People talk a lot about how reading is necessary for writing, but when you really want to improve your writing, it’s important to go beyond just simple reading. Here are some things to do when reading:
Note how they begin and end the story. There are a ton of rather contradictory pieces of advice about starting stories, so see how they do it in the stories you enjoy. Don’t only look at the most popular stories, but look at your more obscure favorites.
See what strikes you. Is it fast or complicated scenes with a lot of emotions? Is it stark lines? Pithy dialogue? What do you remember the next day?
Pay attention to different styles. It’s not just whether they use past or present tense, first or third person. It’s whether the writing is more neutral or deeper inside character’s heads. Do they use italics? Parentheses? Other interesting stylistic choices? Take the ones you like and try them out in your own writing. See what works and what doesn’t.
Keep track of how they deal with other characters. Do we see a lot of secondary character each for very brief periods of time or are there a couple that show up a lot? How much information do we get about secondary characters? Do they have their own plots or do their plots revolve entirely around the main characters?
Count how many plots there are. Is there just one main plot or are there multiple subplots? Are the storylines mostly plot-based or character-based?
Pay attention to what you don’t like. If you don’t like what’s going on in a book or even just a scene, note what it is. Does the dialogue feel awkward? Are the characters inconsistent? Does the plot feel too convenient or cobbled together? Does the wording just feel off? See if you can spot those issues in your own writing, especially when reading a completed draft or beginning a later draft.
(Great advice! I wanted to tack on other things I look for when reading)
Pay attention to how they introduce characters. Very rarely will it be all at once, and I guarantee the author went over the intro of each major character again and again while editing, so I always like paying extra close attention! Did the intro endear you to the character? Make you dislike them? How did the author impart that emotion?
Note instances of worldbuilding/info dumps, especially parts that don’t seem like worldbuilding/info dumps. Maybe the character mentions something offhand about a location you’ll see five chapters later. Maybe the internal dialogue makes a comparison to the character’s childhood. Was the information effective or did it leave you wanting more? Make note of anything that made you go, “ooh, neat!”
After you finish the story, try to find foreshadowing that you missed the first time through! It can be as simple as skimming and looking for phrases you know are important after finishing the story. Most authors add foreshadowing in the editing stage, so I tend to ponder how the story would read before they added it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the story seems more magical for it and it’s just nice to appreciate.
What plot structures could the story fit into? We all know about the three arc stories, hero’s journey, etc. Sometimes stories can fit into more than one category. During the read and after, keep it in the back of your mind. Can you predict where the climax of the story will hit? Is it man v man or man v nature? Does the predictability (or lack thereof) add to or take away from the story?
I can't remember if I sent you the ask I was thinking about but wouldn't blue and yellow diamond being shipped together be considered incest because there technically Family? I have seen very questionable things about those two and I can't help but think "wow people really like incest".
first of all, I don’t know if you noticed, but youre talking to a Bellow Diamond Shipper, like, a huge one, and im very vocal about it.
Second of all, if you can call your mom and dad “family” and they still fuck each other, i don’t see how them being referred to as family on the show is remotely a problem.
Also, ‘family’ is an earth term. The Diamonds don’t know what it means. Steven refers to them as such because he recognized some similarities between them and the CG, but they themselves lack the concept. Now, the CG, who had lived on Earth for a long time, openly call themselves a family- and yet you have Ruby and Sapphire, a couple that’s very much in love, among them.
OH, btw, if we’re going with the angle of “Diamonds are sisters and shipping them is incest” what does it say about literally all of gem kind? are they all related? since, yknow, they are all produced from the Diamonds. So that means, by extension, that Ruby\Sapphire, the Topaz, the Zircons, the Jades, the Pearls, the Famethyst, are all incest ships. Some of them even have the same “mother”!
but WAIT! if Blue and Yellow are sisters, Lapidot is also incest, cause theyre like cousins??? Pearlmethyst? Amedot? any Jasper ship? oh boi, if you take out one (1) Diamond ship down, you drown the whole fleet.
so what are we left with?
Lars and Sadie. ok then.
to finish it all off, here’s a shitty doodle comic i made a few months ago, because i keep seeing the same comments over and over again… on my art……. in my inbox……..it never stops… gimme a break………..
I thought it was so heartwarming and sweet! I love the pebles, they are the cutest fusion between cinderella rats and ghibli-fying little helpers! The song also reminded me of BMO from adventure time?? it was really cozy somehow
I loved that Yellow was jealous of pink being able to talk with White, and at the same time, they have this cool dynamic of Pink being able to make yellow laugh! Blue and Steven were also really sweet! I would have never thought of Blue saying “STEEEEvan?” hahahaha I want to know more about the diamonds! And I’m really happy that they are showing it!
PLus all the walls that blink and whisper were like a mix of terrifying with Beauty and the Beast fantasy. I still am very uncomfortable just thinking of statues blinking tho hahahah magical, but terrifying.
I thought this episode felt like a good hug after a long hiatus, and now things are going to start to get all tense again.
