Here’s Lapis! Technically It’s Her In My Glitch Au But Since We Don’t Have Context Yet I’ll Just

Remember: the more difficult you make it for them to realize a report is false, the more useless you make the portal.

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

Finally got around to redoing all the Eras

(except for the Inevitable shhhhhhhh the giant whale just wouldn’t fit)

Sometimes I forget how much they’ve changed and how much I’ve improved art-wise from the first compilation page from over a year ago

How to Make Readers Care About Your Plot

It's a funny little trick, really. Because the truth is readers don’t care about your plot.

They care about how your plot affects your characters. (Ah ha!)

You can have as many betrayals, breakups, fights, CIA conspiracies, evil warlords, double-crossings, sudden bouts of amnesia, comas, and flaming meteors racing directly toward Manhattan as you want.

But if readers don’t understand how those events will impact:

A character they care about

That character’s goal

The consequences of the event, whether positive or devastating

…then you may as well be shooting off firecrackers in an empty gymnasium.

Why Plot Without Character Falls Flat

Here’s an example:

A school burns down. Oh my god, the flames! The carnage! The dead and injured children! There are police everywhere—total chaos!

And your main character? Standing on the sidewalk, watching and crying.

Dramatic? Sure. But does the reader care? Not really. There’s no emotional connection, so it's basically a meaningless plot point.

Plot + Character Impact = Reader Investment

Now, let’s take the same event but give it stakes.

Meet Mary Ann. Mary Ann has been a middle school teacher for 25 years. This year, she gets a new student—Indigo. An unusual girl with clear troubles at home and a habit of burning things.

Mary Ann defends Indigo when the school administration wants to expel her, citing safety concerns. Mary Ann sees something familiar in Indigo—something that reminds her of her own sister, who was institutionalized as a child.

One day, Indigo explodes in rage, screaming, “Burn it down! I’ll burn this whole place down!”

Mary Ann is shaken. This isn’t just defiance—this is a real threat. She nearly sides with the administration but, haunted by her sister’s fate, fights for Indigo’s second chance.

Indigo is placed in counseling. A compromise that will hopefully solve the problem.

That night, Mary Ann sleeps soundly. She did the right thing. Didn’t she? But the next morning, on her drive to school, the radio blares an emergency bulletin. There's a fire at the school.

Mary Ann speeds through red lights. Her stomach twists. When she arrives… it’s too late.

Oh my god, the flames! The carnage! The dead and injured children!

The exact same plot point—but now it matters.

How to Make Your Plot Matter to Readers

The secret? Before you set something on fire (literally or figuratively), give your character—and thus your reader—a stake in the outcome.

1. Tie Events to Character Desires and Fears.

Why does this event matter to this character?

How does it challenge their values, beliefs, or personal history?

2. Make the Conflict Personal.

The fire isn’t just a disaster—it’s a gut-punch because Mary Ann fought for Indigo.

The outcome isn’t just tragic—it’s haunted by Mary Ann’s past regrets.

3. Show Consequences.

Readers need to feel what’s at stake before, during, and after the event.

The weight of the aftermath makes the plot stick in the reader’s mind.

The result? Higher engagement, deeper emotional connection, and a plot that actually matters.

Summary: It’s Not About the Events—It’s About the Impact on Your Characters

I used a fire in this example, but this applies to any plot development.

Even something subtle—a whispered secret, an unread letter, a missed train—can have devastating emotional weight if it affects your character in a meaningful way.

Make your readers care about your plot by making your character care about it first.

Hope this helps!

/ / / / /

@theliteraryarchitect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler, a writer and developmental editor. For more writing help, download my Free Resource Library for Fiction Writers, join my email list, or check out my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

i loved your recent answer about pacing it was so helpful! it wasn’t my question but the advice was brilliant! not sure if i’ve just missed it but do you have a post on showing not telling? i’m not great with exposition and writing descriptions about things that matter in a scene! thank you :)

Guide: Showing vs Telling

I talk a lot about showing vs telling but I don't have a whole post about it, so here goes! ♥

"Showing vs telling" is one of those phrases that strikes fear into the hearts of newer writers, but it's actually very simple and nothing to worry about.

This quote, which is paraphrased from something once said by writer Anton Chekhov, is the absolute best illustration of showing vs telling.

...

Telling: Sally walked outside and saw the moon was shining.

Showing: Sally walked outside and carefully stepped over the puddles of moonlight left behind by the evening's rainstorm.

...

Telling: It was a long walk to the road.

Showing: Sally skirted the shadows as she traversed the muddy distance between the house and the road.

...

Telling: Sally was mad.

Showing: She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth, her nostrils flaring as her mind raced through every mean word Harold had said.

...

Humans are pretty good at interpreting sensory details. If it's night and we see light shining in a puddle, we know that light is coming either from the moon or an artificial light. We can look up in the sky and see whether it's the moon or whether there's an artificial light nearby. If we suddenly find ourselves standing in a forest and hear wolves howling nearby, we can probably guess we're in a remote location and are possibly in danger. If we go outside and smell wood burning and see black smoke, we can guess there's a fire. If it's cold outside and there are homes with fireplaces nearby, we might assume someone has a nice fire going in their fireplace. If we're in the middle of nowhere, we might guess it's a campfire. If it's the middle of summer, we might worry that there's a wildfire or wonder if a neighbor is burning yard waste.

Showing vs telling is all about taking the direct thing you want to tell the reader--Sally was mad--and thinking about the sensory details that would illustrate that thing for the reader. What can be seen? What can be heard? What can be smelled? What can be tasted? What can be felt?

You don't have to pull every sense into your description, though. Only the ones that best convey the thing you're trying to convey. In the case of "Sally was mad..."

What can we see? Her fists are clenched, her jaw is tight, her nostrils are flaring.

What can we hear? She is grunting, spitting through her teeth when she speaks, she's breathing heavily.

What can we smell? Well, in the case of anger, we generally don't smell anything. Though, if the thing she's angry about has any smells associated with it--like being mad about burning some cookies--that is certainly something to consider.

What can we taste? A third-party observer might not taste anything, but Sally might taste the char of the burned cookies. Or she might taste bile in her throat that resulted from anger-related stomach upset.

What can we feel? Again, a third-party observer might not feel anything associated with someone's anger--unless it's the vibration of a tapping foot of the hot breath of someone's angry words--but Sally might feel her heart racing or heat rising into her cheeks. She might feel the grit of the burned cookies in her mouth.

Showing vs telling means looking at those possibilities and choosing a few that can be combined to create the impression you want to give.

However, sometimes--for the sake of pacing, scene transitions, exposition following a time jump, and for other reasons, telling can actually be the better choice.

Here are some situations where telling is better than showing:

1) When something happened but it isn’t critical for the readers to see the thing actually play out. If the burned cookies played only a small role in Sally's anger, it may not be important to show how the burned cookies affected her. It might just be better to say, "The burned cookies only added to Sally's fury."

2) When clarifying less important things that happened during a “time skip.” If the situation that caused Sally's anger happened off the page, that might be a good time to tell rather than show. Otherwise, you have to do a little flashback to show the thing happening, but that might not make sense to do, especially if the thing that happened wasn't as important as the fact that she's in a bad mood when the new chapter begins.

3) When you need to make a long conversation, speech, or description a little bit shorter. The last thing you want to do is overwhelm your reader with page after page of description, so sometimes it makes more sense to tell things directly to the reader rather than to show them. Any time you get to something that can be told or shown, ask yourself if this is an opportunity to bring some description into the story, or whether "showing" the thing would slow things down or clutter up a section that already has a lot of description.

4) When you need to deliver back story or other important information. If Sally being angry about the cookies preceded an event that was important to her backstory, and this story is being told by one of Sally's acquaintances to another character in the story, this might be a time when it's better to just say, "She was angry about some burned cookies, and that's why she stormed into the village and accidentally bumped into Lord Rotherwell." Otherwise, you once again get into sort of a flashback type situation, which might work in some backstory explanations but not others.

I hope that helps! :)

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thanks for the tag :) I love talking about my top songs

T - the exit by conan gray

o - our lady of the underground from hadestown

t - the frost by mitski

a - alley rose by conan gray

l - lovesick by laufey

l - lost! from the lightning thief

y - your best american girl by mitski

N - not strong enough by boygenius

o - only tea from the great gatsby musical

t - the other side from the greatest showman

O - only us from dear evan hansen

b - boy toy by ricky montgomery

s - scylla from epic

e - evangeline by chloe ament

s - suffering from epic

s - santa fe from newsies

e -

d - disaster by conan gray

S - stay soft by mitski

p - promises from hadestown

a - a loving feeling by mitski

d - done for from epic

e -

s - someone you like by the girl and the dreamcatcher

@rosy-cozy-radio

URL Song Game with a twist!

Write down your url only using songs from your Top Songs of 2024 playlist and tag as many people as the letters in your url

thanks for the tag @ecstarry & @v7lgar <3

d - dark signs by sleep token

o - overcompensate by twenty one pilots

o - obsessed by sophie powers

m - my year in lists by los campesinos!

e - earned it by the weekend

d - die4u by bring me the horizon

t - the othering by sleep token

o -

k - kryptonite by call me karizma

i - in media res by los campesinos!

l - like that by sleep token

l - levitate by sleep token

np tag : @honeybcj @godsofwoes @dracure @reformedpeasant @thorn-rosed and who ever else

i just. i just think he's neat

erin/the void dragon is from @comicaurora

free resources to write a novel in 2024

hello hello! it's me, rach!

as the new year approaches, many of us set goals and resolutions - myself included. one of my goals for 2024 is to write a novel (I've been procrastinating on this for quite a long time now). i assume that some of you might have the same goal, that's why I'm writing this post today.

over 2023 i've been releasing some freebies for authors just like me, so I thought I could compile my favorites in this post. hope you find this useful :)

1) the writer's workbook

this workbook has over 60 exercises to help you develop characters, scenarios, etc. if you're ever stuck, I'm pretty sure this workbook will be your best friend.

2) author's corner (notion template)

this is the most downloaded freebie in my shop! it is a notion dashboard with everything you need to organize your writing and has some templates included (like scrivener)!!

3) another notion template

this one has two themes you can choose from: cottage-core and dark academia. they're very similar to the previous template, but this one is more recent and I added some new features. feel free to explore both and pick the one you like the most.

4) the author's journal

this is a cute printable with 20 pages that will help you stay on track and manage your social media accounts as a writer who shares their work online. you can also register what you're currently writing and your personal research and resources.

5) plan your book printable

this is a 6-page printable for you to fill out and plan your book easily and effectively.

6) excel sheet to organize tasks & word-count

this is a simple excel sheet, but it is very effective for keeping track of your tasks & word-count of your novels. also, it is 100% customizable to your liking!

that's all for now! feel free to explore my gumroad shop where I have plenty of freebies to grab! also, don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss any opportunity to get a goodie for free :)

hope this post was useful!

have a nice day,

rach

Rainbow Crates tsats cover!

sleeve was done by @alessiajontrunfio !

card was drawn by @velinxi !