important note
pretty much all of the text here (and on anything in the snippets folder) is not mine. i either took notes based on what i gathered from them or copy-pasted them verbatim from a thread or article.
stuff i was able to find is sourced below the quote they are attached to.
audience for original art
“nsfw and fanart is the only way to make it as an artist” do you follow literally any concept artist, any dnd-centric artist, or have you only followed fanartists and nsfw artists, see the numbers they worked hard for, and hold yourself to unattainable standard?
nearly every piece of work that crosses my timeline that has over 10K likes is an original illustration. draw what you love, draw often, draw what makes you happy, say something with your work, grow your craft, and you will grow. maybe not numbers at first, but (you) will grow.
“fanart to stay relevant” conversations apply to people who are already in the fanart / convention circuit. you don’t (have) to do that if you are an oc-centric artist. tend to your garden and don’t worry about what seeds others plant in theirs. just keep watering, my dudes.
maybe self-publishing is the way
until you give up on institutional validation, you will never be free
tropes as fun + useful
people end up struggling more with their writing because they cut out all the stuff they find fun in an attempt to not be “tropey” and like. idk. i think you shouldnt be so quick to remove a useful tool you might enjoy.
character-driven
people’s investment in your characters > everything else about the story
– (from a video of alex hirsch at a con)
resonant/coherent
– visakanv
framed stories
“writing framed stories not only answered all those troubling questions about the narrator’s audience, but also neatly integrated the answers into the narrative itself. i knew not only who was speaking, but who was being spoken to.”
- TL;DR get the voice of your writing right by choosing an audience
filtering
when I write as if I am broadcasting, the people I attract are a lot less interesting to me
- you want to bore those who find your thoughts boring, it is a filter
- when you make a effort to select and get rejected that’s a win — you successfully filtered out who you wanted to filter out
- everything you do in dating has a selection effect, it filters out some partners and encourages others
- every behavior rule you have is also a selection rule
- if you’re not letting conscious preferences guide you, you may be very surprised about who you’re actually selecting for
– not from here, but similar, and i think by the same writer
“I deliberately made it tedious and inaccessible - anti-clickbait. Not so much to deter other people but to deter myself from pandering to other people”
– visa, in a twitter thread i cannot find
pick someone to write for
Don’t dumb down: Always write for your top five percent of readers.
Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
finishing
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
on writing abhorrent characters
I think there is no more comforting feeling than the notion your loved ones would still care for you, even at your very worst, that if a monster is worthy of love, then of course so are you.
– null
make a small thing!
“Take your 1000 page epic, your feature film, your thing that is going to take years to make and years of upskilling and make it the smallest thing you possibly can. A 12 page black and white minicomic, a short story, a poem. You can still do the big thing later.”
just do something small in the interim because it helps figure stuff out and get the satisfaction that comes from finishing something. it’s also a great proof of concept.
– i forgor