So I'm Writing A Soukoku Fanfic And-

"Have I met you anywhere?" Dazai smiles a smile of no personality. "No. This is the first time we met."

- The Day I Picked Up Dazai (Side B), Kafka Asagiri

List of describing exercises to help you improve your descriptions.

As I try to improve my technical writing skills, I've noticed my describing skills are pretty lacking. So, here is a list of description exercises.

Setting Description

Pick a setting and describe it in a way that evokes a positive emotion, then describe the same setting negatively.

Pick a setting and try to describe it by using all of your senses.

Find a setting you've written before and write 500 words of pure description on it.

Describe a tree from the point of view of a character that's feeling a strong emotion, whether they're depressed, frustrated, or excited.

Character Description

Pick one of your characters and write a 500 word description of them.

Write a 500 word description on how your character feels about different people.

Pick 3 different characters and write 200 word descriptions for each of their voices.

Write a 500 word description about how your character looks at different people.

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

「Hate You, Love You」 ʙᴜɴɢᴏᴜ sᴛʀᴀʏ ᴅᴏɢs ғᴀɴғɪᴄ

Short rewritten excerpt from Chapter 9:

sᴏᴜᴋᴏᴋᴜ ғʟᴜғғ

~𝙻.𝚁. 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚝

︾︾︾︾

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

"So, where did you go yesterday?" Chuuya asked through crunches as he ate some cereal. He looked up at the brunette across the small table from him, who began to grin. "Dazai?"

"Hehe, don't worry about it." Dazai continued to curl his lips as he took a bite out of a piece of toast.

"That's only making me worry about it more. Please, where were you?" Chuuya whined. He put his spoon down to look at Dazai, now getting concerned as well as annoyed.

"It top secret Chuu-Chuu!" Dazai yelled as he dramatically grabbed the butter knife and held it in the air as if to prove a point.

"Don't call me that and answer my question, jackass."

Dazai dramatically gasped. "My heart! I've been wounded! How could you call me such a foul name!" Dazai grabbed his chest as he flopped back in his chair, and Chuuya did everything he could to keep himself from slamming his own face onto the table and into his food, he had just gotten out of the shower after all.

"Damn it Dazai, just tell me." Chuuya said with a sigh as he rubbed his temples, and wondered how the hell he fell for someone like Dazai.

"Fine fine." Dazai said as he calmly sat back down like a normal person, putting the jam covered toast down on the elegant plate in front of him. "I was doing some research." Chuuya raised a suspicious eyebrow and questioned, "About...?"

Dazai then dramatically threw his arms in the air as if what we was about to say was the best, most revelitional thing ever. "I wanted to find a way to make my Chuu-Chuu happy! And I found it!"

Chuuya sat up straight and looked at Dazai attentively, now more curious and slightly confused than anything. He knew the younger man wouldn't stop with the nickname, and that wasn't the battle he was choosing to fight at this moment. "Go on...." He prompted tentatively.

"One moment!" Dazai sang as he got up and went to the fridge, leaving Chuuya unable to see what he was doing behind the silver insulated refrigerator door, but he didn't take long. As he walked back to the small table, he held whatever he grabbed behind his back, and as his wicked grin grew, so did Chuuya's suspicion. "This!" Dazai said as he slammed the milk carton he was hiding behind his back down on the table. "If my Chibi drink's some of this every day, he'll get taller, and he'll be happier!"

Chuuya's aura grew dark as he slowly stood up, his piercing blue eyes downcast and hidden from sight. His silk purple robe began to float slightly with a scarlet hue as he activated his ability. The spoon in his hand snapped in half with a grudge before it flew towards Dazai with such force, that after Dazai smoothly dodged it, it stuck at least half way into the wall. "You little shit!" The redhead snarled through gritted teeth as he threw the milk at Dazai, and again Dazai dodged and it, making a mess on Chuuya's sparkling kitchen floor.

The brunette began running to avoid Chuuya's wrath, laughing all the while. "Haha, no~ you're the little one! AHH- ANGRY CHIBI!"

"GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE!!" Chuuya screamed full of rage, while arming himself with more food floating behind him like bullets aimed directly at the cackling brunette as he ran around, dodging the oncoming assault of dairy, grain, and produce based bullet hell attacks.

There are two types of writers:

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

2. 'I didn't account for the rotation of the planet and how that affects the constalations while my characters stargazed at different times of year, I have failed as a writer, and this entire thing is trash'

There's 15 books on there now, with 5 of them being random cook books.

I really hope the rightful authors of those books discover this problem ASAP.

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

“When I describe Dazai to the staff, there is a phrase that I always use, “an unworldly being with a mental age of two thousand years.” Dazai has far surpassed the mental dimension that human can reach, thus no-one can even tell if the emotions he shows are the real things or not.

There are rare moments when that Dazai shows his very “human” side. That is when he talks to another superhuman who is on the same level with him. The other is when he talks about his old friend who has passed.

This is the scene when Kyouka wondered “Maybe I’m, after all, just a murderer at heart.” and refused to be saved. And Dazai’s reaction to that. When he said “Don’t give me any of that!” here, he really meant it. That was an outburst from Dazai, as a 22-year-old boy, in this scene.”

(Bungou Stray Dogs Chapter 35 - Easygoingscan’s version)

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TN: I went to the BSD exhibition in Ikebukuro today and they have Asagiri’s comments on each character and their important scene, that I find very nice so I’m gonna find time to translate them little by little.

Happy 38th Birthday to Dazai Osamu's Seiyuu (Voice Actor) Mamoru Miyano 🎉🎉🎉

You wait and wait for happiness, and when finally you can't bear it any longer, you rush out of the house, only to hear later that a marvelous happiness arrived the following day at the home you had abandoned, and now it was too late. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late.

Dazai Osamu, Schoolgirl