#ask zipps | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

performativezippers · 6 months

Text

fanfic writer habits i've had to unlearn when trying to traditionally publish original work

a list in no particular order in case you're curious

starting sentences with "And"

so. many. one sentence. paragraphs. like, yeah, this is fun for The Drama but also...not how books work

using italics for emphasis--gotta use your WORDS, zippy

head hopping. rereading old fanfics i wrote, i'm like, WHOSE POV IS THIS?? HOW WOULD JANE KNOW MAURA THINKS THIS?? jesus christ keep your pov tight, zipperoni. i had to really learn this when i was revising my first book and my agent pointed it out.

Oh. Oh. some of these are good but too many are oh [failure]

Using scene breaks to skip through transitions instead of actually transitioning. this one i'm working on right now and it's haaaaaaard.

scene choreography. if someone is holding something, do they ever put it down? are they STILL HOLDING IT NOW, FIVE YEARS LATER?

overwriting vs using a lighter touch. "that's normal. that's casual. that's fine." sometimes that's great for emphasis, but if it was always just "that's casual. that's fine." the point comes across the same way, and doesn't hit you over the head with it as much.

introducing new characters and making them memorable, vivid, and not sucking up too much space when the reader doesn't recognize them (it's lena! i love her!)

pacing! things have to happen at specific times, the book needs to end at a specific time, the conflict needs to be sown here and explode there. making that all feel organic and honest for the characters while also conforming to the genre expectations that have very little flexibility (especially for a new author trying to convince publishers I know how to write books)

ending things at the right time. at first i wrote too far beyond the climax (classic fanfic problem) and then now i seem to have swung too far in the other direction and am ending too soon after it. but the good news is that my editor asked for an epilogue. you know what that means?? A WHOLE SHORT CHAPTER OF FLUFF Y'ALL!!!

Does this need to be a curse word or can it be a different word? i mean often it fucking needs to but not always!

Just cut out the word just almost all of the time even if it feels like it's just the right word; it will hurt just a little but you should just do it.

use as much sex as the plot needs. incorporate it into the plot. don't change the tone of the piece. make it stay in character and also be hot and also serve the narrative.

got questions? want examples? have thoughts? what other things have you caught yourself doing, or notice when you read through your old stuff?

#writing advice #writing original fiction #ask zipps

682 notes · View notes

hoofclid · 3 months

Note

Hey zipp would you ever open a detective agency?

#ask #zipp storm #hitch trailblazer #stormblazer

65 notes · View notes

mylittlefusions · 7 months

Note

DJ Pon-3 (G4) and Zipp Storm (G5) pls. (Any gen event)

They are definitely my favourite characters.

Also for non event fusions maybe rainbow dash and thorax from G4.

- @atomic-storm

you would think that she'd be the princess of kickflips or dubstep or something but she's actually the princess of ADHD and skinned knees. Thanks for the rec @atomic-storm !

#my little pony #mlp #my little fusions #mlp fusion #fusion #mlp ask blog #pony fusion #mlp:fim #fusion reblog #vinyl scratch #zipp #zipp storm #mlp g5 #g5 #mod mushroom

61 notes · View notes

picturesofponies · 1 year

Note

Some rainbow dash x Zipp storm please! Butch lesbians are <3

they go for a fly 😌💕 -- mod Charm

#mlp #mlpfim #mlp a new generation #mlp gen 5 #mlp gen 4 #rainbow dash #zipp storm #ask blog #ask #mlp art #lesbian #ship #butch #pony #mod charm

142 notes · View notes

ack-cough · 4 months

Text

3am redraw

It's a charming lil show

#oc #original #ask me anything #mlp au #mlp art #mlp gen 5 #mlp generation 5 #my little pony gen5 #my little pony tell your tale #mlp artwork #screen shot #im sorry for those who followed for dragon i swear ill draw the funny lizards soon!#zipp storm #sunny starscout #izzy moonbow

32 notes · View notes

ponyartistbrainiac · 1 year

Text

More digital paintings of mine some being heavily changed screencap redraws

107 notes · View notes

bananasmores · 2 years

Photo

i just think that he

#zipp storm #mlp g5 #i love his big goblin ears #ask box closed for a while for pride month

739 notes · View notes

angeltannis · 10 months

Text

Zipp Storm Autism Moments ????

#mlp #mlp g5 #zipp storm #mlp mym #my little pony #why is Zipp consistently the best character in this show #autistic coded. trans coded. what more could you ask for in a talking horse

48 notes · View notes

theanoninyourinbox · 9 months

Note

saw that you do hypofoals? im not that big into the mlp fandom but could i see zipp storm and derpy? or shining armour and mcintosh?? no pressure ofc, ur art is sick ^^

Breaking News - Local superstar hunk dating the gardening teacher!

#my art #ask answered #mlp #mlp my little pony #my little pony #hypofoals #ditzy doo #zipp storm #shining armor #big macintosh #not big into mlp myself but they are fun to draw

20 notes · View notes

underhoneyau · 7 months

Text

Part 21 Question from NagisaUmie: "Is there anything that happened that made you uncontrollably angry? or livid?"

Previous - Next

#honey sans #underhoney #underhoney au #ask underhoney #ask honey sans #honey zipp #error sans #angst

15 notes · View notes

performativezippers · 16 days

Note

Could you share your thoughts about beats in writing, please?

OKAY HERE WE GOOOOO this is going to be long but honestly it could have been so much longer so oops!

tl;dr: Beats are when things in the story happen.

So in a mystery novel, for example, when does the crime occur? when do they think they've solved it, but they're wrong? when do they realize they were wrong? when is their life in danger? when do they know who did it? when does the reader know who did it? when is the b-plot introduced and when it is resolved?

These typically happen in a similar place in each mystery novel, because of course it wouldn't make sense if it went: (1) you think you know who did it, and then (2) the crime is committed. Right? or if the very first person they suspected did it and they catch them immediately! that's never what happens because then what's the other 200 pages of the book?

so there is relative order, and you know it even as a passive reader, so then the question is how spaced out are those things throughout the fic or manuscript?

in a romance, it's the same. typically we see:

meet cute/first meeting/first canon meeting (the pilot) e.g. alex meets maggie at the airport and they fight over jurisdiction, or jane and maura work a case together as usual but it's the first one where jane is scared, aka a new start to their existing relationship

why aren't they together off the bat? (aka why is this a romance novel and not a romance sentence?) e.g. alex thinks she's straight and they're good friends, or maura dates elon musk types and jane is, you know, not that

complication e.g. alex comes out and then asks maggie to be her gf but maggie says no because alex is fresh off the boat, or maura starts dating jane's dumbass brother

false high (if there is a third act breakup, this is the happy time before that) e.g. alex and maggie get together and are very happy kissing the girls they want to kiss, or maura dumps tommy because her life with jane is more important to her

low point (this is often the 3rd act breakup, but doesn't have to be) e.g. alex freaks out when family conflicts with romance and dumps maggie, or jane kills maura's dad

KISS KISS KISS (aka the happily ever after) e.g. alex apologizes and sanvers stays together forever because the show was cancelled, or jane performs surgery on maura in the woods and then they kiss forever because the show was cancelled

SO, all of those things have to happen, and beats are when. you can of course put your plot points whenever you want them. it's your life and your art and your hobby!! have fun! but if you want to learn "craft" or whatever, or get traditionally published, you need to know when the conventional beats for your genre are, so that you can show you know what you're doing.

You've noticed beats even if you haven't thought about them. Sometimes a fanfic feels like it's going on too long or ending too abruptly, which is because they didn't place their beats carefully. Maybe it's taking forever to get past the set-up, and then the ending feels rushed. Maybe they got to the end of the plot but kept writing little one-shots or vignettes that don't have any tension in them. Almost all pacing problems can be solved by beats!

There are two main beat sheets I use for writing romcoms, Save the Cat and Romancing the Beat. There are book and workshops for both. My spreadsheet I use for every book uses Save the Cat beats, which was originally developed for screenplays. Here's a screenshot of that from the spreadsheet i use religiously:

I try to focus on

inciting incident at 0 or 10% (catalyst)

fun and games 25-50%

mid point high right around 50%

Things get bad from 50-75 until dark night of the soul from 75-80%

Redemption 80-90%, climax around 90%, final snippet less than 1,000 after end of climax

I do the math on my word count and ideal final word count to reverse outline where i am. in my book that's going to be published, i was really struggling with how to fill the 50-75% chunk; it was perfectly paced up until the shattering of the false high at 50%, and I knew what would happen after the dark night of the soul at 75%, but my project was to figure out how i could keep the plot driving forward and interesting while the MC's mood and situation tanked for a full 25% of the book. It turns out in the most recent draft, that stuff is 52-86%, and is stuff i really love. i was able to work in other plot points earlier that had time to breathe and got the space they needed in that portion, as well as find the balance between 20k of boring moping and maintaining tension while the romance was tanked.

it's very very hard to use beats in a fic you're posting as you're writing it (which is most of the fics i post), but even having it in the back of my mind helps. For the Ultimatum fic i'm writing and posting now, i knew before i started posting what the midpoint false high would be, plus the dark night of the soul, plus the endgame. it's important to make sure any b-plots, or in the case other couples, get their shit resolved around the same times as Kacy does, so that we don't need too much wrap up/exposition after the kacy climax.

what other questions or thoughts do you have about beats and plot pacing? send them to me!

#ask zipps #writing advice #writing fiction #writing fanfiction #writing original fiction #writing beats #save the cat #romancing the beat

26 notes · View notes

doodlemark · 2 years

Note

okokok what if— trans man zipp and hitch x zipp being a cute couple 👉👈

#mlp #my litte pony #mlp g5 #g5 #hitch trailblazer #zipp storm #my art #asks

689 notes · View notes

hoofclid · 11 months

Note

Please draw more Stormblazer, your art is so cute! <33

#ask #hitch trailblazer #zipp storm #stormblazer

72 notes · View notes

alienlowlife · 24 days

Note

hi! answer fast. what's your thought on trans people and trans headcanons? :)

trans ppl rock and I have a bunch of trans hcs myself, so yeah! I think trans headcanons are pretty cool too

#ask #my favorite trans hc is trixie #and zipp storm

3 notes · View notes

mymiraclebox · 11 months

Note

which one of your Kwamis took the most time to create?

This is actually a hard question to answer, because so many of my kwamis went through so many different stages. Take my boy Graay for example-- he was my first OC kwami, and originally he was a kwami of Balance in a trio with Tikki and Plagg, he was the "price" of the wish, essentially. He was always Graay the Wolf who loved grapes and hated humans, but he's gone through so many changes since my original idea of him.

Originally he was going to be in a North American, his Miraculous not part of any Box, going to be found by a young girl who eventually changes his perception of humans. Also the holder that betrayed him was actually going to be a good person who sacrificed his very soul to save Graay, but Graay didn't realize it until years later. But the Graay I have today is very different than my original Graay, who while I've always had a Wolf kwami from the beginning, so you can say he took the most time to create with how much of his story changed even if his basic name and design was always the same.

---

Another kwami who went through a lot of change was Yuume. Yuume was always going to be an evil Sheep of Dreams, but my first version of him was of an ancient kwami who never got a Miraculous which made him bitter, and used Dreams to communicate with humans to act out his evil schemes. Now Yuume is a young kwami who does have a Miraculous-- and he hates that fact.

---

Then you have someone like Zipp, who've redesigned three times now (third version hasn't been posted yet) and I'm still I'm not sure I'm happy with it-- so he may be going through many more changes.

Or you have Koree, who was originally a Raccoon of Darkness named Corri (who was named a variation of Dusk before that) who I kept abandoning, then bringing back, then changing, then changing again, etc.

Then there's others whose concepts I've had for a while-- since I've started watching Miraculous I wanted a Snake kwami named Habu; but my friends told me not to bother because there was going to be a Snake kwami later on (this was when I was still catching up with the show). But what do you know the idea stuck around anyways and now I have Habuu my Rattlesnake and I love her.

Finally there's kwamis that just took forever to come up with and get right. When I decided on the idea of Alpha Kwamis and wanted to to make Graay part of a duo, I knew I wanted a Chaos kwami to be his other half. But it took me forever to figure out what animal I wanted for this Chaos kwami. At one point they were going to be a Dinosaur (a raptor of some kind if I remember right) named Voidd, but then I dumped that idea very quickly. I went through a lot of different animal ideas, asking others for their opinion on a Chaos animal, etc. I was stumped on creating a Chaos kwami for a long time, until it hit me that the perfect animal was right there the whole time: the platypus. A semi-aquatic, egg laying mammal (of action) with venomous spurs, looks like a combination of several animals, lacks a stomach, basically "sweats" milk, glows under UV light, can sense electricity... and I could go on. xD But perfect Chaos animal.

From there everything about Prrysm fell into place. I wanted her to have a hard time maintaining a physical form, to glitch in and out of reality, to be a rainbow of colors (which is where she got her name), and yeah.

This turned out to be a bit of an essay. xD But these are the ways I've had kwamis take the "longest", all in different ways.

#anon ask #kwamis #kwami oc #oc kwami #graay #yuume #zipp #koree #prrysm

6 notes · View notes

thatshiiiny · 1 year

Note

I saw!! lmao like zipp.. girl what u doin...👀👀👀 I LOVE it thank you so much! also yeah I hope it doesn't stay a rarepair forever, that would be a tragedy since they're so cute in canon 😭😭 also your tags made me laugh omg truly I'm just so thankful for your contribution to this tiny ship 🙏(would love to see a sequel too 👀 but only if u want ofc)

the world needs more pippzipp propaganda

#my little pony #mlp #mlp g5 #pippzipp #pipp petals #zipp storm #doodle #my art #digital art #artists on tumblr #shipping #shipcest #finally figured out the tumblr safe tag #anon #ask #my headcanon is that zipp is super into pipp but is very embarrassed about it #pipp KNOWS and loves to tease #also sorry this took so long i havent been able to draw lately asdfghjk

10 notes · View notes