okay reblogging this again just to say that i love love love reading these,, like it’s so incredible how we’re all doing such vastly different things at the same time…ik it’s an obvious thing but it’s also insane to think about.
I hate the trope of “I refuse to hit women!! [Gets decked]” cause it’s boring but I do like the trope of someone in an RPG going “hey I don’t wanna hit a kid that’s kinda fucked up” and the kid just obliterates them
“i refuse to hit a woman!” = Sexist, overdone, does nothing to actually empower the woman or make the guy seem nice
“I refuse to hit a kid” = valid, even funnier when the kid whips absolutely ass in one go
The ONLY exception to this is Mob Psycho where it’s a kid vs woman fight, in which the kid doesn’t want to hit a woman because he has been told that only scumbags hit women. And then the lady pauses the fight to explain this is a different situation and he’s not bad for defending himself.
you heard of “hating female characters for traits people would find interesting and morally grey in male characters”, now get ready for “calling female characters annoying for traits they would consider interesting or quirky in a male character” and its twin sibling “accusing a female character of ‘holding grudges’ and 'being selfish/unforgiving’ over something that people would consider 'traumatised’ and 'still feeling hurt’ in a male character”
my writing fundamentally changed forever ten years ago when i realized you could use sentence structure to control people’s heart rates. is this still forbidden knowledge or does everyone know it now
?????? *raises hand* I’ve been writing for years and don’t know this trick by these words! do tell?
Okay, so a few people have asked for me to cite the dark magics at them, and i’m super happy to share because it’s my favorite thing ever.
so, let’s see if i can explain this the same way that i learned. read a sentence out loud. you come to a full stop when you hit the period, and you take a normal, breath. but, when you hit a comma, you take a slightly longer pause. and when you hit a dash - you take an even longer pause.
this is a natural rhythm that we pick up when we’re first taught to read; we do it without even thinking. but when you start to think about it, you realize that it can become a tool.
think of your heartbeat. a period is badump. a comma is badump-dump. and a dash is thump badump. one breath. a longer breath. two breaths.
that means what you read automatically affects the rhythm of your breathing and your heartrate. which means that you can control the amount of physical tension your reader feels… by altering your punction and your sentence structure.
for fast paced scenes, you use short sentences. a lot of hard stops. mostly periods, with just a few comma’s thrown in for the full breath. your reader’s heartrate accelerates. their breathing is slightly and unintentionally, on their end, quicker. you hit the dramatic ending of the scene - and your reader’s body phsyically feels the gasp, the breath of fresh air, of these longer sentences.
now, read that paragraph again ant take note of your natural pauses, and how it subtly affects your breathing.
the same thing can be said of comma’s and dashes. while they can be used as a breath of fresh air, they can also cause a new line of tension as they lead your reader to hold their breath. during this section, you should use longer sentences; breaking up the harshness of the pauses by using variations of punction. read this paragraph out loud from the start and take note of how long you go between pauses and full breaths.
and then, comes the biggest trick.
the hard stop.
the paragraph.
because while the periods, commas, and dashes are variations on a short stop, the paragraph is a hard stop. you take a full breath. you pause for a moment, then move to the start of the next paragraph.
which means you can create an entirely new sort of dramatic tension. read the sentences that are in bold. see how you take a naturally longer pause at the end of each paragraph?
see how it makes you feel?
how it makes you breath different?
how doing it once, twice, or three times creates a different line of tension?
this little magic trick can be used to cause a reader’s heartrate to speed up during a fight or chase scene. it can be used to cause their breathing to slow down during moments of dramatic tension, sorrow, or softness. and it can be used to create hard breaks that add a new level of physically felt emphasis to your written work.
i hope these examples make sense! it’s my favorite writing trick!
wore my thigh high boots on a walk today and we had to take a path through some long grass and while everyone else was rolling their pants into their socks and putting on jackets to protect themselves from ticks i was standing there smug as hell in my thigh high leather boots.
sanguine cowboy hours
