Reader since '08 : Writer since '17

Things You Can Expect From Me:

1. Inconsistency
2. Unedited work
3. Nothing serious

Updates:

January 9, 2018

Stuck in a Small Town will be put on hiatus as I try to figure out the ending. I really didn't think much past making Ruka suffer just a little bit, but now as I try to wrap up a coherent storyline, there are many endings I foreseen, and I still have to figure out which one I want to write. Maybe all of them, who knows?

January 8, 2018

Ha ha, surprise! I'm still here! I will update when the mood strikes, but I also do not like long stories. As you can probably guess, I prefer one-shots so if you're waiting for a multi-chaptered fic to be updated, ha ha.

July 19, 2017

The story "Wrapped Around Her Finger" has been deleted because I wasn't really sure where the story was going. It was intended as a protest against the continual abusive (and somewhat shallow) characterization of Hotaru Imai (blackmails everyone against their consent, "cares more about money than her best friend," ridicules her best friend without making sure she's okay with it afterwards, etc.); however, I soon discovered I lacked the motivation and the skills to properly portray Hotaru in such a negative light while still remaining true to her canon personality.

If you care about the ending or if you need closure, [spoiler alert:I'm just going to say how it was supposed to go here] Ruka and Hotaru spitefully try to keep their best friends from getting together due to their hatred and distrust for each other, but Mikan and Natsume realize how in love they are and how much they've been letting their best friends control their lives (Hotaru isolates and lowers Mikan's self-confidence while Ruka insists he knows best for Natsume and prevents him from making any close connection) so they shed the shackles of their abuse and run away together. Ruka realizes what he has done and realizes how twisted he has become after engaging in such an unsteady, rocky, and manipulative love-hate affair with Hotaru, finally leaving her for good, leaving her unsure of what she has anymore.

Scenes from this story will most likely make it into other stories.

Oh Hello World presents: The Writing Process

Using songs as inspiration: if you read enough of my stories, you can clearly tell when some part or maybe even the whole story in general has been inspired by a song. (Side note: you can probably guess how old I am by the songs I listen to.) I use songs as inspirations because sometimes a particular lyric might carry so much significance and so much beauty that it just sticks. I then use that emotion or that beauty to create something new: a story.

However, please be careful not to plagiarize an entire song. I'm also careful (because I hate it) not to put all the lyrics of the song in the story; like I'm here to read a story, not read the lyrics to a song. I will stick fragments at the very end (not the middle) to wrap up the story.

Good grammar: it makes it a whole lot easier for the audience to read a story if they can understand the sentences through the mutually agreed upon syntax of grammar. Even the most nit-picky things can make an audience understand the story better: using punctuation such as comas, adding quotation marks, proper spelling, having whole sentences and not just fragments.

Flow: long sentences for descriptions, short sentences for actions; varying sentence length. Sometimes, I'll have one huge run-on sentence, just adding clause after clause and marking off those clauses with good punctuation so the reader knows when to stop one train of thought. Then sometimes I won't.

Also essential to the flow of a story is proofreading it yourself a second, third, and as many times as necessary to make sure what you present to the readers is what you intended. Sometimes it's okay to leave the audience assuming where the scene went; sometimes you have to drag them along so they can see the same things you see.

Style: Find your own voice! What kind of story do you want to write? What kind of message do you want to convey? What are the themes? What is symbolic? What do you want to emphasize?

It's the little things. For example, I myself use parentheticals a whole lot. I'll be writing a sentence and then I'd think of something that will relate to that sentence, but there's no good place to put it so I just interrupt the sentence with parenthesis and insert that thought. Most of the time, I use parenthesis for humor or to allow a character's true thoughts to shine through.

Vocabulary: You shouldn't sound like you're constantly using a thesaurus, but the more words you know, the more precise you can define what exactly you're trying to convey. For example, is your character mad or irritated? Sad or glum? Just stay away from the the fancy words like lachrymose.

Also, while it's fun to try to find different ways to say different things, I think there are a few things that should stay relatively normal, such as eyes (not orbs) and hair (not locks; I do use mane, though).

Realism: Particularly in three different ways: characterization, plot, and dialogue.

1. Could this person exist in real life and be considered socially acceptable? (Mary Sues would never last past puberty.)
2. Given your defined world, do the events follow in a logical order? Don't throw in random scenes just to create drama.
3. Would you say what your characters are saying in real life? Sometimes, too, to add emotion or humor, I say the lines out loud and add all the stutters and the "Um's" and the "Like, what do you mean, man?"

Lastly:

Visuals: It's very superficial and definitely not a top priority, but I also think about how make the story more easy to read for the reader. I rarely have long paragraphs (even I don't like to read dense paragraphs), I utilize italics and bold, and I space out words, using a variety of dashes and slashes.

Thank you!