Stunning Abandoned Homes Are Surprisingly Full Of Life
“Abandoned homes are the kind of thing you typically only happen upon when your GPS leads you astray. Unless, that is, you’re author Ransom Riggs, who’s on a mission to find them.
“writers always know exactly where they are going with their work!”
r u sure
“no writer does anything by mistake, it’s all very strategic”
r u sure
“they use symbolism in everything. for example, a simple sentence symbolises directness and-”
R U SURE
The best moments in writing is when you discover you did something absolutely genius by complete accident.
A miscellaneous world-building detail from ten chapters earlier accidentally saved a character’s life once
“Omg this line is genius and the best reference!” “Thank you I did that entirely on purpose!!” *sweats*
READER: “(points out symbolism and foreshadowing and depth)”
AUTHOR:
I once literally flipped a coin to decide which character was going to die in a multi-award-nominated novel.
I was once rereading a manuscript before editing it and discovered that in an early chapter I’d put in a line without any forethought that ended up aligning perfectly the plot and is now my favorite line in the entire book even though when I wrote that sentence I hadn’t even come up with that plot point yet.
In my book series, I have done various things on accident and then, looking back, yelled BRILLIANT and went with it. And, often times, my characters just DECIDE things, like one character was in love with another and I was “WHAT?” but went with it because it was actually a VERY good story and made some of the plot stuff that much more interesting.
If you ever wanted to know my creative process for writing, congratulations, this is it.
Writing a story like
There’s an author’s note in an Isaac Asimov short story collection – Isaac Asimov, mind you – and I can’t for the life of me remember which it was because my mom has a billion of them, but basically he went to a lecture on his books where the teaccher was lecturing on all the symbolism and themes and such and Asimovewent up to him and was just like “Uhhhh…. I didn’t put any of that in? It just…. no? Not really?”
And the lecturer legit looked ISAAC FUCKING ASIMOV straight in the eye and said, “What do you know, sir? You’re just the author.”
And Asimov described it as being a fairly profound moment in his career.
I love ideas, and story tropes, and headcanons. But what I really love is the fanworks that explore these things. The idea, the trope, the headcanon…those alone don’t give the work value, for me. What I love is your unique perspective.
I would never tell the story the way you would. We all have completely different lives and experiences and values. You’ll think of things I’d never think of, and beyond that, you have skills I don’t have. Your craft has developed differently. The way you structure your story or render your art…it’s unique to you. No one else can do it your way.
I love seeing creators leverage their individual skills, the culmination of their lives up to the point of creation, to bring forth a wholly unique work.
It doesn’t matter to me if there are 500 bedsharing fics. I’ll read yours because it’s yours. It doesn’t matter if a thousand people have drawn a bridal carry. Yours will delight me because it will show me you.
You don’t need to have a completely unique idea. That’s impossible. What you need to do is put the effort into developing it and creating a finished work. That work will be yours, a work only you could have made, regardless of the original idea.
“There’s already a fic about…” Doesn’t matter. There isn’t already your fic about it.
Show me your art. Show me your craft. Create something.
One day I wanna be rich enough that I can just like. Give away hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in like scholarships or grants or whatever. That when I see someone make a post like “hey can I get $50 for groceries” I can just donate $1000. Or tip my server their rent money. Like that’s the dream
I-want-my-IWTV 