If you’re just looking to write for practice and to exercise your imagination muscles, there are prompts lists all over the internet you could pick from and just force something out for the sake of self-critique.

You could find a painting or photo you really like and challenge yourself to translate the image to a linguistic form, then give your description to someone else without showing them the image to see if you were able to get them to imagine something close to the original source.

Pick your favorite song or album, write what you think it’s about—that could easily turn into an entire story.

If you’re not looking for prompts or exercises, but want something substantial to come out -

Write about yourself, your frustration with creativity, what it’s like to wish you were loved enough by something to make you put pen to paper and create. Personally, I have to mentally spiral a little to write something, so I intentionally rummage through my brain for crumbs of trauma to feed on lol. Maybe, like me, you’re uncomfortable with being comfortable. Maybe you have some deep seated urge to be bothered because you’re scared of placidity, you’re the type of person who seeks motivation out of distress, you require the structure of disturbance because you don’t truly believe in peace and quiet. Dead air is more threatening than the threat of death.

Idk, scare yourself a little and start fighting or flighting; whatever you do, don’t freeze (unless the fear of freezing is inspirational, of course.)

Write about what you wish your childhood was like. Write about a future you know you’ll never have. Write about something you didn’t know you needed till it was too late. Mourn the impossible and unreachable by writing it into existence. Go to bed with yourself, snuggle in close to your own heart, make it feel safe enough to spill all of its guilt, fear, loneliness, love, grief, and then break it. Your brain can sew it back up with a story.

Or you could try making a new Pinterest board.

Just like a real person; I have to get to know them first.

Mental rehearsal / Mentally rehearsed?

I'm not sure how much this will help, but you could look into terms used in the story of James Stockdale, who was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for over seven years. During his captivity, he used mental exercises to maintain his sanity and resilience. One of the mental techniques he employed was visualizing playing perfect rounds of golf, imagining every shot in detail. I'm pretty sure the story concludes with him playing a crazy good game his first time back after prison.

I make “language guides” for my primary characters. It includes words, terms, and phrases that the character would use a lot, would never use, words/phrases that are used exclusively by that character, their default curse words (if they use them at all), default greetings (hi, hey, what’s up), default filler words (um, I mean, well, so like,)

There are other things that guide their speech too depending on the character personality:

Are they more of a question asker or a statement maker?

Are they instigating? Mediating? Passive conversationalist?

How well mannered are they? How well tempered are they?

What language habits do they share or pick up from their friends? What about family?

Regional language and slang plays a huge role especially with characters based in a non-fictional culture

It can also help to make note of how the characters are supposed to be feeling as a conversation starts, the point where their emotions change, and where they’ll end up emotionally at the end of the conversation. If you know that, you can shape their speech patterns and language to suit their personality according to how the character acts in that particular headspace.

That’s what they say, then there’s also how they say it. Delivery all depends on character and context though, there isn’t a real formula for it you just have to feel confident that you know your characters well enough.

I can’t say the word anonymity unless I’m reading it and sounding it out.

I also have heard a lot people messing up “pacific” and muddling it with “specific” in various ways

I was always under the impression that Dumbledore’s WANTED everything to play out (almost exactly) as it did because he wanted Voldemort to expose himself to the public so people couldn’t be in denial any longer.

The prophecy hardly mattered, Dumbledore just had the order guarding it to make Voldemort think there was something worth guarding, and didn’t tell Harry that because he was using Harry’s permeable child brain as Voldemort-bait.

I know Snape was “supposed” to teach Harry how to block his mind off, but like? Was he? Or was that just a little investigation into how the connection worked between Harry and Voldemort?

Meanwhile, Dumbledore already knows the prophecy this whole time, he’s operating on another level from literally everyone else, playing God, and Sirius is just collateral.

Am I mixed up somewhere?

For me it’s the banter. I love reading it, I love writing it, I can’t imagine any sort of positive relationship without it.

And also the complete opposite, I need some good arguments. Not the easily solvable and forgiving ‘miscommunication’ type, but the type that actually brings into question the whole relationship and challenges the compatibility between the characters.

Just my opinion — metaphors hit the best (or only hit at all) when they're alluding to a higher central theme and/or main idea.

Think of the scene and character at surface level, but then, think about what you're trying to tell the reader about the scene/character in that specific part of the story.

For example, let's say our story's about "Character learning to appreciate their individuality when forced to fit in somewhere new." That's the main idea. The themes could be anything, but for sake of example, let's say we have 'fear of vulnerability' as a forwardmost theme in the beginning.

Character walks into a new setting, feeling slightly anxious, torn between presenting their typical guarded and contrived (maybe even falsified) version of themselves, or taking this blank slate as an opportunity to try and be more sincere, maybe even vulnerable for a change.

With that blurb alone, we can pick out imagery to go along with the character's inner-turmoil.

Character feels anxious & torn :

Character walks up the front steps. They're fidgeting, tearing at a loose thread on the hem of their shirt. During the mindless picking, the thread comes undone and the seam lifts up in an unsightly way. Character silently swears at themselves. Of course they're already unraveling; it starts with the shirt cuff, one thing leads to another, and next thing you know you're cornered in conversation, revealing details of how you got fired for theft six jobs ago. No matter how much Character wanted to turn back down the steps and run, all they could do is roll up their frayed sleeves and make sure, at the very least, they managed to keep their lips sewn shut.

Here, the character has literally torn and unraveled something, while being figuratively torn about how much they, themselves, should unravel. You can tell they're anxious because they're fidgeting.

Character faced with an opportunity to change — we can play off the common phrase 'turning a new leaf':

A chilly October breeze rustles through the trees as Character walks up the front steps. Fallen aspen leaves had gathered in the entry, obscuring the building's welcome mat. They swirl in a flicker of yellow and green, catching a warm gust from inside as the door is swung open.

In general, Autumn is a season of change, so it's a good place to begin when the character is embarking on a difficult transition. Note that yellow typically conveys caution, where as green shows a safety to proceed. The welcome mat being obscured by these dual tones can be taken as a literal metaphor, as in 'it's unclear whether or not I'm welcome here', and figuratively, 'my internal strife with personal vulnerability is obscuring the fact that I am welcome here. I fail to see I am my own worst enemy; perhaps out of anxiety relating to past experiences, I am the one preventing myself from feeling welcomed.

Also, Character walks from chilled outdoor breeze, into warm inside air, marking the start of transition from their 'cold' personality, to a thawed out version. Once inside, a person would eventually shed layers—of both clothes and guardedness—in the warmth, and become comfortable with being seen.

In no way do I think every line needs to pack subtext, but this is just random example of how having a theme to refer to can make creating metaphors much easier and more impactful. But not everything needs to mean something bigger or deeper. Sometimes things are just enough at face-value (and ironically, you could probably make a whole metaphor out of that).

Personally, this is why I like to outline in considerable detail. I basically write the story entirely in its subtext to start so that I can rely on it to direct the plot, ensuring it aligns with the main idea, the themes, all the way down to details of phrasing, word choice, and shifts in tone as the story develops.

I don't think you have to omit those words entirely, but rather, approach the description differently.

Instead of 'the enigmatic woman whom he clearly adored.' Maybe try something like '[Character] clearly adored the enigmatic woman; since arrival, he'd done nothing but dote on her, smiling and nodding at every sentence she spoke as though it were his God-given task, his only ticket to Heaven.'

You can of course cut out the first portion of that description altogether and still get the point across, but imo, if you're illustrating a particularly significant point that the rest of the scene or story hinges on, it doesn't hurt to show AND tell every now and again.

*Editing to add that the significant point in the above instance would not be the things that make something obvious. Instead, the significance would need to lie with the fact that something is obvious at all. The obviousness would likely then relate to something larger, and one could argue that you would then effectively be 'showing' the Something Larger via the 'telling' of Perceiving Something As Obvious.

It also depends on your narration style and the voice you're developed for the POV character. If the character is the type of person to draw quick conclusions (whether they're accurate or not is a different discussion) then using words like 'obviously' and 'clearly' would feel fitting, you just have to make sure you're including WHY it's obvious/clear to your character so that the reader is kept informed about the goings-on of the scene.

"I don't care"

Pacifying or Appeasing — if the goal is to please the person you're talking to.

Deceiving — if the goal is simply to make them think you're being productive when you're not.

Evading — if the goal to avoid a clear answer altogether so that the person leaves you alone. Trouble with this one is that you wouldn't really be evading "them" as in "the person", so much as you'd be evading the person's question.

Yes, I'd say this but "evading" in the context of OP's example

I like to make a list of linguistic choices for my characters so that I’m consistent with establishing the way they talk without going overboard or accidentally having character voices “bleed into” one another.

I’ll have a list of words/terms/phrases always used/default use, sometimes used, and never used (usually in contrast with another character who DOES use those words.)

So for a southern person, I might say “y’all” is always used, whereas “you guys” is never. An older person might even say “y’uns” and I can’t say for sure what that’s a contraction of, but it just is lol.

Another example could be “I’d reckon I oughta” (default), “I’ll be fixing to” (sometimes), “I guess I should” (never) — all these phrases can convey the idea that someone’s preparing to act in a certain way, but two hold true to the accent, and one, I’d reckon y’oughta steer clear of.

Leads into another point, some words tend to make contractions by default in southern accents. “You” is definitely one of them. You could list a rule that your character defaults to “you” to simply “y’[insert following word]”, and never fully enunciates “you”, but if it falls at the end of a sentence they might say “ya” (sounds more like “yuh”). You’re definitely on the right track with dropping the G like you said in your post.

After you have some basic rules down that you stick with, I think the other dialogue will naturally be read in the intended accent without you having to overthink changes in spelling or compromising the comprehension of the dialogue. I’d focus on phrases, terminology, and syntax over anything.

Also the way tenses are utilized can change based on accent, like southern people might default to present tense even when referring to the past. For example, someone might ask the southern person “What did he tell you?” And they could respond, “He don’t know a damn thing.” Or “Honey, he ain’t got the slightest.” VS simply, “He didn’t tell me anything.”

I recommend watching videos of people from the region your character is from and taking note of their phrases and speech. Try to be as accurate to time period and age of person as possible too because accent can change a ton even from one side of town to another. For example, my grandparents (born around 1935-1945) are from eastern Tennessee and have devastatingly thick accents and very specific phrasing when they talk. People born two generations below them in the same city share a lot of phrases but don’t sound nearly as cartoonishly Southern until you get to more rural areas.

It depends on what kind of bad it is. Like if it’s NOT boring, I just hate the premise, or the way themes are being portrayed, or find the characters shallow and detestable, I think I can get past that and finish it the same way I’d be curious to finish a terrible Hallmark movie.

If the book is boring me, I’m not gonna get past the first 5 chapters.

It’s a huge shame when the first half of the book is good though, and the second isn’t. In that situation I’d probably start skimming until something catches my attention again, if I’m being honest.

Immortal child named Corolla

FIRST THING: watch transgroom on youtube, go through their poodle videos and pick one that has a result that seems doable (avoid the second puppy clip ones; even though they look cute and fluffy, they aren't super simple). Watch the video religiously on repeat, including as you are grooming, until you've practically memorized it word for word. She has detailed videos on poodle face and feet as well that I'd recommend, even though she goes over them in the full body groom videos too. You WILL be good at grooming your dog eventually if you do exactly as Kitty says. I highly recommend you get snap on combs like she uses too.

She has a video posted 2 months ago on a poodle that says "efficient and low maintenance" — I haven't watched it, but it sounds like a really good place to start!

Secondly, how you did really depends on what you're goin for. It's a groom. The dog is clean, looks combed well enough. Otherwise it's honestly a sub-par attempt but that's alright; you didn't do any damage so you're fine and will do better next time—which, based on how much hair you left on the dog, you could start 'next time' any minute now!

I feel like I get a new "this is the best book ever" all the time, but I think the first book I really loved because I felt like I understood more than the surface level story was White Fang - Jack London.

My current "best book ever" is Walking on Glass - Iain Banks. Pretty odd, convoluted premise, but it's the first book I've read in years that had me genuinely slack jawed at the end, and I started paging back through, rereading things and re-understanding things the second I was finished.

I changed the surname of my MC in my story like 3 times now and finally landed on one that fits. I just did the find and replace method.

I don't think I could accept the "I can't be a perfectionist" ideology lol. If I don't feel right about something, I'm GOING to change it, it's simply a matter of when and what to. In the future, if I'm feeling not 100% about a name, I'd probably highlight it in my document AND any references to the name (idk what, but like if I mention the number of characters in a name, or the first letter, any descriptors like that). I'd still do my best to pick one though instead of using a throwaway name. At least if I understand my intention behind what I choose, there's a chance I'll come around to it.

Even if I know the exact requirements for a name that I'm looking for and pick one that meets them, I still sometimes get an ick after picking. I think it's mainly when I can't imagine other characters saying the name, even if I can imagine the character saying their own name.

Like, have you ever named a dog, loved the name, but still feel awkward yelling it too loudly at the park? It's like that, lol

Jiminy Cricket

Yeah I guess that’s how I missed it! The book I bought was a digital off the Apple Bookstore. Not THAT old either (2008). I suppose there’s not much of a reason to bother with digital stuff unless it’s being marketed to American audiences

Me when I don’t shave my pubes for too many winter weeks

I think I get stuck editing instead of going forward when I’m too focused on forming real, potentially final content, and not just typing what I’m thinking.

I don’t really have a middle ground between “brain dump” and “revolutionary prose”, so if it’s dump time, then it’s dump time. I don’t even write with any intention of it being usable, it’s more like me telling my future self what’s going to happen in the chapter, and often I’ll get a good chunk of dialogue randomly come to mind, which sometimes expands into fully developed ideas, but that’s pure luck. It’s more like script writing.

I’ll type something like “Chapter opens with XYZ characters at [location] and they’re doing [actions].”

Then I’ll describe (to myself, essentially) how the characters are interacting, what their motives are, their internal reactions to things. These are often very idiotic bastardized versions of character thoughts, like I recently noted “character A is like, :///// fuck“

I always include a few key points that make the intention of the chapter known, like, “this chapter is supposed to reveal/foreshadow/portray XYZ so that [whatever reasoning].

The only purpose this serves is for ME knowing what I need to know in order to keep going until I get to a chapter that I’m actually inspired to write for real. I will go back to those old bastard chapters when the inspiration for them hits me later. You could call it the “worst first draft ever” technique, or, contrarily, the “most detailed outline ever” technique

Thank you! It’s definitely the most creative groom I’ve done so far, and I’m LOVING the practicality of (basically) no ear hair or neck hair without going full German or sporting clip

Thank you !!

Thank you!