Lrs35 - Crying About Fictional Characters

i remember the feeling of teenage obsession, and i miss it desperately. few things about our everyday lives are more genuinely magical to me than the way that loving something with commitment can rewire your understanding of time: instead of dates or semesters, i can place moments of my early life inside the year where i only read vonnegut, the month i first loved the smiths, the autumn i spent with that rilke poem. it manages to make time physical — it turns it into something that can be tasted and touched. i want my life to be textured by the periods i spent perfecting a stone fruit hot honey cake or watching murder mysteries. wouldn’t it be wonderful to one day taste a cake and remember how you felt in september? i have many criticisms of rapid-fire, non-stop consumption, but none are so personal to me as this: when we submit to a cultural landscape that tells us to never stop looking for the new shiniest thing, we lose a kind of language for understanding ourselves and others. loving is a muscle that’s been strategically atrophied by a culture of manic consumption and constant availability.

- rayne fisher-quann

Stained glass

How to write a novel

I was talking to a girl at ComicCon, the kind of person who has a million creative projects at the same time. As many people do, she has a story she wants to write, with amazing characters she wants to share with the world, but writing is hard and a first novel can be daunting. Here’s what I told her.

Now, this applies to the people who REALLY want to see their story done. These are the main pillars of the cathedral that is your story. Let’s begin.

1- YOUR GOAL IS TO WRITE A COMPLETE FIRST DRAFT. It will be shit. But it will be complete. You can build on it and rewrite, but the most important thing is to WRITE TILL THE END OF THE STORY.

2- SIT DOWN AND WORK. That’s the difference between writers and the million people who say they have a story that they’ll write someday.

Alright, let’s get technical, and start by the end. 

3- Art is about causing your public to have emotions. Decide right now what emotion you want to leave your readers with when they close your book. Is it happy, sad, bittersweet, hopeful? Pick one. (This can be changed later if you rewrite and find some other ending, but we are working on the first draft.)

— Maybe you have a nice gimmick, a cool idea for a story, like idk, ‘What if you cloned yourself and that clone took over your life’. This is interesting, but it’s not a story in itself. A story needs emotions. If you don’t pick the emotions you want your reader to feel, your idea is just a gimmick. 

4- Now that you have the final emotion, decide your ending in accordance to said emotion. Are characters dying? Is the bad guy defeated? Is everyone splitting up or leaving together as a found family? 

Then we go back to the beginning.

5- You probably have a million characters you all want to write. Pick one to be your protagonist. Yes, just one. Multi-characters stories are harder to write and demand experience and time. We want this novel to exist, and not be stuck in limbo forever. Anyway, people tend to always prefer side characters. Who has heard of someone having a protagonist as a fave?? Your side characters will be loved, no worry. 

How to find your protagonist: It’s the person who makes decisions and makes the plot advance. Simple as that. Not to be mistaken for the leader of a group.  

6- Now that you have your protagonist, you decide what is normal for them. That is your beginning. 

7- And then, you break that normality in some horrible way that will prevent your protagonist to come back to it. That is your inciting incident. 

Then we write the middle

8- You google Three-Act-Structure and get one of these babies. 

(But Talhí, I hear you say, why should I follow this? It’s been overdone, and my story doesn’t follow this, and I have more to write than this… Well, that’s your choice. I’m not the boss of you. I’m just saying that this is a solid model for western storytelling and it’s been proven to work time and time again. You can create outside of this, but again, the main goal here is to get your novel on paper. This is a solid template.)

9- You probably have a general idea of events you want to happen in the story. Place these scenes where you feel they should go on the structure. Like, a confrontation with the main bad guy goes in climax of act three, and the confrontation with the main henchman goes to climax of act two, etc. Be mindful of the rising action and tension: a cute misadventure in the woods would probably go earlier in the story than a fight to the death.

10- Now, a secret: What separates bad writing from good writing? Bad writing is adding a bunch of events in the middle and have the characters go through them like a checklist of scenes. You can often see this in movies. But good writing links the events. Each and every event that happens has to be a result of your character making a decision. Then, an obstacle happens, and your character makes another decision, that leads to your next event/obstacle. 

11- Another secret: A character will gain power, money, weapons and allies through the story. In videogames, this is useful to defeat the bad guy. But storytelling is not videogames. Having a superpowerful hero at the end is boring. What we want is keeping the reader in suspense. So you’ll have to take everything from them. Leave them powerless and alone. And then, break their leg. I mean, not literally, although you can do that too, but have them super disadvantaged. And then they can use the personal growth they got in the adventure to prevail. (What is more interesting: a character fleeing from a facility but with weapons and kickass moves, or a character fleeing the same facility without weapons or shoes and with a broken arm? Who do you root for?)

Other tricks

The rest of the crew: I go with what Pixar does for characters: Main character gets three or more characteristics. That’s your Woody. Second tier character gets two characteristics. That’s your Buzz. Third tier characters get one characteristic, like Rex and Mister Potato Head. Keep control of your character tiers and never give too much time to the lower tiers ones, it doesn’t help your story.  

Herd your cats: Characters will want to wander in every direction, and you’ll want to follow them. Keep them in groups, and even though you can follow a side character for a scene or two, focus 80 to 90% of your story on your protagonist. 

DND is not a novel: I’m pretty sure your campaign is super fun, but you can’t just put it on paper and call it a novel. It needs a narrative arc and serious editing. You can use a campaign as a base, but it needs to be worked as a novel, because you’re changing mediums, and a novel has different requirements. 

That’s pretty much what I can remember for now. This should help you with the bones of your novel, and you can add the meat on that. I hope it helps. But honestly, the best advice I can give you is 

SIT DOWN AND DO THE THING. 

Glimmering, Zhu Hong

half asleep, half dreaming.

by louis jean françois lagrenée and paul oxborough.

31 Horrific Days [October Writing Challenge]

So it’s still September, BUT the month of Halloween is quickly approaching and I figured some people may like to get a head start on this so they have things to post! Here are 31 prompts for writing, one for each day of October. Skip any days that irk you or that you just don’t have the time and energy for, but feel free to use the tag #31horrificdays so others can see your work! As always, the prompts are up for interpretation and are meant to inspire a plot rather than dictate how it goes - all fandoms, original characters, or even a changing cast is more than welcome! [I may do a part 2 of vague, one-word prompts for those who want something more flexible].

The character goes out on a date (or an outing with a friend) and comes home late that night to see all of their furniture moved/stacked oddly, rotten food in the fridge, but no signs of entry or security issues.

The character learns through conversation that one of their friends hates Halloween.

The character is distressed from several nights of nightmares/sleep paralysis, all of which leave them waking up terrified. Eventually, what they see in their dreams start to blend into reality.

Write a story about supernatural happenings.. from the POV of a character’s pet.

Write a story about a character receiving threatening letters in the mailbox that keep getting scarier and more dangerous every day through the month.

The character, along with one or more others, decide to visit a local haunted house attraction that’s just opened up.

Halloween is rolling around and an odd fair has come to town with all manner of old-fashioned clowns, fire-eaters, and jugglers. The character(s) get their hands on tickets to see the show and cannot resist.

After hearing about an abandoned house in the neighborhood that was supposedly the scene of a gruesome crime years earlier, the character and a friend or two decide to explore the property.

A fun, creepy night of urban exploration gets the character(s) into trouble.

While spending some time at the beach at night, the character comes across something else moving near the shore, something that may or may not be human at all.

The character didn’t plan on any costume for Halloween this year, but their best friend/partner wants to go shopping for the perfect costumes, perhaps even as a themed pair.

Write a plot about a character meeting a fae creature, but realizing they aren’t as pretty and delicate as the fairy tales made them believe.

After watching a horror movie, the character claims there weren’t scared at all. However, once the house is quiet and dark, they’re suddenly hiding under their covers in fear.

With Halloween approaching, weird people have been hanging around town. Very weird people. ‘People in masks standing outside of houses’ weird people, including the character’s house.

Two character end up in a battle over which is better: ghostly horror movies or monster movies?

After the death of a friend or family member, the character (and possibly one or a few others) finds a hidden trap door in their home while cleaning out their belongings. Inside, they uncover secrets the deceased was hiding.

The character makes a new friend who claims to be an actual witch. They end up proving it to them with an impressive display of magic (if the preferred character is actually a witch, feel free to change the POV)

The character ends up locked in another reality where everything around them is just a bit ‘off’, as well as the fact that no one seems to recognize them. Then they meet one other character who does remember them, and appears to be going through the same thing.

The character has a run-in with someone from their past; someone they know for a fact has been dead for years.

The character has had a near-death experience, and is seeing a few moments between worlds before they’re brought back to life.

The character(s) have a run-in with an odd trick-or-treater a week before Halloween, but the eerie child refuses to leave their doorstep

The character, along with one other, travels to the Suicide Forest in Japan (or another famous haunted wilderness of writer’s choice) and uncovers something grisly, or perhaps even gets lost and disoriented. 

The muse meets up with an old friend or family member, and together they find home videos from their childhood Halloweens. This could be either a heartwarming experience, or an eerie one if they see something spooky they didn’t remember from their past.

The character starts a brand new job, but quickly learns that there are warnings that come with the job. No wonder they can’t keep employees for more than a few days.

The character (one or more others are optional as well) has been kidnapped and locked in a cellar, trying to find the means of escape.

Write a ghost story including any characters of your choice, with one twist: the story takes place in a past decade or century.

The character has just moved to a new city and isn’t familiar with anyone or anything. As they’re taking a walk late at night to relieve their stress, they have an eerie feeling that they’re being followed down every block.

Write a horror plot centered around a gas station (petrol station).

The character lost a beloved pet a year earlier, and finally decides it’s time to bring home a new shelter pet to love. They’re magnetically drawn to one animal in particular, but once they take it home, they start to suspect that this animal may not be ordinary at all.

Write a story from the perspective of a legendary monster (lagoon creature, zombie, sea monster, yeti, etc)

It’s Halloween night - write a story about a costume party or get-together going terribly wrong.

can i request some poems about rain?

hi anon, of course! rain is among my top 5 favourite things. here are some rain-soaked poems & i hope you enjoy reading!

e. e. cummings, “somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond” | nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Ocean Vuong, “Immigration Haibun” | How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.

Andrea Gibson, “I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out” | You are so full of rain / There is so much that is growing

Conchitina Cruz, “Alunsina Takes a Walk in the Rain” | Today, the news tells me you are scheduled to be lonely.

Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina” | She thinks that her equinoctial tears / and the rain that beats on the roof of the house / were both foretold by the almanac

Tatsuji Miyoshi, “Great Aso” | Rain is falling. Rain is falling. / In hushed silence rain is falling.

Octavio Paz, “As One Listens to the Rain” | listen to me as one listens to the rain, / without listening, hear what I say / with eyes open inward, asleep

Hayan Charara, “Ode to an Abandoned House” | May you live forever, / may you bury me.

it really pisses me off how easy it is to get sad and then how long and hard it is to get happy again like what the fuck man thats not fair

“When you’re a trans woman you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody and if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you’re accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideas of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement. We trans women are made to teeter on this tightrope, not because we are transsexuals, but because we are women. This is the same double bind that forces teenage girls to negotiate their way between virgin and whore, that forces female politicians and business women to be aggressive without being seen as a bitch, and to be feminine enough not to emasculate their alpha male colleagues, without being so girly as to undermine their own authority.”

— Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, p 28-9  (via lugardepiedras)