Hi, I'm Angela =) This is my personal blog (as opposed to my fandom blog). These are my more thoughtful posts/things that don't belong to my fandoms and will mostly be things like quotes, songs, and stuff that makes me think.
The title is Richard Siken (the poem Snow and Dirty Rain). The blog title (Futari Kiri) is Japanese for "with you."
my writing fundamentally changed forever ten years ago when i realized you could use sentence structure to control people’s heart rates. is this still forbidden knowledge or does everyone know it now
?????? *raises hand* I’ve been writing for years and don’t know this trick by these words! do tell?
Okay, so a few people have asked for me to cite the dark magics at them, and i’m super happy to share because it’s my favorite thing ever.
so, let’s see if i can explain this the same way that i learned. read a sentence out loud. you come to a full stop when you hit the period, and you take a normal, breath. but, when you hit a comma, you take a slightly longer pause. and when you hit a dash - you take an even longer pause.
this is a natural rhythm that we pick up when we’re first taught to read; we do it without even thinking. but when you start to think about it, you realize that it can become a tool.
think of your heartbeat. a period is badump. a comma is badump-dump. and a dash is thump badump. one breath. a longer breath. two breaths.
that means what you read automatically affects the rhythm of your breathing and your heartrate. which means that you can control the amount of physical tension your reader feels… by altering your punction and your sentence structure.
for fast paced scenes, you use short sentences. a lot of hard stops. mostly periods, with just a few comma’s thrown in for the full breath. your reader’s heartrate accelerates. their breathing is slightly and unintentionally, on their end, quicker. you hit the dramatic ending of the scene - and your reader’s body phsyically feels the gasp, the breath of fresh air, of these longer sentences.
now, read that paragraph again ant take note of your natural pauses, and how it subtly affects your breathing.
the same thing can be said of comma’s and dashes. while they can be used as a breath of fresh air, they can also cause a new line of tension as they lead your reader to hold their breath. during this section, you should use longer sentences; breaking up the harshness of the pauses by using variations of punction. read this paragraph out loud from the start and take note of how long you go between pauses and full breaths.
and then, comes the biggest trick.
the hard stop.
the paragraph.
because while the periods, commas, and dashes are variations on a short stop, the paragraph is a hard stop. you take a full breath. you pause for a moment, then move to the start of the next paragraph.
which means you can create an entirely new sort of dramatic tension. read the sentences that are in bold. see how you take a naturally longer pause at the end of each paragraph?
see how it makes you feel?
how it makes you breath different?
how doing it once, twice, or three times creates a different line of tension?
this little magic trick can be used to cause a reader’s heartrate to speed up during a fight or chase scene. it can be used to cause their breathing to slow down during moments of dramatic tension, sorrow, or softness. and it can be used to create hard breaks that add a new level of physically felt emphasis to your written work.
i hope these examples make sense! it’s my favorite writing trick!
Scientists believe the bloody-belly’s red belly helps mask bioluminescent light from the prey it consumes. A predator with a glowing gut could easily become prey.
The genus name Lampocteis derives from the Greek roots for “brilliant comb,” referring to the bright iridescence diffracted from the animal’s comb rows.
My therapist: just because you made a plan doesn’t mean you’ll always follow it perfectly, and that’s okay. It’s better to follow a plan cursorily than not at all.
Me, sobbing: THAT WAS AN OPTION???
Oh, this is super important.
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When trying new coping strategies or learning a new habit, you’ll fail. Possibly many many times.
But that’s alright! No one just PICKS it up immediately.
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You’re trying to learn to do it sometimes, and then occasionally, and then more oftenthan not, and finally every time!
Similarly, you might fail in any plan or timetable you’re trying to use.
But that’s alright!
As OP’s therapist said, it doesn’t have to be perfect! In fact, no one can pick it up immediately.
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Doing things OCCASIONALLY is better than not doing it at all.
Doing things LATE is better than not doing it at all.
Doing things PARTIALLY is better than not doing it at all.
Also don’t aim for perfection. Just aim for as best you can, ideally a little better than last time. But? There will be ups and downs. That isn’t a flaw in you or your techniques, it’s just how people work.
It was, at one point, yes. And some people still use it as one. But that’s not going to stop me, a queer person, who loves queer history and queer studies, to stop using it.
I grew up with people who used gay as an insult constantly. “That’s so fucking gay” as a negative. But that’s not stopping me from going “You know what? Fuck it. I’m gay” and now using it as a positive description of something.
If someone doesn’t want to use that word to describe themself, that’s perfectly fine. You get to find what words best describe how you feel and what you are. But you don’t get to tell other people that they can’t use the word to describe them that seems to work best for them.
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