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Zuri's Blog

A blog by Zuri in Author

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About this blog

Check out my writing tips, book reviews and other interesting thoughts I wanted to share. As always: I'm happy if you leave a comment :)

Entries in this blog

writing tips

Tell, don't recount

Most of you will probably be familiar with the rule/advice "show, don't tell". (Actually, this advice is a little flawed in itself, as outlined in "Bad Character Intros vs Good Character Intros (Writing Advice)" by the YouTube channel "Writer Brandon McNulty", but that would be a whole over topic for another day ). What we are focussing on today, will be the telling aspect. Because, even though, there can be good "tell", when "show" wouldn't work, and then, there's bad "tell", which I
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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writing tips

Part 5: The (sexual?) tension between author and reader

What would you say if I told you that writing is a lot like BDSM? You might tell me that you are not into that—but aren’t you? No, no, that wasn’t an invitation for sex. I wasn’t talking literally but literarily. Okay, let’s clear that up: It’s what we can do emotionally with writing. Usually described as an “emotional roller coaster”. You might say that kind of cruelty only exists in splatter and gore. But it might just be that you’re getting BDSM wrong. When practicing BDSM, you wouldn’t go ar
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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writing tips

Part 3

Authenticity vs everyday life There are two camps of literature consumers: Those who practice escapism (fantasy and science fiction to the rescue) and those who prefer stories that seek a high order of reality and authenticity: Feelings—good ones as well as bad ones—, situations you can identify with, which you even already might have experienced. In the early days of filmmaking, there have been ideas now and then, that had the potential to be revolutionary. The idea, I want to talk ab
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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writing tips

Intro

I originally wrote this blog post in German for another community, but I felt like I give it a try to translate and share it with you folks. This is the first post of a now three series which I’m intending to expand since now and then, I get new ideas or encounter other cases when writing or editing stories. I'm sorry if it appears to be a bit random, but I wrote it as the ideas came to my mind. Make sure, to also check out GayAuthor's writing resources!   I'm sorry if the in
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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writing tips

Part 4

Pile the bricks without the mortar Let me tell you this very exciting story real quick. You know what? I just tell you the payoff, so you don’t have to wait for it. Of course, this is exaggerated. We all know, that suspension is important, but this is not, what I want to talk about in this section. It’s about an often overlooked or badly handled element of storytelling: The filler scene. Filler scenes are boring, and you skip them as a reader, wondering why the author was such a fool t
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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reviews

Some quick recommendations of underrated works

Title Excerpt Why? Short films BRACE   TRIGGER WARNING, Violent and Homophobic content!! After coming out and leaving his girlfriend, Adam dreams of finding acceptance within London's gay scene. His burgeoning freedom is soon challenged when he meets Rocky, a handsome stranger who is harb
Zuri

Zuri in reviews

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reviews

Geography Club—novel vs movie

Now, this is a slightly different review because I won't suggest a book or a movie per se, but rather show the strengths and weaknesses of a story by its two adaptations. The plot diverges somewhat by taking different approaches to the topic, but not to an extent to which the overall idea respectively their similarities would become unrecognizable. That being set, let’s dive right into it, shall we? Theme Geography Club—chosen because it's the most boring club possible, so nobody
Zuri

Zuri in reviews

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My two cents

Represation, queerbating and pinkwashing

When you get what you want but not what you need Who doesn’t like a happy ending? So good representation is when everyone reacts positively to the characters' coming-outs, they don’t have to look for love for long and live happily ever after, right? Right? That might represent your dreams, but that doesn’t represent reality. What representation means is: Can I identify with it? Have I been there? In return, does that mean, we can’t have a happy ending? Sure, we can. But it has to
Zuri

Zuri in My two cents

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reviews

Review: Openly straight

Always being in the spotlight, filmed by his father with his cell phone camera at every turn like a celebrity, and everybody takes him for “the gay”, but nobody just for the person he is. Taking a shower after gym class is odd, all the people are considerate of him, when they say something that could be considered offensive, and expect Rafe to borrow the cliché. To be just like the others, is, despite the openness and acceptance in Rafe’s hometown Boulder, impossible for him on these grounds.
Zuri

Zuri in reviews

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reviews

Review: Center of the World

“The Center of the World” is a tessellated coming-of-age youth novel, which is about the 17 years old Phil, who has a crush on Nicholas, who’s a new classmate. Phil and his twin sister Dianne experienced a very different parenting style, practiced by their mother Glass and her friend Tereza, and their mother is well-known to be quite promiscuous in their small town—a fact that doesn’t make life easier for the siblings. Phil’s father (“Number 3”) is somewhere in America and a huge variable in his
Zuri

Zuri in reviews

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My two cents

hetero-like: cis man and gay—burning questions and insecurities of gender expression

When I found out about my own homosexuality, I was thirteen. I didn’t want people to think, I was a certain way because of my attraction to other men. I insisted on being hetero-like (this concept is similar to cis passing for trans people, as far as I know). But as time went on, I realized that I realized that I had to stop worrying about what other people thought of me. Easier said than done, of course, but at least I took tiny steps in the right direction. Maybe, one day, I won't care about i
Zuri

Zuri in My two cents

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My two cents

Coming-out—do we (still) need it and why it means more than to be true to yourself

The question, of why one should come out in the first place, is probably as old as the coming out as such itself. Similarly, the question of why LGBT* people still need their pride parades and other events. Sure, one could argue, that there are still here and their attacks on queer people in the US or people are killed because of their sexual orientation in other countries of the world. But my answer focuses more on the individual that makes the very decision: As privileged peop
Zuri

Zuri in My two cents

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writing tips

Part 2

Hero’s journey In the last part, we talked about it seeming to be difficult to tell origin stories that inweave new concepts. Apparently, there’s something like laws of nature that apply to writing. Let’s have a look at the hero’s journey. Most of you should be familiar with this. In its beginning, the hero (or heroine) lives in their own world until something happens with an impact that changes the hero’s worldview and sets everything into motion—something that makes the hero and their men
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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writing tips

Part 1

When writing, there are rules based on the experiences of countless authors from several literary periods on one hand and the expectations of readers that are somewhat trained in what stories look like. While it’s never bad advice to play along, for the most part, good writing oftentimes resorts to some unusual surprises. That’s where stories might shine. Don’t always tell the same old story and dare to break some rules https://gayauthors.org/story/sammy-blue/gemini/ is partly a very c
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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