.webp?h=10 "P-Hat (blue) - Ughhhh coming up with different descriptions for RuneScape party hats")
I have total aphantasia, which means my minds eye is dark. I have 0 senses up in my brains. Any tips for writing detailed scenes without the senses?
Iโve always wanted to write, but always struggled writing detail into the story. I love writing stories themselves, but loathe the detail in creating a scene around the story. I think I donโt focus on it because it does absolutely nothing for me. Even when I read books, I basically gloss over the setting. I just need to know an overview of the setting and Iโll be good.
As usual, the comments give moderately decent, superficial advice while eluding the fundamental problem: You can't describe a scene if you can't imagine one.
Some kinda reverse midjourney human being
The Chad summarizer
Go through published books and try to identify what kind of tone scenes have (e.g. scary, sad, cosy) and write down how they're described. Make a list of recurring details and use them when you want to generate that effect.
Here are some that I've noticed:
Warmth normally seems positive and safe. E.g. a fire crackling in the hearth, or a steaming mug of hot chocolate.
Beep boop. It appears the organic beings are drawn to the olfactory sensations correlated with the preparation of food. I shall investigate further.
R/writing is the absolute worst hobby/artistic sub. Imagine if half of the music sub posts were about being tone-deaf or deaf-deaf and everyone was just sucking each other off about how valid that is. Or talking about how you don't need to listen to music to be a musician.
Also check out my previous post, in which an neurodivergent train wants to be a writer despite being completely unable to concentrate on reading:
https://rdrama.net/post/139302/marseybrainlet-giga-r-slur-asks-if-she
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I feel like a fantasy novel written by a p-zombie like him would be almost interesting. Like a postmodern deconstruction of it. Or like an alien trying to imitate human literature.
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here you go king, have fun: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5378.Worst_YA_Books
What happens is they spend 10000 hours on reddit, 500+ hours on tv-tropes and fan wikis (so they can REALLY understand how stories work), and 100 hours slowly reading fiction within their very narrow interests
Result: barfing up tropes, a setting that feels generic no matter how much
worldbuilding 
they did, and characters that are cardboard cutout archtypes instead of feeling like real people.
These people basically are basically doing the writing equivalent of coloring in a kid's coloring book. Then they think they are amazing story writers, on the same level as someone who is writing from actual life experiences (even if writing sci fi or fantasy) that is the writing equivalent of a fine oil painting containing both texture and many layers of glaze.
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Genre fiction is just check boxes to them, they are part of the audience that will consume any of the books on that list because it hits all the boxes they like. Almost makes me think the best person to write genre fiction is someone who has never read that kind of book before.
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The issue with non-genre writers rolling in is they usually overestimate their originality. You see a lot of people trying to critique tropes or trends that haven't been widespread in decades, or have been deconstructed many times.
On the other hand, people who only read SF/F have no idea how to tell a story, so they just spend 200 hours on a "magic system" instead.
The ideal is to be well-read both broadly, and in the specific area you're working in.
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Hard agree. Waaay too many genre fiction autismos spend all their time "worldbuilding" with their dumb made up languages and magic/science systems while being completely unable to write interesting dialog or characterization. If the author is a woman they're more likely to have somewhat decent characters but then the plot often just gets thrown out the window and all the background shit is left vague as heck to allow for convenient asspulls.
And these authors will proudly tell you that they barely read any of that "boring" literature promoted by snobs.
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yet no one will publish my book of Bilbo's potty diary.
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A lot of great literature has middling plots and is instead made by the fantastic prose, characters, dialogue, ideas etc.
It's mainly in shitty genre lit where you see most of the discussion about tropes and A->B plotting, because there's nothing else interesting in the book to talk about.
The latter is where you see Cinemasins style criticism: i.e. 'scene does not have a lap-dance - ding!'
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Absolutely. I forget who it was, but I remember some minor sneeding a long time ago when a writer for some fantasy setting (could've been warhammer maybe) said he doesn't really know anything about the setting or care about it, he just writes crime thrillers and his editor slaps a coat of paint on it.
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Hollywood in a nutshell. apparently this is why the halo series turned out the way it did. something about how it was supposed to be mass effect but the deal fell through
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It's all about trying to turn an art into a science. Nerds make up all kinds of rules and then torture themselves trying to follow them.
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But it's not easily memorizable rules, you have to have develop fundamentally intimate understanding to be actually great, the same way most people fundamentally understand walking without having to think about it.
Some languages have two different words for head-knowing and heart-knowing
These people are just like "if only I had access to education, that's the only thing stopping me from being great!"
Then in school "If only I could [quit my job at wendys | make my dad approve of me | had access to education and support my whole life like that guy over there that's good (frick his smug face btw) | could afford more expensive supplies | I was a rich trust fund kid with no worries], then, THEN I would be great."
I'm not saying it's necessarily "just born with talent" and I'm not one of those people who cope like ":marseyakshually: talent doesn't exist every talented person secretly worked hard and is hiding it to make us feel bad"
But you see people with talent often just have a different mindset, which means it's possible to try to learn it.
less jealousy, less "just tell me fricking how", more willingness to try and understand things yourself, experience for it's own sake is valuable and can help you truly know something, in a way there's not an English word for. These words usually just get translated to "intimate"
lmao making it harder to explain
Legit seen an ancient artist try to impart the wisdom of what it takes to be great "you must intimately appreciate and understand even the paper bag to truly paint it" and youngsters think "this dude has a fetish for good lighting???
Man, great artists are too eccentric for me I don't understand ts imma make a living grifting and being a hack and never actually being good"
sorry for the
post I took different supplements than usual and keep infodumping on people irl 
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Np dude. Was gonna ask what you're taking lol.
I think you're onto something with the "just tell me how!" guys, a lot of Reddit tier creatives just want to get it all over with. They want to read enough to be good writers, not because they like reading. They want to get good at writing so a good story/book can exist that was written by them, but they openly admit to not enjoying writing.
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way more fish oil, turmeric, black pepper, magnesium, the b-vitamins I usually take, and I also eat a lot of weird shit like plants I find outside which varies from month to month
In college around "creatives", creatively bankrupt people always believed everything can be taught, and if they don't know something it's because no one has bothered/figured out how to teach them properly, or else it's some big secret that they are on the verge of hearing any minute.
Because of this they always have resentment and emotional instability related to their work, because they secretly suspect that some people "have it" and some people don't. Too bad they can't stop gigacoping and just accept that harsh reality, because then they might eventually ask ask "why and how do they have it" and actually learn something that wasn't rote memorization for once.
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No lie, if you wouldn't frick the paper bag your portrayal will be unflattering.
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The trick is to want to frick the paper bag so you know which aspects of the paper bag to minimize so as not to overly sexualize the paper bag and turn your art into cheap paper bag porn
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go on...
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Some people are able to display their intelligence by going on at length on a subject and never actually saying anything. This ability is most common in trades such as politics, public relations, and law. You have impressed me by being able to best them all, while still coming off as an absolute idiot.
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I'm stuck on the pot "detoxing" >:(
coffee depletes magnesium they said take lots of magnesium they said ๐
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Metis vs Episteme
And yes great creatives often struggle to explain how they do what they do, because so much of their knowledge doesn't come from textbooks or pre-determined flowcharts. It's why you have so many people that think they're smarter than the artist or author about their own works because in interviews and regular correspondence they just come off as regular, sometimes dumb sounding individuals. It's hard to put into conversational terms concepts that take several years and pages to manifest.
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this. literally this is why i was held back in 5th grade because I'm so great
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Why are so many neighbors necroposting to me today?
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https://stupidpol.site/h/lit/post/148881/are-you-an-aspiring-writer-marseychudnotes/3632688#context
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King tier post. I have his original writeup saved and screenshotted.
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All them words won't bring your pa back.
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YES IT WILL!
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we have this, its called 'neurodivergent people at film school'
they cannot write. they create parody of human consciousness without even trying.
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See also:
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https://x.com/dystopianya
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Finnegan's Wake might be up your alley. Claim to have read it like everyone else.
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Yeah Joyce is one of the authors I claim to like despite only having read Dubliners. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll read the wikipedia synopsis and start telling people it's my new favorite book.
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read the Wikipedia article out loud because that's how it was written to be read.
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there's no apostrophe in Finnegans Wake (nor in Howards End)
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https://chat.openai.com/
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Cormac McCarthy already made a career of that.
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Not quite that, but https://www.amazon.com/Legend-10-Elemental-Masters/dp/0615348130 is weird but surprisingly fun.
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Oh don't worry- we'll have plenty of examples of that when the SSRIs lobotomize the next generation and GPT bots with idea filters for no-no topics write all our literature for us
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yeah, reading fiction from a guy with no imagination sounds great.
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