To Wait For Something Seems To Be An Integral Part Of The Universe And The Way It Works. It Takes 13

character movements for anxiety

1. Pacing: The character walks back and forth in a small area, unable to stay still due to restlessness and nervous energy.

2. Fidgeting: The character repeatedly adjusts their clothing, taps their fingers, or plays with objects, unable to keep their hands still.

3. Nail-biting: The character nervously bites their nails, a common habit that indicates anxiety or nervousness.

4. Rapid breathing: The character's breaths become quick and shallow, as if they're struggling to catch their breath due to heightened anxiety.

5. Clenching fists: The character tightly clenches their hands into fists, a physical manifestation of their inner tension and anxiety.

6. Avoiding eye contact: The character averts their gaze, unable to maintain eye contact due to feelings of unease or insecurity.

7. Shaking or trembling: The character's body shakes or trembles involuntarily, reflecting the physical manifestation of their anxiety.

8. Wrapping arms around oneself: The character crosses their arms tightly over their chest, as if seeking comfort or a sense of protection from their anxious thoughts.

9. Picking at skin or lips: The character absentmindedly picks at their skin or lips, a subconscious action resulting from nervousness or anxiety.

10. Swallowing hard: The character visibly swallows, indicating a dry throat and heightened anxiety.

Burn the bridges! otherwise you come back to the same roads

Suspense and Foreshadowing—Two Great Tools for Writers

I’ve found that foreshadowing and suspense often get confused. Sometimes writers even forget about them. It’s time for a quick reminder about why these are such great tools for writers and how you can use them in your next story.

What is Suspense?

Anyone can put together points in a story’s plot map. You’ve got your inciting incident, a few things that happen to move the story along, then the climax and resolution.

Suspense is what keeps the reader’s eyes glued to the page in between each of those stages.

It works in every genre and helps every story. It may even be what your work is missing if you’re stuck in your WIP because you’ve lost interest.

Example: Carver is a restaurant server and sees his crush, Aiden, get seated at Table 2 with his friends. He’s had this crush for forever and decides it’s now or never. He has to ask Aiden out before he leaves after dinner.

Where’s the suspense?: There’s an emotional suspense in the relatability of feeling nervous about asking someone out after crushing on them for a while. There’s also time-related suspense because sooner than later, Aiden will pay the check and leave. The clock is running out from the moment Carver makes his decision.

Where could you add suspense?: Carver might need to take on more tables because his coworker leaves for a family emergency. He’s rushing around twice as busy for the rest of the night. Then other guests need extra things, like another set of silverware or a ketchup refill. The night passes quickly, so Carver almost misses Aiden walking out to his car.

What is Foreshadowing?

Foreshadowing helps build your suspense. It’s one of the key ingredients that you can work into your first draft while you’re writing or while you’re in the editing process.

You don’t need foreshadowing in every story to create suspense or keep your reader interested. However, it can be a great way to support it.

Example: After Carver decides to stop by Aiden’s table before he leaves, he’s so busy serving other tables that the group in his window booth get up and leave. They’re irritated that their food is late, so they talk with the manager before leaving for another restaurant.

Why is this foreshadowing?: It demonstrates how the events building the suspense—the other server leaving suddenly and forcing Carver to serve twice as many tables—make it more likely that Carver will miss Aiden. It also mirror’s Carver’s Worst Case Scenario: that he’s now too busy to fulfill his goal before Aiden leaves, because he was too busy with his other tables to get food to his guests before they left too.

Other Forms of Suspense

Suspense can happen in a few ways besides general plot points. You can also heighten the tension with things like:

Making your characters feel the suspense for the reader (they get anxious, start acting out of fear, feel their stomach knot up, verbally snap at another character).

Changing the scenery (the lights go dark because the power goes out, other characters step between the protagonist and their goal, the protagonist must leave due to an unforeseen reason).

Using specific descriptive word choices (maybe the vibe in a room becomes tense, someone feels agitated, a foul odor burns at the protagonist’s nose and makes them uncomfortable)

Varying your sentence structure (choppy sentences create suspense, while long sentences sound more monotonous).

Introducing conflict for the protagonist (make things go wrong so they have to sweat through a few challenges to reach their goals).

Other Forms of Foreshadowing

You may have heard of a few of these before, but they could still be something your story needs to deepen your plot or become more gripping. Think about adding foreshadowing tools like:

Flashbacks: maybe your protagonist has tried and failed/succeeded at a similar goal before

Chekov’s gun: introduce something that your character will use in the future (could be a literal gun, an object that they’ll use later to accomplish their goal, a person they’ll come back to for the friendship they seek, a trauma they’re pushing away and eventually have to face)

A prophecy: could be a literal prophecy from an oracle, but could also be something lighthearted in a fortune cookie, a Magic 8 ball, something a character mentions in passing to the protagonist, etc.

Symbolism: your character might set out for their first day on a job and drive there in a terrible thunderstorm, show up to the wrong location, immediately break the copy machine, etc. Something negative in the environment or a character making a bad choice/mistake can be symbolic for their overall goal or phase of life.

A red herring: your character believes somebody or something to be their antagonist/the reason for their conflicts, but it turns out to be something or somebody else

When to Use Foreshadowing or Suspense

It would be great if every writer knew exactly how to use one or both of these tools while they were working through their first draft. That might be possible if you’ve spent a long time figuring out the exact plot before sitting down to write, but that isn’t always the case.

You could add new elements of suspense or moments of foreshadowing while you’re in the process of writing. Just make sure you note what your wrote and why so you can carry that thread through to its completion or revelation later on.

You can also add these moments while editing. If your first draft feels like it’s missing something, adding in a new conflict and revising to work it into the rest of the draft could greatly improve your story. It’s also possible to drop a foreshadowing device in one chapter and jump ahead to another to make it reappear/complete the foreshadowing.

A Lolli Pop; A Story of Love

Marco A. Romero

When I told her that I loved her she did not believe me. She threw the Lolli Pop outburst in my face that had happened when we were kids, and we played hide and seek, the cat and the mouse, and freeze tag (you're it).

I do not know what happened, at that time.

I guess I wanted to eat a sweet and she did not want to share her Lolli Pop with me, so I took it away from her, and I ran to eat it under a tree, and I enjoyed it quietly with pleasure.

The Lolli Pop tasted sweet.

What was not sweet was her heartbroken, and from there she did not want to talk to me. That anger lasted years, maybe decades...

She said I was a bad boy!

Then I remembered, a few years later, when I asked her to be my girlfriend because she no longer had these crazy girl traits, or I did not know if the love I felt for her made me not seeing her as she was because love is blind. ...  By the way, she rejected me...

I argued (trying to be a little philosophical) that love was not related to things, nor was there a correlation between my love for her and the Tootsie Pop that I had taken away from her years ago as children, but she argued yes!!! - In this strange and irrational feminine logic inference and again I repeated to her that I liked the lolli pop, and had nothing to do with love and period (I had to be a man, truthful and make things clear once and for all, right?)

Bad result!

She never talked to me anymore! ... I think she did not like my tone of not regretting what she thought was wrong. The years past by, and as she grew older she was getting more beautiful. I did not know how to make her forget the Tootsie Pop outburst.

I loved her. Really.

A lot.

I imagined in my hypothesis that she would have read the novel of Pedro Páramo , and some of it would have stayed in her heart , because she was too intellectual, with those words "make him pay dearly  the neglect of duty that we had“, or rather, I should say the Tootsie Pop one day he took away from me ...

A decade later we found each other at the law school. I must admit she was a beauty, and I liked her even more. My first impulse was to talk to her, but she again harangued me the Tootsie Pop incident with sweet chocolate that I had taken away from her, decades ago....

Truly I was desperate....

I figured out the reason she wanted to be a lawyer or prosecutor in court. She had this very great talent to explain with detail, with delightful charm, I would say, the

evils and omissions that the accused had committed to reach the tribunal.

But I still loved her and liked her like that.... She was beautiful, indeed.  I was in love with her and I could not do anything else but to be close to my dear love. My crazy heart loved whoever did not deserve to be loved and endured all the insults, rants, and bad moods.  As the time passed intruding questions came into my mind from Descartes, Plato and Thomas Aquinas. She was intellectual and I did not want to stay behind her knowledge, of course….

I told her that "if we think” about that candy, then “it would exist " and it would interfere in our relationship that I wanted to have with her.  I wanted to offer the best of me (my heart, and it sounds corny but sometimes so it is) and that the love that I felt for her would give me the thrust to build those palaces that she deserved and I could not temporarily give, unless we both work hard for it. I would accomplish her dream, of course ... being Descartes.

 I told her what St. Thomas Aquinas said "seeing is believing" and she would see my immense passion trying to meet her each day and at least say " Good morning " when passing between classes. After looking at her, my mind was filled with her smile that I tried to draw later in my notebook when the teacher was lecturing.  Obviously my teacher wondered what the drawing had to do with the notes and explanations of civil law that he had taught...

“None” teacher, I said. It is that I'm in love and love makes me fly like a butterfly.

I apologized and asked him that love should be declared as a pleasant cause of exception to the rigidity of academic schools. This feeling is uncontrollable, -I argued, and suddenly it came into my mind her image, the wind, and the leaves of the shaking trees like a movie, where we both walked together holding hands and being happy to enjoy what life gave us....

(Do not think wrong, I said, I mean the love that I feel for her)

And again, I said, it has nothing to do with you teacher, but with the fact that I am just in love....

Try other methods! My psychologist told me. One day I brought two Tootsie Pops with chocolate inside to make amends to my beloved, but she said that those lolli pops were not the same as the one I had mistakenly eaten...

Afterwards, when she looked at the other lolli pop with an engagement ring, she looked at me, smiled, hugged me and screamed I do!! I do!

That was the biggest hug that I have ever had in my life.

And we both lived happily ever after.... getting married

What is your story of love?

:)

World Building

Creating Land

❂

⥇ agriculture

⟿ what is grown in abundance? how common is farmland? where is the farmland?

⥇ architecture

⟿ what kind of buildings? how tall/spacious? what are they made of? how well made? how well planned?

⥇ animals

⟿ what wild animals are lurking in the area? hunting? any animals affecting the livestock or agriculture?

⥇ biomes

⟿ desert? tundra? grassland? forest? savanna?

⥇ bodies of water

⟿ seas? lake? ponds? rivers? fresh water/salt water? fishing? keep in mind, settlements are often built near bodies of water

⥇ climate

⟿ dry? rainy? temperate? tropical? polar? how have people adjusted to this climate?

⥇ elevation

⟿ altitude? how does the altitude affect lifestyle?

⥇ geology

⟿ rocky? types of rocks?

⥇ landforms

⟿ mountains? valleys? plateaus? plains? hills? glaciers? peninsulas? volcanos? canyons?

⥇ latitude / longitude

⟿ location on planet? how does it affect other elements of land?

⥇ livestock

⟿ common domesticated animals? common animal usages?

⥇ minerals

⟿ any valuable minerals / metals? are they mined regularly? how are they used?

⥇ natural disasters

⟿ earthquake? tornado? volcano? duststorm? flood? hurricane? tsunami? how often do these occur? protocols?

⥇ population

⟿ how many people? how dense is the population? how does the population affect surrounding nature?

⥇ resources

⟿ what is abundant? scarce? how are they used? how available are they?

⥇ sacred land

⟿ religiously important land? historical importance? widely accepted as sacred? how is it honored?

⥇ soil

⟿ good or bad for vegetation? rocky?

⥇ tectonic activity

⟿ earthquake frequency? volcano frequency? trenches?

⥇ topography

⟿ how common are maps? how accurate? how long have they been around? who makes them?

⥇ vegetation

⟿ what is abundant? scarce? what grows easily? with difficulty? what is commonly foraged? who forages? plant types? tree types?

The tiny seed knew that in order to grow, it needed to be dropped in dirt, covered in darkness, struggle to reach the light.

Sandra Kring (via earthenspirit)

The Coca Cola logo or vending machine was shown only 10 seconds out of 1:31 minutes, in all these scenes from real life commercial. 

That is all it takes, a brief moment, when a brand is positioned. The logic and magic, strategy and creativity are together to build a brand. Why we do not let the Coca Cola Logo stays in right hand corner along the 1:31? The reason is  the magic side, the creativity side, the story behind is what matters to associate it with the brand. That is all it takes to position the name brand into the public.

 When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand. In other words, a brand .Is not what YOU say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.

 Neumeier, Marty. The Brand Gap. MBS Direct.