NEED HELP WRITING? (a Masterlist)

subtle ways to include foreshadowing

one character knowing something offhandedly that they shouldn't, isn't addressed until later

the crow rhyme

colours!! esp if like, blue is evil in your world and the mc's best friend is always noted to wear blue...betrayal?

write with the ending in mind

use patterns from tragic past events to warn of the future

keep the characters distracted! run it in the background until the grand reveal

WEATHER.

do some research into Chekhov's gun

mention something that the mc dismisses over and over

KEEP TRACK OF WHAT YOU PUT. don't leave things hanging.

unreliable characters giving information that turn out to be true

flowers and names with meanings

anything with meanings actually

metaphors. if one character describes another as "a real demon" and the other turns out to be the bad guy, you're kind of like...ohhh yeahhh

anyways add anything else in the tags

it is canon that:

Noelle would mercilessly grind her Catz to get the right combination, eliminating all Catz that strayed from her path

Noelle has a morbid curiosity, and it gives her the determination to see scary and messed up things, like videogame creepypastas, despite her emotional response to cry and fear

I conclude that:

Noelle could complete an Undertale No Mercy route

Noelle would stream her No Mercy Playthrough and be an instant hit, because everytime someone dies, Noelle spends 5 minutes grieving the person she just killed

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

Let's be honest in this whole transmigrating situation, the one who got the shortest end of the deal isn't krs! Cale. Like, sure, he was forced into a series of sucky things, but he still gets something out of it.

You know who's the one that doesn't benefit whatsoever from Kim Rok Soo's deal?

The original, unknowing, 18-year-old, Cale Henituse.

Did the now Kim Rok Soo realize he had killed an innocent 18-year-old boy the moment he regressed?

I'm writing a reaction fic with an alive tboah!Cale, but tboah!Cale is not the original Cale, and sometimes I can't help but think about the truest victim that everybody has forgotten: Cale Henituse, the boy whose entire existence was erased the moment 40-year-old Cale regressed.

Can you imagine? One day, you went to bed like normal, and then your body suddenly ceased to be yours.

Apparently, your depressed "older self" - who had already lived his life but was now stealing yours - not only decided to kill you in the name of the "Greater Good", he was also too much of a coward to stay.

Your "older self" (and your murderer) had made a deal with a God and would be fucking off to another world very soon.

You were left to come to terms with 3 things:

A stranger will be taking over your body in your stead (and you know they don't have a choice in this either, but still, you hate-)

You will die. No, more like you will get deleted (and no one will even remember that you had once lived)

You do not get any say in any of this. (You never did, and now, you never will.)

(And to think that in another world, you would have grown up to become him.)

(In the end, Cale Henituse dies hating himself.)

It keeps me up at night sometimes.

Cale: *makes a cruel plan on how to completely obliterated the enemy and/or learn new information about their opponents*

Everyone: *agrees with the plan and follows it step by step just as Cale had instructed them*

Cale: Wow vicious people…

Readers:

kfc stack!!!! WOOO

Reactions to grief

Denial and Disbelief: Initially, a character may struggle to accept the reality of their loss. They might refuse to believe that their loved one is gone, clinging to hope or desperately searching for any signs of their presence.

Emotional Turmoil: Grief often brings intense emotional upheaval. Characters may experience profound sadness, despair, anger, guilt, or a mix of conflicting emotions. Their moods may fluctuate drastically, leading to outbursts of tears, frustration, or numbness.

Withdrawal and Isolation: Some characters might withdraw from social interactions, seeking solitude to process their grief. They may isolate themselves from others, finding solace in their own thoughts and memories.

- Physical Symptoms: Grief can manifest in physical symptoms such as loss of appetite, insomnia, fatigue, headaches, or other psychosomatic manifestations. These physical reactions can reflect the toll that grief takes on the character's overall well-being.

Immersion in Memories: Characters may immerse themselves in memories of the person they've lost. They might seek comfort in looking at old photographs, listening to recordings, or visiting significant places that remind them of their loved one.

Guilt and Regret: Characters may grapple with guilt and regret over things left unsaid or unresolved issues with the deceased. They may blame themselves for not being able to prevent the loss or feel remorse for any negative actions or words in the past.

Seeking Closure: Characters might actively seek closure by investigating the circumstances surrounding the loss or searching for answers. This could involve conducting their own inquiries, talking to people connected to the situation, or even pursuing spiritual or metaphysical avenues.

Attempting to Fill the Void: Some characters may try to fill the void left by their loss by immersing themselves in work, hobbies, or other distractions. This can be a way to cope with the pain or to create a sense of purpose in the absence of their loved one.

Rediscovering Meaning: Over time, characters may go through a process of reevaluating their own life's purpose and finding new meaning or direction. This can involve pursuing new interests, engaging in charitable acts, or dedicating themselves to causes that honor the memory of the person they've lost.

Healing and Acceptance: Eventually, characters may find a sense of healing and acceptance. While the pain of the loss never fully disappears, they learn to live with their grief and carry the memory of their loved one with them. This can lead to a renewed sense of purpose or a deepened appreciation for life.

6 Tips for Writing an Underdog Character

People love reading about an underdog. There’s something within all of us that relates to persevering against the odds, even when they’re crushing. Anything becomes possible—but how do you write that kind of character successfully?

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Create Their Disempowerment

Underdogs need to lose something or have one thing less than those they fight against. It might be something they hope to gain back or something they hope to gain at all.

Let’s use The Hunger Games as an example for this post. Katniss comes from District 12, but she’s already at a disadvantage when she volunteers as tribute. Restrictions on her district kept her from food security for most of her life. Without a lifetime of basic nutrition, her body is already at a disadvantage in the physically-demanding games.

District 12 is also one of the less appreciated districts in her country. She doesn’t think anyone will care about sponsoring her in the games, which makes survival much less likely.

But we still root for her! She volunteered to save her sister, which is heroic. There’s so much potential for more heroic growth that we keep turning the page, even though she’s not the most likely person to survive.

2. Make Your Protagonist Likable

Getting excited to see a character grow might be something you feel as a creative writer, but the average reader also needs an underdog protagonist to be likable in some way. Katniss will do anything for her family, including hunting where and when she isn’t supposed to. Many people would feel the need to do the same for their families.

She also feels deep compassion for people, which she covers up with her gruff demeanor. We’ve all felt like we got hurt because our hearts opened too wide for someone. We can relate to her building defenses into her personality, which might make her likable to more readers.

Katniss also has the core value of loyalty. People always seek loyalty in new connections. It’s how we trust new friends. It’s also how readers trust characters.

This site has a few more tips on crafting likable characters. Part of that happens while you’re creating the characters during your planning process, but you can also do it while you’re writing. As your underdog becomes more of a real person in your mind, you’ll know which primary character traits make them most likable to readers.

3. Plan Their Rock-Bottom Moment

Underdogs always reach a point where they feel they’re at their lowest. Even when they feel crushed or defeated, they choose to find strength and continue with their journey. It makes readers support them even more, but it’s also the defining moment of an underdog’s arc.

Your underdog’s rock-bottom moment will be the scene where they resist the temptation to give up, change their dream, or change who they are. It will be the choice that keeps them moving toward their end goal, instead of taking the easy road.

You could argue Katniss has a few rock-bottom moments. It might be when she hears her sister’s name called at the Reaping. It could be when Rue dies and she chooses to spearhead a revolution.

There could be multiple moments for your underdog too. It depends on the shape of your narrative arc and how many acts your story has.

4. Show Them Trying and Failing

It’s time for an important caveat—underdogs also fail. If they were perfect, they’d be god-like figures that readers couldn’t personally identify with.

Maybe your underdog achieves their ultimate goal, but they experience failure along the way. Their failure helps them grow or makes them pursue their goal with more conviction and determination.

Katniss begins her journey with a mindset of self-preservation. That makes her slightly selfish and automatically distrustful of people. She makes some choices readers would probably disagree with, but then she learns from them. By the end of the series, she’s as selfless as a human can get. 

Characters don’t grow if they don’t make mistakes. Even underdogs should fail. However, that failure shouldn’t make them quit. It should either motivate them to keep going or give them a new perspective on how they can achieve their ultimate goal.

5. Train Them Along the Way

Underdogs start out as unlikely heroes because they don’t start with everything they need to succeed. That might be a societal problem, like coming from an economically disadvantaged family or a biased society. Maybe they don’t have the skills they need, like the ability to fight in hand-to-hand combat, outsmart their antagonist, or solve mysteries.

Usually, characters learn these things during their arcs. Your underdog will likely pick up what they need to succeed through the relationships they make and experiences they have. 

Katniss already knows how to hunt when she volunteers for the games, but Haymitch mentors her to win over much-needed sponsors to survive. Peeta teaches her how to soften her heart and think outside the box. She wouldn’t have made it through the series without the people in her life. Other underdog characters can’t either.

6. Reward Them at the End

Underdogs work hard and transform themselves to achieve their goals. At the end of the story, they often gain a tangible reward, power, knowledge, a new title or a new community. Your underdog should get what they set out to achieve, plus a few extra things they didn’t expect.

Katniss wins the Hunger Games. She gets her primary objective: to continue living. She also protects her sister. In addition to surviving, she has her (albeit rocky) relationship with Peeta, a new mentor in Haymitch, a comfortable living in the Victor’s Village, and an audience of fans who are another layer of protection against President Snow’s desire to kill her.

The extra rewards propel her through the remainder of her storyline. They also set her up for more success with the new lifepath she sees for herself: aiding the revolution to end the games for good.

A new goal is sometimes a reward in itself. It depends on if you want to continue writing about your character or if you want a one-off story.

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I hope this helps gives you a new perspective on future protagonists! Adding one of these factors into your character’s growth could remove your writer’s block too. They set up a path forward for your protagonist and help shape their journey.

You can also use these resources to learn more about the underdog archetype:

Character Archetypes: The Disruptor and the Underdog

Writing the Underdog: Effort Matters Most

7 Tips to Writing Underdog Heroes

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!