Here’s my entry to @digimondancingfever! Of course i took Eri, i really like drawing her in case it wasn’t clear…. the outfit is vaguely inspired by Rise’s in P4D because let’s be honest, that’s who she’d be in this AU
– A lot of people come to me with questions about writing more intense, emotional scenes, so I figured I’d make a list of tips for those of you who would find it useful. This article isn’t as much about action-intense scenes, but some things may apply. This is mainly focused on writing intense scenes that invoke a lot of emotion from your readers, so I hope it helps. Happy writing!
Emotional scenes are usually the more intense ones in a story, but this can be a very slippery slope to tread on, because a lot of writers can go overboard on the actual emotion. Overloading a scene with cheesy emotion will bring your reader out of it or corner them. Your reader’s reactions shouldn’t be limited by the pressure to cry when your character does. Your reader should feel the intended emotion because they feel they’re inside of it, mostly due to subtext and surrounding details, not because of pressure from the events to feel what the character is feeling.
You Don’t Have To Be Unrealistic To Invoke Emotion
Your characters don’t need to display inconsistent traits or do things that will shock your reader purely out of “I can’t believe so-and-so would do that”. You also don’t need to have a groundbreaking event in your scene for it to be intense. Sometimes the most intense scenes are the most mundane ones that are more internal reflection than anything, especially following larger events.
Focus On Tone
Tone will play more of a role in making the scene intense than the actual events will. I have a whole article on perfecting a scene here, but to put it simply, you should have a healthy mixture of body language, intentional dialogue tags, and context that build the tone of your scene.
Word Choice
Word choice is a super important aspect of what makes a scene more intense for your reader. There are powerful words you can use to bring forth certain universal associations and reactions from your reader. For instance, instead of saying “cut, broken, sad”, you could put it as “sliced, shattered, miserable”. I am not saying you should use a thesaurus for this. That will take it to the level of being unnatural and forced. Just use upgraded versions of simple words you might use to describe how someone feels or whatever is going on.
Empathy
Your readers probably haven’t been through the same thing as your character, but most humans have felt the same form of emotions in different dosages and different contexts. This is the recipe for relation that makes scenes more hard-hitting for your reader. If your character lost a family member in a car accident, describe their emotions in a way that most people can connect to. Maybe not everyone has been through that same experience, but most people can relate to the aspect of loss and tragedy.
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Stalin was an incredibly devoted father; Saddam Hussein was
fantastically charming; Hitler was a streetfighters who risked his
personal safety in the fray; and a surprising number of dictators,
monsters and autocrats have careers in the arts, and are described by
their childhood friends are not exceptionally cruel or sociopathic.
Robert Evans’ list of the ways that real “horrible dictators” defy our
caricature of torturing autocrats as obvious, vicious monsters is an
important reminder that dictators do not merely rule by force and
terror: they inspire large numbers of people to deep personal loyalty by
charming them, by fighting alongside of them, by public demonstrations
of human loyalty and affection.
It’s a challenge to the idea that in a dictatorship, you have a
psychopath at the top, a mix of psychopaths and desperate people with no
choice around the dictator with guns and tanks, and everyone else,
ground underfoot. Instead, it’s more like the dictator at the top, inner
circles with high numbers of people who have convinced themselves,
based on profound personal experience, that he is a “good man” and a
“brilliant man,” and then, in the wider population, a mix of people who
hate and fear the dictator and people who love him.
i’m out of polite, out of gentle, out of understanding. i’ve signed each petition, walked in protest, went to marches. i called every representative, emailed, boycotted. i have volunteered every time i could squeeze it in, donated, got the word out, bent my head to pray about it.
i am not polite. i’m fucking desperate. we have done polite and look at how they responded. we all throw up our hands and say “how are we going to get out of this mess!” and i’m promised if i’m polite and wait until we can vote again we’ll surely see a turnaround. just keep your hands to yourself and wait it out. i’m lucky because my life isn’t on the line if i wait four months. i can afford to wait four months.
there are people out there. there are children out there. who can’t afford to wait four months. and we can all act like we’re shocked and scared and not my america but the truth is there’s nothing on this green earth i can do about it. i don’t have the individual power to stop it. i donate my last few dollars and skip lunch for it and bow my head to pray about it and email and call and raise awareness and we’re all watching, watching, complicit because we’re bystanders in this; watching, watching, horrified but unable to stop it.
i’m out of polite. there are children laying on mats on concrete floors and calling that home and you’re worried because when i said “if you think toddler detention centers are legitimate you can burn in hell” it comes off as unfriendly. i didn’t realize that this migrant crisis was about your feelings. also, you can burn in hell. the rest of us are burning ourselves up, because we’re calling, and we’re emailing, and volunteering and god. god. are you listening? because at this point, white-knuckled, on-our-knees, we’re praying.
Because the universe apparently hates me, Garrus is at the emergency
animal hospital again. He was acting perfectly normal yesterday, but I
woke up around 3am or so to find him showing the same symptoms that he
had last time. Due to the risk to his kidneys when a blockage is
occurring, they had me bring him in ASAP.
He’s going to be there
for the next 48 hours or so, if everything goes as planned. They want to
keep the catheter in for 36 hours if possible, and then they’ll observe
him for at least another 12 hours to make certain the blockage isn’t
going to reoccur. They’re going to give him prescription food to switch
to after he gets home, to see if that will prevent this from happening
again.
The biggest issue is the cost. This is going to push his
vet bill up to $5000, including his last visit and this one, and I very
much don’t have that kind of money to spare. If anyone can help, even if
it’s just sharing this post and helping spread the word, I’d greatly
appreciate it.
I currently have a YouCaring page set up, but if you prefer using PayPal then I have a PayPal.me page you can use. Thank you!
Well, Garrus is home and has been for the last few hours. So far, so good. He’s not quite back to his usual levels of being him, but he’s definitely much better than he was a few days ago when I rushed him to the vet at 3am.
He has several medications that he’s going to be on for awhile, plus they’re switching him to prescription food which will be making a fair dent in my checking account. As will the fact that he’s going to have monthly check-ups for awhile to make sure the prescription food is doing its job. The hope is that they’ll prevent him from developing another blockage, though, so fingers crossed that they work.
Thank you so much to everyone who’s donated and/or helped share this post or its companion over on Twitter. I definitely have a long way to go, but all of you have helped a great deal.
❤
don’t base your personality on memes please don’t please for me develop actual interests even if it’s just something like pressing flowers or reading books please get a hobby that doesn’t have to do with memes please for humanities sake please i promise your life will immediately feel more whole and lively once you stop caring so much about memes and the internet yeehaw
Hey while we’re at it, maybe don’t base your personalities entirely off fandoms, either. Enjoy the company of people who don’t ingest the same media you do. Learn to talk about other things and appreciate people for being fun, polite, enthusiastic, generous, etc. Please, please, please learn to think of yourself and others in terms of qualities instead of strictly interests.
How dare Mashima use similar character designs in his new manga…it’s not like a lot of other mangaka’s do the exact same thing. But that’s fine because it’s not Mashima. 🤔🤔🤔
Hello! My name is Nina Lei, and I am currently a doctoral student in the Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program at Teachers College, Columbia University. I am a member of the Stigma, Identity, and Intersectionality Research Lab team. The goal of our lab is to investigate and promote the health and overall well-being of diverse populations.
We are currently conducting a study explores the experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans’ experiences of discrimination and their mental health (IRB Protocol #18-375). I am contacting you to ask that you please share the flyer and hyperlink for this study with the followers of writingwithcolor. The study can be reached directly by using the following link: https://goo.gl/kwNiN6
Your help would be greatly appreciated!
If you have any questions regarding this study, please feel free to reach out to me at nl2349@tc.columbia.edu. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Have a wonderful day!
Used to be the place where I preview my fanfiction but it's now mostly Mons, Kaiju, magical girls, and merchandise driven shows whose toys I haven't the slightest desire to buy. Oh, and also social justice stuff. I try to tag the potentially triggering stuff as best as I could.
I'm also in charge of http://ask-anguirus.tumblr.com/
