You Own Everything That Happened To You. Tell Your Stories. If People Wanted You To Write Warmly About

Sharing this on both blogs since it's so amazing and I'm awed by it.

Ryiah Lavellan, commission for sinedra 

idk if anyone will find this useful, but this is how i go about planning my stories. i mostly write fantasy, so that’s what this is most applicable to. but it could work with other genres too.

so there’s three major components to a story: the characters, the plot, and the world. creating them individually is the easy part, but they all connect and affect each other in different ways. (like you can’t have a character who loves peaches and eats them every day if they live a peasant in a region that doesn’t grow peaches, for example.)

so i created a cheat sheet to help connect all three components together.

1) the world creates the characters.

this is related to the peach example above. the characters should be a direct result of the environment they grew up in and the environment they currently live in.

2) the characters are limited by the world.

also related to the peaches. characters can’t do anything outside of what the rules of their surroundings and universe allow, such as eating peaches when they’re not available. this also applies for magic users. they can’t have unlimited magic, so keep in mind what you want out of both the characters and the world when creating magic systems.

3) the characters carry the plot.

we’ve all heard it before: “bad characters can’t carry a good plot. good characters can carry a bad plot.” but we all like a good plot anyway. try to make sure you’re not giving your characters too heavy or too light of a plot to carry.

4) the plot pushes the characters.

if nothing in the plot happens, your characters will remain static forever. if you struggle with plots, try starting with what character development you want to happen, then go from there.

5) the plot depends on the world.

you can’t overthrow the evil government if there isn’t one. think of what your world needs most and what your plot is centered around, and fit those two together.

6) the world is changed by the plot.

even if your plot is centered around something most of your world would call “insignificant”, the world will still experience some change from the plot. either the evil government will be gone, or maybe that one teacher is now way more careful about keeping an eye on the test key. either way, the world will be different from now on.

final note: usually people will be able to write one or two of the components with ease, but don’t know where to go from there. i personally can’t write plots, but thinking this way has really helped me actually make a story out of the world and characters because i looked at what i needed from what i had. i really hope this can help you too! happy writing!

tl;dr this is a cheat sheet to help anyone who struggles with writing one or two of what i consider the three major components to a story.

Your writing will always feel awkward to you, because you wrote it.

Your plot twists will always feel predictable, because you created them.

Your stories will always feel a bit boring to you, because you read them a million times.

They won't feel like that for your reader.

I try to keep this just writing, and this is a little late, but holy cow do they not look amazing. @janeopries look at our dorks! It’s perfect.

Sadira and Ulyesses commissioned by @sinedra

© (c ) copyright 1990-2011 Rebecca Sinclair

See the original HERE

This blog

Well, if I treat this blog anything like my facebook then it'll be sorely neglected and sometimes forgotten (apologizes). But I'll try to do things like book reviews/recommendations, story snippets, or just rants basically.

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Remember, you will always be growing as a writer. There is no peak, only improvement. It's a continual learning curve and you can only go up from here. So keep writing lovelies.

“Boring when you aren’t around,” he said with a grin. Finishing up his own food and standing, holding out a hand to her. “Indulge me for a second.”

Sadira stared at them in a silent awe, they were gorgeous. It was nearly impossible to pick which one was better. She looked up at him, and smirked. “I could always model them, and you can decide which one looks good enough to deign the Tuuli Thea’s neck.” She pulled out her hair, as her sister often wore it down, and put on rose gold necklace.

She pushed her hair out of the way and made sure it rested on the hollow of her throat before turning to him. “Well?”

Kiesha’Ra RP- Private pt. 8

Araie turned and smiled at her, happy to see she was till alive and that her brother hadn’t chased her off. “Thank you for letting me borrow Aiden, he was a great guide through the Keep.”

Ulyesses scowled and looked away. That large eye sore of a building? 

Mara finished with with Ulyesses’s burn and turned back to her guests. “So, about that tea.”

A month had passed since Sadira had come to the Opries home and Araie had spent most of her nights with Aiden, dancing, laughing, and his attempts at formal courting made her only fall deeper and deeper in love with him.

Ulyesses had avoided leaving his shop the entire month, not even to venture to the nest to seek comfort from one of the dancers there. There was a banquet soon for the celebration of the new royal baby. Though not yet born, serpiente usually held a banquet in celebration of a new family member. Ulyesses did not know what to give his friend.

“Araie…I need you to tell Sadira that I…damn it, need her help with something. Make it quick.” He shooed his sister out of the stall.

48hr tumblr blackout proposal

tumblr mobile has seadily become near unusable these past few updates. not just from a user experience perspective (which is important enough in itself) but also from an accessibility perspective.

examples include the new way the image viewer works (if you can call it "working"), the tumblr live button replacing the profile button, and that newly created blogs will be forced to have their main dashboard tab be the 'for you' page.

the demands of the protest would be along the lines of:

reverse the recent image viewer update

scrap the new users 'for you' page default setting

let us turn off tumblr live indefinitely

increase efforts against spam / porn bots

make reporting abuse and hate speech as easy as reporting as reporting spam

let us go nuts show nuts again... for real this time

commit to improving usability and accessibility, and listening to users!

(suggestions welcome!)

to protest against these usability issues, and inspired by the recent reddit blackout, i propose a 48 hour blackout (where you don't use tumblr at all). preferably of both mobile and web (since web has problems too) but mobile is the focus here.

I suggest the 48 hours between the 30th of June to the end of the 1st of July.

this marks the end of pride month (for the "queerest place on the internet") and the start of disability month (since accessibility is a massive issue here).

tumblr office is in San Francisco, USA, so the times and dates will be calculated using their time zone (PDT).

you can find out the times and dates for your timezone here.

i can't afford to blaze this post so please spread it around as much as possible! protests only work if significant numbers show up!