Author and doctor of clinical psychology Carolyn Kaufman has released a one-page body language cheat sheet of psychological “tells” (PDF link) fiction writers can use to dress their characters.
This is something I have always encouraged people to consider when writing. If you can afford it, and you have one in your area – TAKE A BODY LANGUAGE CLASS. It will open your eyes to a whole new world of subtleties you never knew existed. SO worth it as a “Real Life” skill and for all those times when you’re writing and you need your character to react nonverbally.
There is also, in addition to these others, the writer resource book: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
This is how you show, not tell what your character is feeling.
i just realized that tumblr is the one major social media site where your number of followers isn’t openly displayed.
like, youtube, twitter, instagram, facebook, vine, etc. all list how many subscribers or followers or friends or whatever you have, but not tumblr.
and i think that’s kind of interesting, because generally you tend to have an idea about how popular someone is even if you don’t know exactly what their follower count is – but other times you’re completely wrong. there are so many awesome people i’ve met on here who i though had, like, at least a thousand followers but then they don’t???
and it also makes me wonder how actually knowing people’s follower counts would affect who i follow. would i be a snob about it and not follow someone who i though had “too many” followers? or would i be too star-struck to talk to someone who i really admire, because i thought i was just a small fish who could never hope to get noticed among their multitudes of followers?
anyway, it just wasn’t something that had occurred to me before, but i honestly do think it changes the dynamics of this website in interesting ways.
flint: we should definitely date
silver:
flint:
silver: but i don’t want to die
tbh i think the thing that surprised me most about finn and poe is how WELL they got along, right off the bat. i’m so used to seeing narratives where two male characters are thrown together and immediately distrust each other, being snide and subtlety jockeying for superiority (almost an ‘alpha male’ mentality, especially when there’s a female character involved), and even when they end up friends that friendship is often expressed through ribbing and snark that never gets TOO friendly or emotional (let’s be honest, even han and luke fell into this pattern often)
poe, on the other hand, was immediately and openly friendly towards finn, and finn responded in kind. there was no implicit competition between them. compliments weren’t given begrudgingly or veiled as an insult. they were just allowed to be friendlyand openly caring with each other and i don’t know about you but that feels like a fuck you to toxic masculinity to me
Shadow In The Light 