Top-Tier Villain Motivations

A vampire, turned against their will, despises the idea of feeding on humans, and so makes a hard living out of hunting game for blood instead. After decades of this, while hunting for deer, they come across a pair of human vampire hunters who've never met one like them before.

You are an evil doll. You were trapped under a lake by some kids for twenty years. You planned your revenge—but now, their lives are already so awful you don't need to do anything.

Write a piece about something that takes a year to build being destroyed in a minute.

Text: The smell so delicious it torments me turns out to be coming from my own blood. I resist it, fearing what I already know: I am an Ouroboros, the first natural born in over two centuries.

I kind of suck at tagging, so I made this infographic to help make it easier.

you know how mathematicians have the journal of recreational mathematics, right? where they publish stuff like, ‘oh i found this cool property of this one seemingly boring number’, or, ‘this is literally nonsense but it sounds ~scientific~’ and it’s all great fun to read?

well

behold, the journal of recreational linguistics

with such delightful papers as ‘tennis puns’, ‘animals in different languages’, and ‘gifts from a homonymous benefactor’

excuse me while i go read all 50 volumes in one sitting

Tips for Writing Sad Scenes

Remember not all characters express emotions the same way. For example, some characters are more closed off than others and will act accordingly. What makes one character collapse into a sobbing, wailing mess, might make another grieve quietly in a way people who don’t know them well might not even notice. That doesn’t make either reaction less impactful, it simply highlights the differences between the characters’ personalities.

Avoid melodrama. Going overboard with intense expressions of sadness can make them unintentionally humorous. Basically, make the intensity of characters’ emotions suit the situation and don’t let characters endlessly wallow in sorrow throughout the story. While it’s perfectly understandable for emotions to linger, dwelling on the same one with minimal variation risks losing the reader’s interest. 

Use buildup judiciously. Sometimes, you might decide to reveal that a bad situation is even more dire than the characters’ first thought, leading them to feel hopeless. Other times, the sad event might strike the characters as suddenly as a lightning strike.Giving characters and readers nuggets of hope can be especially effective. That’s because those lead people to believe that a positive outcome is possible, thereby making it hurt all the more when things take a turn for the worse.

Show characters seeking and giving comfort. Whether they try to drown their sorrows in alcohol or hug their friends close, moments where characters seek or give comfort show how much a sad event is impacting them. This provides good opportunities for bonding and possibly more conflict. Plus, coping mechanisms speak volumes about characters. Do they try to comfort others when they’re practically falling apart themselves? Do they seek some kinds of comfort but avoid others?

Emphasize lost opportunities. What will characters’ find much harder or even impossible now? If a character dies, who or what are they leaving behind? Who misses them now that they are gone? What dreams did they leave unfulfilled?

Write a piece about someone who no longer needs to sleep

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

how to write creepy stories

over describe things

under describe things

short sentences in rapid succession build tension

single sentence paragraphs build dread

uncanny valley = things that aren't normal almost getting it right

third person limited view

limited expressions

rot, mold, damage, age, static, flickering, espsecially in places it shouldn't be

limited sights for your mc - blindness, darkness, fog

being alone - the more people there are, the less scary it is

intimate knowledge, but only on one side

your reader's imagination will scare them more than anything you could ever write. you don't have to offer a perfectly concrete explanation for everything at the end. in fact, doing so may detract from your story.