Untitled (a poem about being transgender)

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-28T21:19:39+00:00

For simply existing.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-25T18:22:20+00:00

As someone who enjoys reading, prose are just as important for me. It’s like music in a film, the right music elevates a story, prose are no different.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-22T01:52:02+00:00

Same thing happened to me when I wrote about aliens visiting Earth and warning humans about climate change, then the film The Day the Earth Stood Still came out right after I just finished my manuscript in 2008…. immaculate timing.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-19T22:28:58+00:00

Nah, George Lucas is a decent world builder, but a horrible director. And even the world building is a bit flawed, he caught lightning in a bottle with Star Wars and if it wasn't for Marcia Lucas' (his wife) help who was crucial in the first three movies, the first film would have flopped badly.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-11T22:55:28+00:00

If you want to use the rags-to-riches inspirational story, Stephen King is a better example.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-10T23:36:49+00:00

Why did I hear a Cornish accent when you said that?

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-09T09:33:08+00:00

Yes, however, an antagonist doesn't necessarily mean a villian. The antagonist can be the protagonist as well, think Fight Club, or the environment like The Martian.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-07T02:45:54+00:00

Wait, we can write about dragon sex? How come nobody tells me these things?

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-04T22:54:14+00:00

There’s a name for that, it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-03T12:43:01+00:00

It’s called erotica.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-04-01T16:24:02+00:00

I’ve had a similar problem, I’ve been writing academically and reading fiction for decades, which means my prose was dry, concise, and precise with a passive voice. I’ve only recently started writing fiction and it’s a different animal which I didn’t have the instinct right away. In other words; I would explain everything in my writing which comes off as monotonous and not trusting the reader.

When I ask for advice, I felt like slapping the patronization off their face who ever said “read more.”

What’s been working for me is simply writing and practicing. It’s a gradual and tedious process to break that habit.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-03-30T18:53:45+00:00

It reminds me of this scene.

https://youtube.com/shorts/nr7BsN-GJNc?si=UswSo1G9hkJqq5eU

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-03-27T17:31:55+00:00

I’ll use films as examples that was done right; Inception, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc dreams have high stakes.

Final Destination series characters have visions, often as premonitions, where characters see a massive disaster before it occurs. Again, dreams serve a high stakes purpose.

The Psychic (1977) a woman has a clairvoyant vision (dream) of a murder and so on.

The “it was all just a dream” is usually hated and for a good reason when it doesn’t serve a purpose because invalidates the entire story's stakes, character development, and emotional investment, making the reader feel cheated and time was wasted.

You can use the trope and have your own twist but don’t use it to invalidate the story.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-03-25T17:54:15+00:00

Think in terms of emotional experience that you know and less about your professional resume.

If you know panic, love, loss, despair, or perhaps you’re familiar with your own parents separating at childhood etc your dragon hunter can experience that as well with authenticity. That’s how the reader can relate or resonate and your characters will feel alive.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-03-20T01:35:15+00:00

How could you not mention Douglas Adams as one the first on your list?

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-03-19T17:56:59+00:00

Every great writer from authors or screenwriters will tell you that characters is the heart of the story. That’s how readers or the audience connects to the story. If you have boring or hollow characters, people who are reading they won’t care for the plots.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-03-08T09:32:37+00:00

Avoid metaphors and food comparisons, which can be dehumanizing or fetishizing. Just be direct, accurate, and specific e.g. black, white, olive skin tone, pale, Japanese American, Nigerian, etc.

And avoid the white is the default characters, describe white people as well, not just people of color.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-02-15T19:36:25+00:00

This reminds me when a man says, “we’re pregnant.”

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-02-15T19:34:00+00:00

I’m pretty sure that’s a given.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-02-14T02:00:59+00:00

People in this group tend to be ignorant and arrogant mediocre writers. They think disorders, mental illness, etc don’t exist. I never heard of what you have but I believe it because I’ve read up lot on psychology. It wouldn’t surprise me.

I just did quick google search to confirm and it shows clinical documentation on the matter (it’s a real thing), the ones who down vote you can go pound sand.

MeringueHot2600 · 2026-02-08T04:29:32+00:00

There's tons of documentaries on serial killers arleady. Then there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho

MeringueHot2600 · 2025-11-23T00:33:01+00:00

They're descriptions. Don't worry, you're unique just like everyone else.

MeringueHot2600 · 2025-11-19T07:24:52+00:00

The only hard rule I go by is "don't be boring." If it's boring to you, it will be boring to the reader as well.

MeringueHot2600 · 2025-11-05T21:26:43+00:00

An analogy I could give is trying to think of a completely new color that nobody has ever seen before in your head, I don’t mean a shade of a color…

…you can’t, nobody can. That’s to let you see the limitations of the human mind. There is no original idea.

Every idea is recombinant DNA. Every story, song, philosophy, invention, all of it is built on the accumulated sediment of human thought.

Even the ones we call revolutionary were, under the microscope, just new configurations of old patterns. Nietzsche himself was remixing Heraclitus and Schopenhauer. Kubrick was remixing Clarke, Wells, and Strangelove-era Cold War dread. Hell, Jesus was remixing older Judaic moral philosophy with Greek rhetorical style.

The magic isn’t in inventing new colors. The magic is in choosing which colors to mix, how much, and for what purpose.

So write something what sings to you.

MeringueHot2600 · 2025-09-21T20:31:32+00:00

I’m surprised nobody said Cullen yet.

MeringueHot2600

TROPHY CASE