It is increasingly obvious that most people have no idea how to indicate an illness is slowly killing someone without making them cough up blood. Doesn’t matter what it is or if it has anything to do with your respiratory system, if you’re dying, you’re coughing up blood.
Writers found out about tuberculosis and were like “damn this slaps” and we’ve been stuck with it ever since
As a person the doc told had all the symptoms of something that kills people (procedural testing confirmed it was something else so that’s neat, I’ve been given steps to mitigate it so what I actually have won’t be a problem that could kill me for quite some time) I have some other options
1. MAKE THEM FALL OVER. Seriously most things that will kill people cause some bodily system to fail at some point, and having somebody be walking upright, then suddenly grasping for something to hold onto, then hitting the deck can be a far more dramatic moment than “oh no mystery illness, I’m coughing a lot, uh-oh there’s blood now.”
2. Cognitive dysfunction. One of the body’s common responses to “oh that’s no good” is to focus all of the attention on the problem, and that can make people with chronic illnesses ‘zone out’ for no reason. If you have a normally witty, innovative, or otherwise mentally present character having them sit in a chair talking and then suddenly drop out of the conversation, only coming back to it when somebody addresses them directly, and even then their eyes are perhaps unfocused, or they seem like they’re trying to say the minimum necessary to get you to move on. It can be a gut punch.
3. Lack of confidence. When something goes from routine to being something [malady] might prevent them from doing the person might suffer a loss of confidence. Maybe you have a strong character that has a stress-triggered case of syncope. They might hesitate to lift weights or work out again, fearing that sense of oncoming death that knocks when you realize your body is going to shut down on you and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
4. The opposite of loss of confidence, the acquisition of false confidence. The inability to accept there’s things they can no longer do, punished by a demonstration of the fact they cannot do it. Maybe your character is a gymnast, but tore their rotator cuff. They might instinctively go to swing around a corner by the doorframe, a typical enough gesture for most, especially those accustomed to moving quickly, but the pressure of simple inertia causes them to cry out in pain and fall, their arm and torso spasming as a sense of hurt, failure, and doubt clouds their eyes.
5. Google illnesses with similar symptoms, then go read peoples’ stories. “There’s nothing more tragic than the truth,” and whatnot. Oftentimes an author cannot even imagine the pain of having something be one’s lived experience. So go look for people who have that lived experience. Then revel in the pain you can cause your character.
hey you know that project you’ve been thinking about endlessly for an ungodly amount of time? go start it. yes, you. don’t look at me like that, just start writing. you’re talented and incredible you’ve got this!
Summarizing is an important part of skipping several events along a timeline, but you don’t need to introduce the new part of the narrative with a 10 page long info-dump on everything that happened. If nothing is omitted, then there’s no point in skipping it at all. If you’ve chosen to skip a long period of time, then cherry pick the important information for the scene you’re introducing and make it clear that time has passed. Don’t share a lot, because you don’t want to reveal too much and certainly not too soon.
Be Clear About The Timeline
Unless the aspect of not knowing where in the timeline these events are happening is a purposeful tool you’re utilizing, you need to make sure the reader is aware of how much time has passed and where they stand now within the conflict. What has changed, what has persisted, what has worsened or resolved, and how has this affected the characters?
Utilize Flashbacks
Sometimes it’s a good idea to leave the reader a bit disoriented by the shift in time, and in this case I think using flashbacks can be a creative way to turn up the suspense and give them information while also showing them the space which is occupied by what they aren’t allowed to know yet. Instead of explaining something, you could show them a part of the period you’ve skipped and let them infer its significance or glean the important information.
Take Advantage of Formatting
Referring to the flashback point a bit, let your readers know very clearly that they’ve revisited the past. An easy and pretty universal way to do so is through formatting, like creating a divider between the present and past narrative pieces, or italicizing the flashback portion of the chapter. This also makes it easier to pop tiny flashbacks in as they become relevant or imperative to the reader continuing to connect the dots.
Recognizable Triggers
When you move forward in time a considerable distance, you need to create some consistency in what triggers this decision, like a common occurrence, resolution to a smaller conflict, etc. This build up will be noted subconsciously in the reader’s mind and as soon as those things return later on, the tension will build naturally.
Transitions Within The Text
Don’t end a chapter abruptly on a cliffhanger and then skip 10 years. I mean, do what you want, but in most cases this is a bad idea. The pace and timeline of your story should have good ebbs and flows, and the flow of your story will be noticeably jolted if there are no transitions leading up to and out of time skips.
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You've probably got a lot of questions rn but I'm gonna try my luck: how to introduce secondary characters? In my specific case: the friend group of the main character
Instead of going on a long tirade for this question, I decided to list a few tips that I’ve found helpful over the years and some things that are key when introducing secondary characters. I’ve also listed some helpful articles I’ve found from other blogs that elaborate more on this concept for your perusal.
Here are my tips:
Instead of introducing them all at once, phase them in using scenes that have a lot of revealing action and/or dialogue. This prevents info-dumping and allows you to focus on the more distinguishing characteristics of minor players so that the reader establishes them in their index for your story.
Only spend time truly integrating characters into the scenes if they impact the main character and move the story along. If it’s an old man they pass by once that is more of a metaphor than anything else, don’t spend a paragraph describing them. This will mislead the reader and mess up the flow of the scene.
Don’t forget to introduce the implications that come with supporting characters as well. If your main character’s mother-in-law lives with them, you’ll need to begin to describe how this impacts the character’s day-to-day life on top of just describing the supporting character’s appearance and general personality traits. Supporting characters make a main character more three-dimensional, but only if you can convince the reader that they’re people too, and not just accessories.
Introduce minor characters in a manner that corresponds with their importance to the story. By this, I mean don’t have a really minor character enter the story in a way that brings a lot of questions into the reader’s mind and then never mention them again, or worse, lead them to believe answers will come in future scenes with the character and then never deliver. If a character will only be in 2-3 scenes, give the reader as much information or room for future knowledge as needed. Don’t create intrigue and leave the audience hanging.
Other articles that I found interesting/helpful on this topic:
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Hi! Thanks so much for doing this. I've read in your past posts that you say one can still have a solid career without, say, debuting on the NYT list, but do you still need to debut pretty dang well to have a shot at a solid career in the long run? (I hope this makes sense and thank you!)
I feel like I have said this A LOT over the years but, well, nobody wants to listen to me, even though I am RIGHT, so whatever, hell, let’s do this, let me lay down some facts:
99% of books never hit a bestseller list – and that’s fine.
Hitting, say, the NYT bestseller list, means that you sold a large number of books in one week. It does NOT automatically mean that the book has longevity. As exciting as it is to “list” (AND IT IS EXCITING, and worth celebrating!) – it’s just one metric that ultimately doesn’t mean much in the long run. I would much rather have a book that sells decently, but consistently, then have a bestseller for a week that then falls off the radar.
I rep books that sell consistently that have sold hundreds of thousands, or MILLIONS of copies over time… that have never come close to a bestseller list.
Another fact: Plenty of authors achieve success because they are around for a long time and, again, are consistently putting good books out that plug along decently, and they are working hard and being nice and taking cool opportunities when they come up (which they tend to do when an author is consistent, hard-working and nice) – and they rise because of all that, over time, not because they were BORN as some kind of super-star. Like, I know it’s not FLASHY or SEXY, but … there is definitely such a thing as “working hard, paying your dues, networking, moving up the ladder” in Author-dom, just like in a “regular” job. What’s that saying? “The harder you work, the luckier you get”?
Another fact: MOST books sell way fewer copies than you imagine they do from the outside. Like – “success” in the book world is not remotely close to what “success” looks like for, say, a TV show or a movie. In the book world, 100k copies is a fantastic number – can you imagine the horror of executives at a TV show or movie that only had 100k viewers?
Many books never earn out. Lots of books tank entirely. That doesn’t mean that an author is “done for” – at all. Even super well-established authors will do better with some books than others. Like, not every book is a massive hit, even for “superstar” folks that you have for sure heard of.
The most important thing you can do for your career is to KEEP WRITING BOOKS. I am not saying that in a “Little Engine that Could” kind of way, I’m being literally factual: looking at the data, the biggest boost for backlist titles is when a new title comes out, your name recognition increases when you have more books come out, you are more likely to get that lucky break when you are working hard, etc. etc. So… again, that’s the consistency, right?
Jeesh I honestly don’t even know if I answered your question at this point but I guess I had to get it out of my system and I hope that it answered SOMEBODY’S question, at least.
“This representation was groundbreaking for the time and a lot of people liked it” and “This may have aged poorly and many modern audiences from the group don’t feel represented by it and are bothered by aspects of it” are not mutually exclusive
see also: “it’s okay to feel uncomfortable with these pieces of media due to their clumsy—if not harmful—depictions” and “some people still enjoy them, despite their flaws, especially older people who grew up without the same amount of representation we have today, and it’s not your place to tell someone they can’t like it”
I know it’s late, but like… people know 99% of authors don’t have social media handlers, right? That most small time creators, artists, Youtubers, and TikTokers are both obligated to stay on social media for their livelihoods and also don’t have any barrier between them and people being shitty just for the hell of it?
And I feel like we all know that, or at least should know that, and that what happened to Tess Sharpe is an outlier, but I also see authors get tagged in negative reviews all the time. I see YouTubers get pulled into drama that had nothing to do with them, because someone parasocially decided they had to be involved.
And there are consequences. People leave social media, they shut down access to their work. Tess Sharpe is no longer going to have anything to do with a book she wrote, a book a lot of people liked, because a small group of people refused to admit what they were doing was wrong.
And man, I don’t know how to convey that a conversation or a debate stops being so once you start deliberating triggering someone. You can’t reason with an organized internet harassment campaign, so what do you do?
I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t think anyone does. But if someone’s being shitty to you and they’ve crossed that line, you gotta get out of that situation. Lock your stuff down, reach out to others for help if you need it, block what you can and have a friend take over if you must. Don’t sit there and suffer, you don’t deserve it.
And stay off twitter, probably.
I have been thinking about this all day (because I follow Tess and have watched it go on all day). Tess is incredibly generous with her time and energy in giving publishing advice for beginners. Her twitter is an incredible resource for demystifying publishing. She’s also openly queer.
She’s been harassed by (purportedly) lesbian & queer readers to the point where she is not only no longer going to discuss the book in question that they claim to love, but has said she will never sell the film rights (even though there’s been interest) and is going to write it into her author estate to never have a film made. Because people WON’T STOP HARASSING HER ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR BOOK.
Do you people KNOW how much writers need the extra revenue streams of various rights to make a writing career viable? Do you have any idea how much money–money that supports her and her family, money that MAKES MORE BOOKS POSSIBLE–she’s decided to now close herself off from because of this harassment? Because stan twitter has gotten so insular and toxically aggressive that they will casually send writers death threats (it’s not a joke if it’s sent to a stranger), make up fake lesbophobic tweets (yes, they edited her tweets in screenshots), publicly act sweet to her then in personal replies say they’re only doing it because she blocked their friends and they want to report back on what she’s doing?
It’s fucked.
And it’s queer teens doing this to a queer writer who has only ever tried to put a ladder down behind her for the rest of us.
I’m just so unbelievably enraged and disappointed and discouraged.
I think we need to start having serious conversations about Internet Harassment Culture and why people feel entitled to harass everyone from Black actors who have opinions about Star Wars to someone who writes a ship they don’t like. We need to discuss how being a marginalized person does not make your behavior any less vile or abhorrent. Regardless of how it gets started, if you are trying to deliberately trigger someone, you are in the wrong, end of discussion
The onus should not be on the person being harassed, yet it is. This is incredibly messed up, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen this happen, and it won’t be the last. Please take time to consider how you will handle your social media if you plan to publish or create content, how you will maintain barriers, who to block and when. Your own mental health is far more important than fan access to you.
Understand, also, that there is a very big difference between posting something in your own space and actively directing something at someone–and sometimes it’s okay to say something directly at someone, and sometimes it’s okay to say it in your own space, and sometimes it’s not okay to say it anyway.
Think an author got something wrong? That is usually fair to (respectfully) tell authors, once. “Hey, squids actually work like this.” Probably fine. “Hey, this is a disrespectful representation of autism because XYZ.” Probably fine.
Hate a book? Feel free to write a bad review, or complain on your own blog, or tell it to your friend. Don’t send it to the author.
Want an author to be hurt or die? Keep it to yourself and get a serious reality check.
And the first two can slip into harassment, and you need to absolutely check yourself.
Here’s the other thing: when I was growing up with the internet, one of the biggest lessons I learned (other than to be careful on MySpace) was that everything is forever on the internet. Teenagers today seem to have missed that lesson, so here’s a crash course from your internet older cousin or whatever:
The fact that you were cruel or bigoted or harassed people on the internet will follow you. People aren’t going to care that you were sixteen or queer or sad when you repeatedly told a real human being that you wished they were dead. People aren’t going to care that you didn’t mean it, or you only kind of meant it, or you didn’t mean it that way.
The people you send vile messages or harassment to aren’t going to care that you’re young or queer or joking when you call them c**ts and tell them to die.
The internet is forever, and the people you’re talking to are people too.
And if nothing else: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
I kmow nothing of what has occurred with said author that this post is discussing, however important points were made. Harrassment is not okay. It never will be. Don’t harass people. I know feelings can be intense and we can go overboard, but it’s not and will never be okay to send death threats, repeatedly spout hateful rhetoric towards someone online or in person.
Things do stay on the internet so be careful with what you put out there and be kind and respectful towards others.
Another thing to stress here is that all of us have to beware of parasocial relationships (please see StrucciMovies excellent video here or this HuffPost article if you don’t know what that is). Most authors/small content creators would not consider themselves all that famous, but it’s still hard to remember that person who makes you like and follow on Twitter is not your friend. They don’t get your jokes, they don’t understand that you didn’t really mean that death threat.
Everyone is susceptible to this - it’s just how your brain works - but I feel like this especially happens with younger people, because how content and media is shaped these days. When I was growing up, the idea of sending a letter to an author seemed impossible - how would I find their address? These days, you can threaten an author for killing off your favorite character on social media because you feel like you know them, and they have no way of knowing how serious you are.
Barriers and appropriate public interactions are important - they protect you from an employer googling your name five years from now and they protect the person whose work you like and want more of. We need to work to maintain them, or this will keep happening.
I would rephrase that as be aware of parasociality and how it works, rather than just “beware”, because the only way you can avoid having a parasocial relationship is realistically not having interactions with someone. Our brains are going to do this: if you interact with someone, especially if that interaction is reciprocal, there will be either a parasocial or true social relationship that forms over time. We form social bonds even when we try not to; you will almost certainly form parasocial bonds with people again, whether you want to or not.
That is to say: your brain will decide hey we LIKE that person (when it’s a public persona) when you interact with or watch or otherwise expose yourself to another person’s content. It will do that even if you totally know that it’s a public persona, and that’s not in and of itself a problem. It’s just a thing our brains do.
The problem becomes when you confuse parasocial with true social or try to impose the rules of a true social (ie act like someone is ACTUALLY your friend and you have rights to how they interact) on someone whose interactions with you are necessarily mediated by a persona (like a creator interacting with you in public, or for that matter a cashier interacting with you in public, where the conditions of their jobs absolutely constrain them to specific kinds of interactions with you).
So absolutely yes be really aware that your brain does this, both to avoid being an absolute jackass to authors the way those (supposedly) kids were and also to avoid being preyed on by those who use this parasociality for evil because dude, this is absolutely something that can also be done.
But also wanted to highlight: “We need to discuss how being a marginalized person does not make your behavior any less vile or abhorrent. Regardless of how it gets started, if you are trying to deliberately trigger someone, you are in the wrong, end of discussion.”
There has been an unfortunate thing where the needed push against genuine uses of tone argument (”that thing where someone derails the attempts of the marginalized to point out that something is fucking them up by complaining about how they weren’t nice enough about it”) has resulted in a real and deeply toxic situation where people are asserting - whether out of genuine misunderstanding or because they see a way to exploit this to act badly - that basically, as long as you’re (supposedly) addressing an Injustice, you get to treat anyone you want however you want, without consequence, and any objection is Someone Oppressing You.
This is a fucking problem.
If you genuinely cannot figure out the difference between harassment, verbal abuse, etc, and speaking about genuine experiences and problems - even speaking passionately about them - then you need to step right back from “activism” of any kind until you’ve figured it out. If you actually think that being marginalized - on any axis - completely frees you from having to think about how you treat other people of any and every category, there is something wrong going on in your understanding, and what you’re working for is not justice, it’s just a change in the hierarchy where you get to be on the top punching everyone else.
[nb: having looked in depth into the Tess Sharpe thing, I’m going to be honest: I do not think those individuals are even slightly confused about what they’re doing, I do not think there is even a shred of believable ignorance there. I think they know exactly what they’re doing, I think they are doing it on purpose, and I think they just figured out that if they use this framework, they get to avoid feeling bad about it and had at least a better chance of justifying themselves to others and avoiding consequences that they cared about. While I think it’s entirely possible for Young/Unsavvy people to end up crossing boundaries more or less by accident, I don’t think it’s a good idea to be fooled into thinking that’s the only way this shit happens, or to extend too much good faith in the direction of people who have clearly and repeatedly spat on it.]
Unfortunately I’ve found the only way to really cope with people who behave this way is to block their access. They’re not capable of hearing any of this, and they’re convinced they’re in the right. It’s horrific but it is part and parcel of the Internet. I wish to God it were otherwise but it’s not.
I mean it’s part and parcel of PEOPLE; some of the mechanisms are new but the bad behaviour at core is ancient.
It’s also a mistake, I think, to perceive these discussions as even primarily aimed at the people being Actively Shitty; while there’s a small change they’ll read and change, it’s not really about them. They, like almost everyone, operate within contexts of community norms, and most of their power arises from what those around them will tolerate, accept and support.
They also tend to be quite good at the social manipulation and manoeuvres that convince others to accept and even reward their behaviour. THOSE are the people that might relevantly read this kind of discussion.
Lost track of this thread, but there are several very good branches of discussion coming from it, and I recommend looking through the notes for some good insights. Thanks, everyone, for carrying through with difficult but needed discussions.
No I don’t know the difference between affect and effect, thank you very much, and I refuse to learn.
A few of y'all missed the “I refuse to learn” part and rest assured, it’s not out of spite, it’s because my brain will not retain a single helpful hint no matter how hard I try. Your efforts are lovely, but wasted here.
I see we aren’t having any effect on you
[ID: a comic showing a skeleton holding up a finger, then thinking, then scratching its skull. End ID]
