Last Minute NANO Advice

We’re almost out of days for nanowrimo, it could be you fell behind, it could be your story just pooped out on you.  Either way, here are a few last ditch efforts to help you drag your story across the finish line.  At this point just add some words, you can edit it later.

1. Change every said to _____ told _____.  This will add two words for every time you wrote said.

2. Add words to adverbs.  He didn’t smile happily, he smiled with so much joy lighting up his face she almost thought she would be blinded, but couldn’t look away.

3. Add adverbs.  If its what it takes, add a qualifier to every word you can find. Make your characters speak rapidly, climb quickly, drink heartily, and finish successfully.

4. Add chapter headings, or add long chapter headings. 5: The chapter where they try to find a sheep, but then lose it and find something else instead adds 19 words.

5. If you’ve just ran out of novel for your novel, have you characters tell each other stories.  Add a character, or have a character that is characterized by long stream of consciousness rambles about a rock they saw or their chemistry homework, or your chemistry homework.  Retell the three bears in the world of your novel, retell a conversation with your mom, don’t let yourself get story blinders.  You are in charge of your story.

6. Expand acronyms.  Use the replace tool in your word document and change AI to artificial intelligence, change NARA to the national archives and records administration.  Let that acronym be that delicious list of words it was meant to be.

7. Describe everything.  Start at the beginning of your story and describe every noun.  Describe every everything.  What does that coffee cup look like exactly, describe how to pick that red dress out of a line up, where did your character find those shoes, what process did they go through to adopt that dog?

8. Add titles.  It’s not Mark, it’s Mark the tall.  It’s not Judy, it’s Judy the one with the pocket knife.

9. Add footnotes, appendices, or stuff in parenthesis.  If you’re not able to make yourself break the narrative flow with all the Dickensian stuff above go on tangents that are vaguely connected in the foot notes.  Did you think up a cool back story, but it just isn’t fitting in the flow?  Stream of consciousness that baby into the foot notes  Make it funny, make it factual, just make it longer.

You can do it!  I believe in you!  (And even if you can’t, I still believe in you!)

Hello! I recently finished your story… It was amazing!!(and cute>~<) And I’m not sure if you already answered this but how was Wee John in Sherlock’s flat after W commited suicide? As in how did he get there and when did Wee John come back to existence??

John faked his death, so it was like the Reichenbach Fall but reversed.  The gun was used to shrink him again and to move him from the air to the ground, while he was out of it he was taken into the hospital, he was replaced with a body furnished by Bad Davey (who else would have a spare body lying around), then he was taken to 221B and left there.

thenerdyindividual:

creoparametric:

creoparametric:

creoparametric:

experiment goal: to determine whether smarties are an effective tea sweetener

hypothesis: smarties will sweeten the tea, but also introduce unwelcome flavor profiles due to their flavoring

procedure: procured one cup (≈12 fl oz) of Barry’s Tea Gold Blend black tea, hot. added 2/3 of a single roll of smarties candy (10 candies). wait for candies to dissolve, then stir well. tea will be sampled after stirring concludes.

addendum: control group was used. control sample consisted of one cup of the same type of tea, sweetened with white sugar. results will depend on the relative tastes of the control and smarties tea

results: smarties tea was significantly more bitter and less sweet than sugar tea. additionally, the smarties failed to dissolve in the expected manner, and when stirred, ended up breaking down into particulates that refused to dissolve. 

conclusions: because of the chemical/structural makeup of smarties, they do not function well as an ad hoc tea sweetener because of their reluctance to break down. it may be the case that crushed smarties would work better, but this experiment was intended to study how normal, uncrushed smarties would work as a sweetener

Did Ray Kowalski write this?

a comprehensive collection of weird-ass wikipedia articles to read when you’re bored

lesliecrusher:

fair warning: while some of these articles are just silly or weird, i do like to freak myself out, so a fair amount of these are creepy and/or morbid! some of the links involve death and occasionally suicide, so consider this your blanket warning for potentially upsetting/tiggering stuff! also when you’re white-knuckled gripping the bedframe at four am because you’re too freaked out to go get a glass of water and you think there’s an axe-murderer in your closet, don’t go a-blamin’ me. you clicked the link.

Lol as if your mom would ever let you go to the club alone

disgustinganimals:

disgustinganimals:

disgustinganimals:

i’m 45 and live with my son. of course my mom wouldn’t let me go to the club alone. i have to take him with me, you idiot. you buffoon. you oafish nitwit. you bottle of half-drunk marmalade. you goon. you classless neanderthal.  

#Anonymous #you slackjawed goblinshark#you unfinished mixtape for a high school crush #you tiny baby person#you romance novel adapted for film by michael bay #you small minded mooncake#you horsedrawn razor scooter #you jag #you walking bummer

you melted creamsicle. you unfeathered down pillow. you cut-off sandwich crust. you green potato. you churlish mind number with the conversational capacity of a fish. you tasteless chewed up wad of gum person. you obtuse triangle with rounded edges. you glowering waste of tumblr usernames. how dare you talk to me. 

to all my new followers, hello and welcome to my animal blog.

schweizercomics:

My Patreon paper figure set this (last) month is 

APPALACHIAN FOLK MONSTERS

so here y’go! Some of these are from folk tales, some are a mishmash of stories that I’d heard growing up so I combined ‘em and laid names on ‘em, some are a hybrid of folk tales and the creations of rural pulp writer Manly Wade Wellman, who wrote horror yarns from the twenties through the eighties, some are native myths from the region that still hold sway with the locals. This is the kind of stuff I’ve got in my backyard out here in Kentucky.

If you’re inclined, you can download these as a free printable PDF, and cut your own cards, either to keep flat or stand up.  Here’s where you get ‘it (bottom of the post):

https://www.patreon.com/posts/september-paper-14717628

Happy Hillbilly Halloween!