Drawing Socks On Feet

Some of my writer’s block cures:

Handwrite. (If you already are, write in a different coloured pen.)

Write outside or at a different location.

Read.

Look up some writing prompts.

Take a break. Do something different. Comeback to it later.

Write something else. (A different WIP, a poem, a quick short story, etc.)

Find inspiring writing music playlists on YouTube. (Themed music, POV playlists, ambient music, etc.)

Do some character or story prompts/questions to get a better idea of who or what you’re writing.

Word sprints. Set a timer and write as much as you can. Not a lot of time to overthink things.

Set your own goals and deadlines.

Write another scene from your WIP. (You don’t have to write in order.) Write a scene you want to write, or the ending. (You can change it or scrap it if it doesn’t fit into your story later.)

Write a scene for your WIP that you will never post/add to your story. A prologue, a different P.O.V., how your characters would react in a situation that’s not in your story, a flashback, etc.

Write down a bunch of ideas. Things that could happen, thing that will never happen, good things, bad things.

Change the weather (in the story of course.)

Feel free to add your own.

here have 10 pieces of writing advice that have stuck with me over the years

every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person

even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday

exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them

if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love

make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you

if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders

don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts

i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less

sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer

a story written in chronological order takes a lot more discipline and is usually easier to understand than a story written with flashbacks

“Drawing techniques for the structure and appearance of the fingers when the hand is extended”

Source: Twitter

I am a(n):

⚪ Male

⚪ Female

🔘 Writer

Looking for

⚪ Boyfriend

⚪ Girlfriend

🔘 An incredibly specific word that I can’t remember

I miss the days when, no matter how slow your internet was, if you paused any video and let it buffer long enough, you could watch it uninterrupted

Hey GMs, when your players beat a legendary monster start spreading rumors about them. Just for fun. Try it.

One of them deals the finishing blow to a mercenary warlord intent on ravaging a countryside and burning villages to the ground. The people in that area start calling them "the peacemaker". They don't even know the character's name. Just the legend. The story that some stranger risked their life for no apparent reason and brought peace to the land.

Another player beheads a mind flayer that had been hiding in plain sight in the city. They earn the nickname "octopus". The name becomes feared in the criminal underbelly of the city as someone that feels no fear, sees through all enchantments, and strikes without warning.

One player character outsmarts a vampire, knowing they stood no chance in overpowering it. The vampire is good on its word upon losing their game of wits and absconds to more obscure realms, though the character knows their for us far from done. Nonetheless, the character earns the nickname "the bloodless", a figure the vampire could not consume. It carries the impression of a cold and calculating personality, one people are not eager to cross.

Hi do you mind if I ask how you deal with loss of creativity in writing? Lately, I’ve noticed that all my ideas nowadays are unoriginal and bland and I feel helpless about it. I finally have the motivation to write but no inspiration. Is there a way to improve creativity in my stories?

Guide: Filling Your Creative Well

Whether you’re an artist, singer/songwriter, sculptor, or writer, ideas don’t come out of thin air. If you put a pair of shoes, a sweater, a ziplock bag of clothespins, and a hat into a box, shove it into the garage and let it gather dust, you can’t expect to open it up in six months and find some amazing new thing. You can only get out of that box what you put into it, and our storytelling brains work the exact same way. If you’re not constantly feeding other stories and inspiration into your brain, you’ll never have new ideas to pull from when you write.

Thankfully, even if you’re in a rut or a tough place in life, there are a variety of accessible ways to feed new ideas into your creative well. Here are some things you can start doing to fill it back up again. But don’t expect a barrage of great ideas just because you took a walk or watched a movie. Filling up your creative well takes time, so start now and before you know it the ideas will begin to flow.

1. Consume Other Stories

read a variety of fiction, including novels in different genres, short stories and micro-fiction, poetry, essays, and fan-fiction.

read about myths, legends, folk tales, faerie tales, and ghost stories. See if you can find any that are relevant to your area or your ancestry.

watch a variety of different TV series and movies, leaning a little heavier on things that will inform what you write in some way.

watch documentaries on a variety of subjects. These can be found on TV, OnDemand, streaming, on YouTube/Vimeo, and at your local library.

stay up-to-date on local, state, national, and global current events. When a story strikes a chord with you, research it further.

take an interest in real life stories of total strangers. Look for interesting blogs and vlogs. Spend some time on pages like Humans of New York, Humankind Stories, The Dodo, or 60 Second Docs. Listen to podcasts like This American Life and Radio Lab.

play board games and video games, especially ones with a story or that allow some level of role playing.

go to a public place, sit on a bench, and discreetly observe the people around you. Don’t be a creeper, obviously, but see if you notice any interesting stories unfolding around you. If you see an interesting person, without staring at them, see if you can imagine who they are or what their life might be like.

2. See the World

Before you panic, this doesn’t have to mean traveling abroad. It doesn’t even mean you have to leave home…

if you can travel the world, by all means, do that! If you can’t, try planning out a trip you’d like to take someday. Figure out where you’d want to stay, where you’d eat, and what you’d see while you’re there. Then get online go to the web sites of those places, look at pictures, walk around on Google Street View. Look for video and video tours on YouTube.

if you can travel around your country, state, province, region, etc. Do that. And again, if you can’t, try planning a trip you’d like to take someday, then see how much of it you can experience from your computer screen.

try choosing a random location and go “walk around” via Google Street View. Click on photos. Sometimes there are walk around photo tours of places.

watch travel shows, travel documentaries, and travel movies. You can find them on TV, OnDemand, streaming, YouTube/Vimeo, and at your library.

see if your friends or family member have any travel books or travel-related coffee table books you can borrow to flip through. Or go to the bookstore or library to flip through some. If nothing else, think of interesting places, then do a Google Image Search to find photos of that place.

follow facebook pages, instagrams, and tumblr blogs dedicated to a particular place. If you have friends and family who are from different places, or have traveled to different places, ask them to tell you about it.

take a short road trip, or a “Sunday drive” as they used to be called. Be safe about it, of course, but just get in the car and explore some local roads you’ve never traveled before.

visit a nearby town you’ve never been to. If you can’t do that, find someplace in your town you’ve never seen. If nothing else, take a walk in your neighborhood and try to walk down a block you’ve never been down before. (Again, make sure you’re being safe about it.)

ask some friends or family members to go visit a local state park with you. Take a short hike or walk and enjoy that time in nature.

see if there are any interesting street festivals to attend in your town. Many towns do sidewalk art festivals, craft fairs, food truck rallies, carnivals, and seasonal or cultural events.

go spend a few hours walking around a local museum, botanical gardens, or other local attraction.

3. Learn About History

watch TV shows, documentaries, and movies about different historical figures, events, and time periods.

choose a person, event, or time period that interests you and research it thoroughly. Think about ways you can incorporate those ideas into whatever you write–no matter how far your usual genre may be from that event.

learn about the history of your town. See if your town has an historical society. Go to their web page. See if there are any interesting local sites to visit.

research your family tree. Ask family members about family history and see if they have interesting childhood memories to share. See if anyone knows interesting stories about parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

choose an historical figure or event that interests you, then try to re-imagine their life or that event in a different time period or setting. What if Henry VIII was the king of England now? How would that have played out differently? 

learn about daily life and survival in different time periods. Learn what people ate, how they passed the time, how they dressed, and what traditions and rules they lived by.

choose a subject matter like music, fashion, dance, or food, then research how they’ve changed through the ages.

4. Learn About the Future

think about an element of your daily life that either frustrates you or that you deeply rely on. Do some research to see how this thing is projected to change in the future? What advances are expected to be made? How might this thing be different in twenty or thirty years?

learn about the different ways people are planning for the future now. Cities that are implementing green technology, people that are finding interesting new ways to combat pollution or the effects of climate change, and organizations that are planning to colonize the ocean, space, or even other planets.

think of a notable person you’re interested now, like perhaps a pop star or a political figure, then imagine what their life would be like if they were alive in a futuristic city 100 years from now.

watch TV shows and documentaries about the future, or watch movies that take place in the future.

I think I’m going to make a list of recommended TV shows, movies, books, and other resources one of these days. I will eventually link that here. So if you come to this post as a re-blog, click on the original post to see if I’ve updated. Or you can look on my main site. I’ll try to have it up by the end of September 2018.

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

I spent last night looking at Neocities sites and here are my takeaways:

There's a real push to keeping the internet weird, open and less corporate-driven -- info on bypassing paywalls, protecting your data, archiving web media and basic coding/tech literacy.

(I found one tutorial on how to make a pop up that detects whether someone has an ad blocker and suggests they install one if they don't! Love that.)

There's also resources on finding the kind of internet that isn't the default experience anymore - alternate search engines I hadn't even heard of, human-made link lists and webrings. (Webrings! Turns out they never went away!)

If any of that sounds interesting to you, by the way - sadgrl.online has a lot of it and is possibly the best thing on the internet????

The "90's web" aesthetic is really fun and nostalgic, but I particularly loved seeing some people bring the better parts of the "modern internet" into it. What if we had weird, eye-searing personal sites BUT with plaintext alternatives for accessibility purposes? CW for flashing lights and unreality triggers?

(Again sadgrl comes in with a lot of resources for making your website accessible.)

Most of all, I'm honestly emotional about all the sites I found that were like, "hi! I'm 14 and this is my website where I talk about stuff I like haha."

It's so good that so many kids and teens who never experienced the "old internet" are still finding stuff like this and making their own weird stuff! Not just because weird websites are more fun, but because these skills are being passed down.

Anyway it's great and who knows maybe I'll make my own site sometime to keep horror media recommendations or something.

Good stuff.