A NYC grad student working on food stamps for her thesis has released a free cookbook for those living on $4/day.
SIG NAL BOO OO OO OOOST
hello
oooooh this is so nice!
I believe it’s important to eat well, even when you’re strapped for cash. It’s good for your health and energy! This cookbook is full of delicious and healthy recipes, the ingredients of which are fairly inexpensive.
I ACKNOWLEDGE THIS WOMAN AS A FELLOW WARRIOR AND A FANTASTIC HUMAN BEING.
Boost so hard. Feeding yourself well is a challenge when you”ve got little income
I HAVE BEEN USING THIS COOKBOOK FOR MONTHS AND IT’S AMAZING 100/10 RECOMMENDING EVERYWHERE
(just to give you an idea, my food budget is 30 euro/week at most [about $38] and I have to maintain a healthy diet due to weird medication side-effects and yeah, basically this book is a lifesaver if you’re broke but need to watch what you’re eating)
Reblog to save a life. Because it’s easy to find food for $4/day, but most of it tends to be garden variety junkfood
(The pdf is free, I repeat, the pdf is free)
A really good source for meals that are affordable but quality.
I think what I hate more than grittiness (and I have gone on at length about that, about creating worlds where realism is synonymous with unpleasantness and how much I dislike it) is the unnatural dichotomy between things that are bad and things that are wholesome. Things that are unwholesome can still be good things, fun and happy things. Darkness and dirt don’t have to be gritty, they don’t have to be synonymous with unpleasantness and pain. Maybe there can be bad things in the shadows, but that’s where ferns grow. There is this thing in fiction where a good childhood is a wholesome childhood, and things that aren’t wholesome become the markers of a bad one. Living in a trailer park where the bugs get in through your windows and you bring your dad a beer when he asks, none of those are wholesome things. But they can be good things, if you live next door to all your best friends and you take the duct tape off the window screens to let the fireflies in and you like to listen to your dad and his friends shoot the shit so he asks you to bring him a drink because he knows that you like to feel helpful while you’re eavesdropping on conversations you barely understand about his job that you definitely don’t understand. Those things aren’t gritty and unpleasant. Sometimes your bad memories are in suburbs and they smell like lemon-scented bleach; sometimes your good memories are all tied up in bonfires and the smell of cigarettes and grown-ups swearing.
2. Agonized: as if in pain or tormented 3. Alluring:
powerfully and mysteriously attractive or fascinating; seductive
4. Appealing: attractive, in the sense of encouraging goodwill and/or interest 5. Beatific:
bestowing bliss, blessings, happiness
6. Bilious:
spiteful; bad-tempered
7. Black:
gloomy, pessimistic, dismal
8. Bleak:
without hope or encouragement; depressing; dreary
9. Blinking: surprise, or lack of concern 10. Blissful: showing a state of happiness or divine contentment 11. Blithe: carefree, lighthearted, or heedlessly indifferent 12. Brooding:
showing unhappiness of thought or appears darkly menacing
13. Bug-eyed: frightened or surprised, having the eyes bulging
14. Chagrined: humiliated or disappointed 15. Cheeky:
impudent or irreverent, typically in an endearing or amusing way
16. Cheerless:
joyless, depressing
17. Choleric: hot-tempered, irate 18. Coy:
shyness or modesty that is intended to be alluring 19. Crestfallen:
dejected, dispirited, discouraged
20. Darkly:
vaguely threatening or menacing manner
21. Deadpan:
deliberately impassive or expressionless
22. Dejected: downcast, depressed, dispirited
23. Derisive:
expressing contempt or ridicule
24. Despondent:
showing profound hopelessness, discouragement, or gloom
25. Doleful:
expressing sorrow, mournful 26. Dour:
relentlessly severe, stern, or gloomy in manner or appearance
27. Downcast: low in spirit 28. Dreamy:
pleasant, peaceful, and relaxing
29. Ecstatic:
in a state of ecstasy, full of joy, rapturous:
30. Etched: a feeling clearly visible on someone’s face
31. Faint: cowardly, weak, or barely perceptible 32. Fixed:
set or intent upon something; steadily directed
33. Furtive:
suggestive of guilty nervousness
34. Gazing:
look intently, especially in admiration, surprise, or thought
35. Glancing:
to look quickly or briefly
36. Glaring:
having a fixed look of hostility, fierceness, or anger
37. Glazed:
a fixed, dazed, or lifeless expression
38. Gloomy:
filled with or showing gloom; sad, dejected, or melancholy.
39. Glowering:
sullen dislike, discontent, or anger 40. Glowing:
showing the radiance of health, excitement
41. Grim: very serious or gloomy
42. Grave:
something that is serious or doing something in a solemn manner
43. Haunted:
showing signs of mental anguish or torment
44. Hopeless: depressed by a lack of encouragement or optimism 45. Hostile: aggressively angry, intimidating, unfriendly 46. Hunted:
appearing worn or harassed as if one is being pursued.
This has been highly requested and a long time coming and finally, ‘tis done. I hope this proves useful to you. Enjoy!
Writing Quality Conversation
Dialogue Should Serve A Purpose
All pieces of dialogue in your story should serve a purpose. You just have to train your writer brain to ask itself what it accomplishes. Here are some examples of how dialogue functions:
Dialogue Is Not A Loophole To Tell Instead Of Show
You should not be using dialogue as a way to tell the reader what’s going on or how the setting looks or anything that is usually done in a narrative form. Trying to use dialogue as a way to get out of concisely describing the situation to the reader in an artistic and eloquent way is lazy and once you start, you start to believe you can get away with it more and more. Don’t let that slippery slope get you.
Be Inspired By Real Conversation, Don’t Mimic It
The truth is, your reader will not fault you for leaving out the “um..”s and the “eh..”s and the weird vocal mannerisms that you have assigned to your characters. Leave those for the movie adaptation. Instead, if you character is stopped in the middle of a statement, use “but he-” rather than “bu-” because that will read strangely in your reader’s head and stall them in the process, killing he momentum of the conversation.
If You’re Stuck With A Piece Of Dialogue, Read It Aloud
As a writer, you are also an actor, and if you are stuck on a line and need to act it out a few different ways to match one to your scene, so be it. Say it loudly, say it gravely, say it flirtatiously, whisper it; it doesn’t matter. Try it out yourself and find what works. Your reader is going to be hearing this in their head, so make sure you convey it exactly how you want it to sound.
Remember Who’s Speaking
Your characters are all different people with different word preferences and personal catch phrases and tonal patterns and vocal styles. Use this to your advantage. You are making a movie in your reader’s head, so use these specific characteristics to your advantage.
Dialogue Tags
Don’t Over-Do Dialogue Tags
There are a lot of very interesting and wonderful dialogue tags out there. You do not need to use all of them. If you have a very clear vision of how this line is said and you know that you want your reader to hear it that way, then use a dialogue tag, but if you know they’ll connect the dots from hearing the word “said”, then refrain from using a unique dialogue tag. Part of the fun of reading is having your own special imaginative freedom while consuming the story. Too many dialogue tags strip your reader of that freedom because every detail is directed.
Respect “Said”
Said is not dead. Said is very much alive and well and must not be taken for granted. Love Said and nurture Said and Said will be good to you and your story.
Flow
Use Action Between Periods Of Dialogue (Give Your Characters Stage Business)
This is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s an example of the wonders this simple fix can achieve:
“No,” he said, “I’m not leaving.”
vs.
“No,” He said, fixing his sleeve cuff calmly and meeting her eyes with an intimidating stare, “I’m not leaving.”
Don’t Include Too Much Information In One Conversation
Information in stories is supposed to be distributed evenly over time, not in a single conversation whenever you need to pack a bunch of knowledge into the reader in order for them to understand the next scene. Dialogue is also, again, not the method you are supposed to use in order to tell the reader all they need to know. Information about the setting, world, characters, past, present, and future is all supposed to be revealed through description, non-verbal communication, exposition, narration (if it allows), and other literary tools. Do not use dialogue to tell your reader everything.
Keep It Short
Dialogue, specifically individual pieces of dialogue, are meant to be short, informative, and sweet. Don’t drag it along, don’t make the discussion longer than it has to be, and going back to a previous point, don’t include unnecessary information.
This doesn’t need too much unboxing on its own, but just because someone has a thick British accent doesn’t mean that “you” is suddenly spelled “yeh”. This is incredibly difficult to get used to and can A. Confuse the reader, whether it be the first time they come across it or repeatedly over time, and B. bother the reader so much they end up putting the book down because it’s so exhausting trying to remember that “yeh” means “you”. If your reader has to repeatedly assure their self that yes, that is what they’ve just read, then your story is only going to suffer for it.
*Side note: this does not apply to fanfiction. This is because, most of the time, the reader has an idea of what the protagonist’s voice sounds like and can therefore navigate the writing without a problem because they aren’t trying to form a unique voice in the narrative. Just something I thought I should mention. Sorry if this sounds ridiculous to non-fanfiction readers.
Writing Autistic Characters: 50 posts from scriptautistic
Happy Nanowrimo! In honour of national novel writing month 2017 we
have put together this list of 50 of the most useful questions and answers
from our blog this year. We hope you find them useful – happy writing!
And not the skeletons in their closet (although that’s fun, too). Like, their selection of clothes. How much thought have you put into what your characters wear?
Years later, I still remember reading a series of books where one character always wore loose clothing. He never wore anything tight around the neck. I hadn’t even noticed until several books in, someone else mentioned that he hated feeling tied down or restricted, and so that was reflected in his clothes. He didn’t want to feel collared.
It’s not necessary to go into intricate detail in describing the clothes your character chooses to wear each day, unless it’s something important to the plot. Typically, I think clothing descriptions should be brief and subtle. But at the same time, putting characters in their own style of everyday wear is another unique way to characterize who they are as a person. (Read More)
It’s all in how you treat it. There’s nothing wrong with sex work or sex workers first and foremost, and so long as she’s not using stripper as some sort of “dumb sexy bimbo stripper” front I think you’re totally cool. Just develop her fully as a person, give her a full characterization, and have it make sense that she has a stripper persona (such as being a stripper in a club that caters to rich clientele so she can gain access to politicians, CEOs, etc.)
I have opinions.
I have lots of opinion.
One- Men refuse to believe women could be spies. This is a fairly held-true fact. They will talk about anything and everything because they don’t see women as a threat
Two- Strippers get men talking about themselves in order to form a “relationship” to get our bills paid. Do I watch Game of Thrones? No. Did I string a customer along listening to his theories about the show and dropping in appropriate nods to get him paying me? You betcha
Three- We are unsexy as we can get when we are not at work. Looking pretty is hard. We get paid to look pretty. After awhile you develop a “unless I am getting paid you are not getting my looks” attitude, although some girls do like looking pretty outside of work. But at least half of the “done wrong” for strippers is making them pretty outside of work. Trust me, we’re not (and our caloric intake is upwards of 3,000. Getting a bazillion calorie fast food meal after a shift is normal)
Four- This is a sales job. Think any commission position in lingerie. Our product is our bodies and whatever persona we’ve generated. As a result, it’s really easy to string guys along because how many times has a sales person lied to get buddy buddy with you?
Five- It’s pretty rare to sleep with clients. Like. Way rare. Some girls will give/ receive hand jobs or oral at work, some girls will have sex in private spaces, but for the most part, sleeping with men happens outside of work if it happens at all. Lap dance booths usually have the guys groping, not much else
Six- A lot of female spies get their information by getting men to boast and not believing they really are telling the truth. This can be done by saying “why don’t you tell me all about it in VIP” (private room), so she’s draining wallets, too
Seven- A lot of clubs are blue collar. Most of my clients are construction workers. You can get high end clubs with the matching high flying customers, but those have a certain amount of difficulty to get into.
Eight- Never, ever, ever underestimate blue collar workers for getting information, especially if you end up near a military base (it’s good, steady money, on top of it)
If you want more on the basics of stripping, read this.
Rambles & Rabble 