How To Write A Healthy Relationship

Worldbuilding Questions: Other* Cultures - a handy list for writers with little time

(*not the main characters')

After my extensive [list of questions for towns and cities] for your main setting, there will also be many countries, regions and cultures mentioned in your project, that aren't central to the plot, that you don't have time to delve into detail about, but that still should feel 'real'.

For this use (or, really, in general, if you don't have much time to worldbuild before you start your first draft), I prepared a list with 10 very rough, basic questions to make your world feel alive:

What is their most important export good or economy?

What was the most important event in their recent history, and how long ago did it happen?

What do people from that place wear and how do they style? Are they distinguishable in a crowd?

What is their language, and is it understandable for your narrator? Do they have an accent?

What are they famous for? (People from there, their humor, their food, their skills at something...)?

Are or were they at war / at the brink of war with other people; esp. with those at the center of your story?

What is their most important difference to your "main" / narrator's culture? (Religion, society, economy...?)

Are representatives of that culture seen often in your setting?

What is something outsiders say about them?

What do they say about themselves?

I recommend thinking about these for your side character's home cultures, as well as for your setting's most important regions and neighboring countries. Five or so might even be enough, just as a handy ressource to make your setting feel alive and real.

5 Tips for Writing Best Friends

Friendships can make books more engaging for readers than romantic or family relationships. The trick is writing best friends in ways that feel real.

It’s why we love Gideon and Nico in The Atlas Six or Bree and Alice in the Legendborn series.

Here are a few tips to get you on the path to writing an incredible friendship that’s the backbone of your character’s arcs.

1. Make the Friendship Serve Both Characters

We’ve all read books where the protagonist has a best friend who seems to only exist when the protagonist needs something. They’re the main character’s source of stress relief and support, but real-world relationships serve both people.

Make sure you write scenes where the best friend also benefits from the relationship. They might come to the main character for support or call the protagonist when they need cheering up. The most minor moments can mean the most to readers.

2. Give the Friendship a Why

Why is the friendship so important to each of your characters? Maybe they met while experiencing a unique life event or a tragedy. Maybe one helped the other through a difficult time and later vice versa.

The why behind the relationship is key to making readers fall in love with the bond between your characters. Why they met might be the only thing holding them together when times get tough. Establish a clear motive to their solid connection and everything that happens afterward will be more impactful for the reader.

3. Create a Life for the Best Friend Too

Best friends need personality traits like protagonists. As you draft their persona during your planning or writing phases, remember to give them traits like:

Likes

Dislikes

Goals

Dreams

A history

These details shape who people are. They can also be the things that pull your protagonist and best friend together. 

4. Set Up the Occasional Clash

Friendships are stronger when they survive the ups and downs. Turbulent times also make friendships realistic because friends never stay in just happy periods of their lives.

Make your two characters clash to learn through their arguments or mistakes, especially if they’re disagreeing about how to solve/accomplish your plot’s main goal. How they work through their differences and move past them demonstrates each character’s core values and how much they value their friendship.

5. Establish Honesty Early On

Best friends are honest with each other. Setting that up early on establishes a foundation of trust. It also sets up stakes when one character decides to lie to the other for a specific goal or purpose, even if they don’t like it. Without honesty, there’s no reason for the two characters to trust each other or remain best friends.

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Develop your best friends as separate individuals before merging them in your plotlines. You’ll create stronger relationships that pull readers in and keep them thinking about your story well after they turn the final page.

Project and Team Management

Project and Team Management is an interesting class. No project is done, if there is no involvement of people in it. In other words, people make the projects, and the project may or not work depending on the skills, talents, and willingness of people involved in it.

That is the main purpose of this class. Every project has five main areas that a team management would seek, in order to assess where the best resources are to get the job done: People, Resources, Places, Personalities and Budgeting.

How a project management will achieve the goal of increasing a production of cars from five hundred to one thousand in a day? Can we build the same cars with the same people, with the same resources and budget?. Changes in the process means changes in management.

Welcome to team management.

A team in the company is important to achieve success. A team that “manage” all the changes in the environment from planning, execution and control.

What resources do we have? What places are available? How do we connect different places with same policies at the same time? Do we use the Internet, do we use the web to get the messages to our partners all around the globe?

If we want to produce more, who is the leader that will challenge his team to get a little further? What skills and traits does every single person have to get the project done?  What kind of leadership do we have at the other side?  Is it a shark, an owl, a turtle, a teddy bear? What about the personality? Is it a dominant personality? Is it an influence personality? Is it a steadfast personality? Is it a Compliance personality? http://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/

In real world, how do we combine all these types of personalities in a working place?  Is it one better that the other one? Do we take advantages of every single personality to produce a meaningful and diverse team that achieve the goal of producing more? How?

Welcome to Project and Team Management, where knowledge is the key to open a world of opportunities to make things happen, and get the job done.

Just do it with knowledge. Knowledge is Project and Team Management.

  LINK: http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

Where is that noise coming from?

NEGOTIATION AND DEAL MAKING

Negotiation and Deal Making is a wonderful and useful course that helps you to deal with businessman, entrepreneurs and negotiators. In order to put in perspective the “great deal” about the course, we need to compare the past (without any course) and the present (with the course) in my personal experience as negotiator. I still remember when I founded an Expo in Mexico, and most of 30 businesses got together around my business because they found a mutual benefit. I should say they did get a more beneficial interest than me, except for the fact that I was on the spotlight, which brought me a lot of social presence that I used it in the future. However, to gather those businesses together meant to give away concessions against my own interests.

I negotiated with no goal in mind except than putting them together at all costs. I did not know anything about role-playing, deal-structuring skills, critiquing role playing scenarios, negotiation skills development, and self-awareness (except bringing those business together at all costs). With the knowledge of this course, everything would have changed, and mutual benefits would have existed for both parties in the negotiation process.

 Nowadays, the expectations for the future in business negotiations look very promising with this course taken. Someday the student will become a businessman with knowledge on how to deal with people in different environment and scenarios. The road to success is filled with little bumps along the road as Fisher, Ury and Patton (2011) stated in his book Getting to Say Yes “This may require experimentation and a period of adjustment that is not so comfortable” but they highlighted that the negotiation power would be amplified if you believe in you.

 How does the negotiation start in real world? Human beings and their emotions are the main topic in Negotiation and Deal Making. Even though we are rational, there are always emotions involved in any negotiation process that could get the deal in hold, go forward or in an impasse. It would be endless to talk about all of the different kinds of emotions, but Fisher and Shapiro (2005) in his book “Beyond Reason” express that we have five core concerns: Appreciation, Affiliation, Autonomy, Status and Role.  These emotions and their knowledge will play an important role in business negotiation. The outcome of the deal will be successful depending on what perspective we apply towards those feelings: if we recognize, deny, block, or forget those emotions. If we want a successful deal, we need to be proactive and acknowledge all these emotions with our negotiators if we want a successful negotiation.

Do not forget our BATNA that is the most important piece of equipment. Our Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement is the key in case we do not have a beneficial agreement, and we should consider the other negotiator and his BATNA to be more successful.

 What have I learned from this course? I have learned to valuate the other people’s interest because there is a lot of information in them that we can use towards the negotiation process. When there is an obstacle, I try to scrutinize what kind of emotion and where in those 5 categories might fall, or as the author stated, “use the core concern as both a lens and a lever”. Also, I try to acknowledge what is the driving force in that individual whom we are negotiating with. Additionally, I will always review the kind of communication we have with our negotiator (good o bad terms), our communication process (do we listen to each other?), our interests (do we have mutual interest?), our options (What options do we have?), our commitments (what commitments we both can agree with), and finally our BATNA (His BATNA and mine).  It is only then when we could say we are prepared to face the challenge to get a deal done.

       REFERENCES

  Roger, Fisher,, Shapiro, Daniel. (2005). Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate. Penguin Books, VitalBook file.

  Roger, Fisher,, Ury, L.. (2011). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Penguin Books, VitalBook file.

Baraja de cartas con cartas hipnóticas

Baraja de cartas con cartas hipnóticas

How to create “complex” characters

– Introduction

I wanted to make a post about creating complex and multifaceted characters, since character creation is something I'm very passionate about from both a craft and storytelling perspective. Specifically, I remember I had this tendency to apply flaws as an afterthought to my characters in hopes of making them balanced and seem more complex, and this could often make the characters feel a bit artificial to me. I'm obviously not any sort of authority figure on the subject, but I do have one tip that really simplified the process of making characters more intricate, and I wanted to share it! This is probably more helpful for people who might still be at the very beginning of their writing journey, but hopefully others can get something out of this as well! It's a bit lengthy, but I hope it's somewhat enjoyable to read ^^; Enjoy!

For a bit of background, back in the early internet days, there was this trend of judging various OCs on youtube, deviant art, etc. where people would essentially evaluate your character and determine whether or not a character was well written. During this time, the term "Mary Sue" would get thrown around a lot (which is a whole can of worms I won't be touching on here). For simplicity though, Mary Sue generally means a character who's "perfect" (again, heavy oversimplification here). To counter this, people began creating these lists of character traits where they'd list off a character's good and bad traits, and people who didn't have equal amounts in each category would often be scrutinised for it.

And I see this advice all the time. If you want complex characters, people will usually tell you to just throw on a bunch of flaws, but I think this can be a bit misleading, because most traits exist on a spectrum, and aren't a perfect dichotomy of good and bad.

Thinking of character traits as neutral

My biggest advice is honestly to just think of all character traits as neutral. Because what really is a character flaw? A flaw is a very ambiguous and subjective term after all. What might be considered a flaw in one character could be considered another character's greatest attribute, and vice versa. Functionally, a character flaw should be a trait that creates conflict within the context of the story. Any trait a person has could be good or bad, it just depends on how it shows up in practice and how it's applied in daily life. It might be tempting to think that certain traits are inherently good or bad, but again, flaws aren't really about good or bad. They're about conflict and tension, and just about any trait can work to a character's detriment or in their favour.

I'm going to list off two examples of hypothetical characters below; one who most would consider to have a lot of "good" character traits, and one that would be considered to have "bad" character traits. Then I'll show you how you can easily flip those traits to create nuance. (And again, I really don't think good or bad are relevant terms here, but it's just to exemplify what I mean more easily!)

The "Good" Character

This character is empathetic, creative and incredibly supportive of others. They always do the right thing, and are a very responsible individual. They're approachable and friendly, funny, and generally enjoyable to be around.

The "Bad" Character

This character is cunning, manipulative, and don't care if their words hurt other people's feelings. They're largely apathetic and unreceptive, don't care about rules, and don't go out of their way to get to know people.

Their flaws & how it can affect the story

For the "good" character, you can look at what the downsides of empathy can be; very reactive emotionally, perhaps even a bit emotionally impulsive. Maybe they have a difficult time recognising their own needs, especially since supportive is also a trait listed above. Maybe they even use this empathy to figure out other people's needs and use it to their own benefit. Someone who's creative can often have a difficult time committing to their passions and ideas because there's always something new. Maybe they feel out of place or easily stifled by rules, but because they always want to do the right thing, they're hesitant in outright breaking rules and social norms. If they use their empathy and approachability to manipulate, perhaps this is their way of subtly regaining a sense of control because they're too afraid to explicitly go after what they want in life. Maybe they care a lot about how they're perceived, etc. Or maybe they really are a compassionate and kind person, but they're often a doormat to others because they don't know how to set boundaries or even how to recognise what they want. Maybe they don't trust their own judgment because they're so used to doing the right thing "just because it's the right thing to do", and don't actually reflect on their actions beyond that. There's a lot you can do with these traits!

For the "bad" character, which might seem a bit more tricky at first, the easiest way to figure out what the nuance of "bad" traits can be is to break down the why. Maybe this character became cunning because they've had to think long term a lot. They're good at waging the odds, they're good at reading the room, they're good at putting things together and seeing how the dominos will fall. Maybe they're even the person responsible for setting up the dominos, because they don't trust anyone else to make sure that there's a desirable outcome. If they're manipulative then it likely means that they're good at reading people, and they must know how to appeal to other people to some degree, otherwise they wouldn't really be able to manipulate anyone. They're likely used to having to look out for themselves, and they might even be good at spotting their own kind and knowing just when to avoid them. They don't care much for rules so they might not be as harsh in judging others, maybe they even have an easier time getting along with people who dare to defy social norms. Maybe they're even supportive of other people breaking the rules, because why the hell not?

Creating nuance

If you look at the two characters above, you'll quickly realise that they could hypothetical be the same character, because... They are. The "good" character is the "bad" character when they were younger. The "bad" character is the "good" character's future. An empathetic character can easily turn that empathy and their social skills into cunning manipulation. A character who previously felt stifled by the rules might choose to defy them. A character who got sick of caring how others perceive and judge them might choose to stop caring about what others think, and might even go out of their way to seem off-putting and un-approachable, because they refuse to ever allow themselves to care about others and be treated like a doormat again.

Or you can treat them as two separate characters that function as foils to one another. They both overlap in a lot of traits despite it not seeming so at first glance. My point is, I find that if you treat all traits as neutral, you don't really have to manually "add" flaws. Most traits have both upsides and downsides, and which side of those traits create conflict in the story is often what determines whether something is a flaw or not.

– Outro

Sorry for the lengthy and possibly rambly post, I just thought it might be advice worth sharing as it's something that really helped me flesh out my own characters more when I was still very new! Plus, as mentioned before, character creation and analysis is one of my favourite aspects of storytelling, and I'm also very passionate about psychology and philosophy and such. And again, this is all in good fun and 100% not a rule on how to write characters! There's exceptions to everything and everyone's process is different, and while this advice might be helpful to some, it might not be helpful whatsoever to others, and that's completely fine!

I'd love to make more posts on topics like this in the future if people enjoy it, or if anyone has any specific requests on anything! :,)