand?
- What is the trajectory or the shape of the story?
- Does the story start in the right place?
- How quickly do I become immersed in the book?
- Are there any points where my immersion in the story is broken, or I lose interest?
- Do I believe in what I’m reading?
- How satisfying is the ending? Does it feel inevitable?
- Does it feel like anything is missing?
- Is there anything extraneous (characters, detail, unnecessary plot points)?
- What is the narrative point of view (first person, second person, third person)? Does it change? Is it consistent? Does it work? What might be lost or gained if the story were told another way?
- Is the tense consistent? If it changes, is it necessary?
- Does coincidence feature as a plot device? If so, is there another way to engineer the same events?
The Revengers in Thor: Ragnarok 4D
That totally unnecessary roll thing. I can’t get over it.
Ridiculous child.
Three years already since he left us, orphans in spirit to wander this absurdly spherical world. “The night is always old. He’d walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep.”
Open With A Punch
It takes about three paragraphs to decide whether or not I’m going to buy that novel I just mindlessly picked up in the book store. Sometimes I’ll read the entire first chapter if I’m still on the fence, but those are rare occasions. Nine times out of ten, I’ve made my decision by the end of that third paragraph.
That means the writer has three paragraphs to present an interesting premise, a strong voice, and a character I’m willing to spend 200+ pages with. And maybe that sounds like an impossible standard to meet, but I’ve bought more books than I can fit in my house.
Three paragraphs is more than enough space. Hell–I’d say I’m even being pretty generous by reading that much. I’ve met pickier readers who only went by the first paragraph. There was a particularly tough event my old writers group offered where we’d critique and rank our interest level based completely on the first sentences of each others stories (which was ridiculous in hindsight, because it actually is pretty impossible to get a solid impression from just one sentence).
Point is, you have a very limited window to grab a readers attention, so a strong opening is indispensable.
In my old writers group, we learned a little checklist for things our opening paragraph(s) should contain and accomplish. I don’t have the damn thing memorized anymore, but it went a little something like this:
- Introduce your protagonist, preferably by name
- Introduce immediate conflict and foreshadow larger conflict
- Introduce your setting
- Don’t open with a dream
- Actually. Just don’t open with your character waking up at all
- Also. No flashbacks.
- And don’t open with dialogue
- AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE DON’T TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER THAT’S SO BORING OMFG
The list I learned was a lot longer than that, but that’s the gist of it. Aaand now you can go ahead and forget you read any of that, because I personally think it’s stupid to put any sort of limitations on a person’s creativity. You wanna start with dialogue or a full weather report? Go ahead.
The novel I’m writing now begins with a flashback to an out-of-narrative monologue, then jumps into the main character’s point of view on the second page. My main character goes nameless through the majority of the novel.
Basically, I’m breaking all the rules I put so much merit in back in the day. But I’m still super confident in my opening. Why? Because I open with a punch.
So. How exactly do you open with a punch?
Voice. A strong, interesting voice catches me every time. Take a look at some of your favorite books and pick out what makes the voices unique.
Disorient me. Most of my favorites left me completely bewildered after those first three paragraphs. I’m confused. I have questions and no idea what the answers could be. I’ll probably start reading in the parking lot.
Action over explanation. Back story can almost always wait until after you have your reader on the line. It’s best to give them something to sink their teeth into before you go unloading all the lore of your world. I’ll be much more interested in (and less likely to skim) the back story if I’m already invested.
Seriously. Action. It’s important. Like I said, you can start your story however you want, but boring content will always be boring content. You wanna open your novel by talking about the weather? That’s fine. But it’s only interesting to read about if it’s something out of the ordinary. The blizzard of the century. A damn meteor shower. Something I can’t just walk outside and look at.
Give me an existential crisis. This one might be specific to me, but I have quite a few favorites that, instead of starting with action, use their openings to scare the shit out of me with some horrifying theory or observation.
Of course, these are just a few ways you can punch your reader with your opening. Play around, experiment, and write your own hooks.
Happy writing, lovelies
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