Five Recipes For An Exciting Life (in My Opinion)

Messy happy Gryffindors enjoying a quidditch match…

This whole thing came about just because I wanted to paint Remus absolutely cheesing to show his lil crooked teeth ☹️

i get a little bit of free time and start going "what if i taught myself woodworking" girl work on ur resume

Domestic wolfstar part two because. Yeah

'If you don't like graffiti look away like you do for genocide"

Seen in Austin, Texas

in what order do you think it’s best to read dostoyevsky’s novels?

hey so this is a question i get asked quite often, so you know what? i made yall a handy chart

What's your advice on writing a strong, solid chapter one? Something that will grab the reader's attention and make them beg on their knees for more?

Tips for Writing a Strong First Chapter

Note: in the examples, I’m using the second chapter as Harry Potter rather than the first, which was really more of a prologue.

1. Create a “snapshot” of your character’s normal life…

One of the most important things you can do in the first chapter is give your reader a sort of “snapshot” of your character’s life before the the inciting incident turns everything upside down. Otherwise, if we don’t know what their life is like before everything changes, the inciting incident won’t be a change. It’ll just be something that happens.

In Twilight, we saw Bella being the run-of-the-mill daughter of divorced parents. In Harry Potter, we saw Harry being the unwanted and much-maligned ward of muggle relatives, while struggling with emerging wizard powers. In Star Wars, we saw Luke being the bored farm boy, longing for heroism and adventure. In The Hunger Games, we saw Katniss taking care of her mom and sister by hunting for extra food for them with Gale.

2. Show us who they are–show us their strengths and their flaws…

Most stories feature a protagonist who changes in someway throughout the course of the story. This is the character arc, and it can either be positive (the most common) or negative. Positive story arcs stem from the character’s flaws that are established at the beginning of the story. While they have strengths, too, it’s the flaws that dominate and make their lives such a mess that the reader is anxious to see how their lives will change. The character will overcome those flaws through the events of the story, so in the end the reader can marvel at how far they’ve come and how much better their lives are as a result of this change. In a negative arc, it works in the exact opposite way. Sometimes there are static arcs, where the character doesn’t change but changes someone around them or their environment, and sometimes you get a little hybrid of both.

In Twilight, we see a girl who’s a little selfish, a little closed off, and very codependent. In The Hunger Games, we see a girl who feels helpless against the oppressive government making her life, and the lives of everyone she cares about, a living hell. In Star Wars, we see a boy who’s cocky and idealistic.

3. Show us who and what matters in their world…

Another important element that should be introduced in the first chapter is who and what matters to the main character. These are the initial stakes–the thing that motivates them into action when the world turns upside down. In some cases, the world turns upside down because something happened to them.

In Twilight, we meet Bella’s mom and dad, but in many ways, the absence of anyone else here is part of what serves as motivation for Bella to want her life to change and to want to belong to something bigger than herself. It’s much the same in Harry Potter, where the only people who really matter to him are people who died when he was a baby. In The Hunger Games, we meet Katniss’s mom and sister, her best friend Gale, and we learn about Katniss’s father and Gale’s family, and the boy with the bread. In Star Wars, we meet Luke’s Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

4. Show us their world…

Part of the point of the inciting incident is that it’s going to change the known world for the main character. This really dovetails with #1, because their normal life happens within this world. In some stories, a character’s “world” might be their work and home life or their home and school life. In other stories, their “world” might be the small village they live in and the plagued-by-evil-king kingdom the village is a part of. 

In Twilight, Bella’s world was uprooted right at the beginning and exchanged for the tiny, perpetually overcast town of Forks, Washington. In The Hunger Games, Katniss’s world was District Twelve and the oppressive Capitol beyond. In Star Wars, Luke’s world was a moisture farm on the desert planet of Tatooine, part of a larger Civil War-wracked galaxy.

5. Start the story when something interesting is happening…

We often hear the advice “start in the middle of the action” or “begin the story with action” and this is often misinterpreted, either to mean you should start with the inciting incident or start with a big car chase or heart-pounding battle. Neither of which is true. Beginning the story with action just means you should start the story with something interesting happening rather than with a big info dump. That doesn’t mean you can’t include exposition in your opening, but weave the exposition into something interesting happening.

In Twilight, the story opens with Bella being dropped off at the airport by her mom so that she can move to Washington to live with her dad. In The Hunger Games, the story opens with Katniss getting ready to go hunting with Gale, then walking through her district on her way to meet him. In Harry Potter, we see Harry and the Dursleys getting ready for Dudley’s birthday party.

If you hit all five of these points in your first chapter, not only can you be sure to create a strong first chapter from which to launch the rest of your story, you can be sure your reader will have everything they need to start getting invested in your main character and the world around them. :)

something i wish i had realized earlier: you can write poems on the same subject more than once. you can write, paint, draw the same thing over and over if you want to. you can spend your whole life making art about oranges. i think i always felt this pressure to get it right the first time like i couldn’t go back and use that inspiration again. but you can. you can go back and revisit it. you can pick up the conversation again and again if you have more to say.

i would be soooooo powerful if i wasn't so deeply afraid of people and places and also things

“how to read more” “how to read faster” “how to read daily” STOP STOP stop STOP this is not a competition. read slowly, read when you’re in the right state of mind, really savour it, read for pleasure, read for yourself. don’t read for performance, stats or to compare yourself to others

Avengers AU - If Tony was Peter’s biological father

Tony is super protective of his son. And Peter, inspired by his dad, becomes Spiderman anyway (his dad and his Uncle Rhodey figure him out in a second though).

My other Avengers AUs