How To Write The “Gifted” Kid

How to Write the “Gifted” Kid

Intro

First, I apologize for the slightly misleading title when this is also a thinly veiled excuse to rant about being said “gifted” kid. But I also do want to touch on this topic because it’s something I’m familiar with, having seen it in many other people my age. The irony of the system I’ve seen and experienced is that it’s meant to push us up, but instead far more often pulls us down.

Note: I think the idea that people are more gifted than others is complete nonsense, therefore I have placed it in quotation marks in the title. I will not be using the quotations throughout the entire post; however, please assume they are there, just invisible.

Remember too, that this is my experience, and a lot of these are my opinions; you may have had a different experience, and that is also completely valid!

Pressure

“Gifted” kids are often singled out at a young age by the education system. Usually they have desirable qualities like good memorization, determination, and curiosity. Sometimes they’re chosen by their school to take part in a “gifted and talented” program or something similar. The result is that they grow up with a lot more pressure on them to do well in school, and later on, life. They are expected to achieve high and aim for success, all with relatively little effort because they’re “gifted.”

But as they grow older, they become more insignificant as the number of gifted kids increases, and suddenly they’re struggling to compete with a dozen other people at any given time.

And speaking of grades, that’s another thing gifted kids focus on. A lot of gifted kids end up connecting their self-worth to their grades, which eventually leads to low self-esteem, mental exhaustion and low mental health, and burnout.

Perfectionism

Another effect of being a gifted kid is growing up believing that you have to be perfect. This often leads to a huge fear of failure and/or disappointment.

Perfectionism has always been a huge issue for me. When I check my grades, I get a cold, almost nauseous feeling from the anticipation. I cry when I don’t understand a lesson the first time because I expect myself to be perfect. I hate not being good at something the first time I do it. It’s terrible and it’s irrational, but it’s a habit, and a hard one to break, at that.

Not all gifted kids are perfectionists, but it’s a common trait. You probably know that one kid who complains about getting an A minus or some other grade that’s still good. That’s the gifted perfectionist, on a bit of an exaggerated level.

Gifted kids are held to a much higher standard, and I believe that’s what causes the perfectionism in the first place. Our identities are tied to our success. If other people aren’t satisfied with us, we aren’t satisfied with ourselves. If we make mistakes, we become them. It’s a vicious cycle that’s difficult to break out of, but unfortunately, it’s a reality for many.

Academic career

(Disclaimer: A lot of what I say here applies to the United States. If you live in another country, I would be interested to hear about what the typical “gifted” academic career looks like!)

Gifted kids frequently take honors classes, AP classes, or IB classes in their academic career, and usually more than one at any given time. Also, note that College Board, which runs AP and a bunch of other tests and classes, is regarded as a scam and a rip-off by most people, and it’s something of a running joke among AP students. I’m not going to dip into that discourse here, but I do believe that exams are very expensive and the grading scale is designed to be deliberately detail-oriented and harsh.

All of this is to say; gifted kids spend most of their early lives learning to build toward their future. A frequent problem is, though, that it’s not a future they’ve chosen for themself. I’ve chosen it, but there are plenty who haven’t, or people who want to escape it and can’t.

Burnout and motivation

All of this can lead to declining mental health and self-esteem and close connections. “Gifted kid burnout” is a common condition as gifted kids get older. They work themselves to the point of exhaustion, and use coping mechanisms such as old childhood/comfort hobbies or fandoms. Another popular coping mechanism is procrastination.

Often at this point, productivity sharply tumbles, and the gifted kid is left wondering why they can’t seem to summon any of their old achievements and success. This may bring them to a loss of motivation and increased apathy towards life.

Why it’s problematic

The entire concept of “gifted” kids is designed to benefit only a select few, and then then, after the system is done with them, I wouldn’t call those few “benefited.” And what about those who aren’t deemed gifted? Are they average? Below-average? The system is divisive and discriminatory, and it needs to be reworked.

Gifted kids are also forced into competition, both with others and themselves. Their careers become a race against their own productivity and success. And when that fails, they’re left with the dregs of their mental health.

Outro

Hardly any of this was actual writing advice, but I hope some of it was useful, or at least eye-opening. This may not be the most important issue out there, but it is certainly one of the most common ones. When you're writing a gifted kid character, keep these things in mind. Thank you for reading!

How to Write a Chorister

Intro

Singing has always been one of my passions--I’ve been in choirs since I was ten years old, so I have a pretty good knowledge of music and music theory! I haven’t seen many posts on how to write a chorister (aka a fancy word for a member of a choir), so I decided to make one myself. Yes, it’s a very self-indulgent post, but hopefully someone finds this somewhat helpful!

Warm up

You know how in movies and other media, people will start singing out of the blue and they're perfectly on pitch and flawless? Yeah, well that’s kind of misleading. A singer will never perform at their best without warming up. They can sing despite that, but their voice will most likely sound strained or weaker than usual, and their vocal range won’t be as wide. Singing warm ups are omitted in most media because it’s inconvenient to show, and I understand that, although I think it would be fun if the process was shown!

Choir warm ups are frequently both vocal and physical. I’ll give you my choir’s as an example. First we loosen up by stretching, paying particular attention to the neck and spine. Other physical exercises are clapping along to a rhythm that the choir director sets, practicing good posture, and doing breathing exercises.

Next comes the fun part: vocal warm up. We usually start with lip trills, “sirens,” and repeated words or vowels/diphthongs. After that, we typically do ascending and descending solfege scales, stretching into the highest parts of our range and down into the lowest parts of our range. And then we’re ready to sing!

Vocal parts

There are four main parts to a choir, which I’ll define as simply as possible:

Soprano: The highest range of voices in a choir

Alto: The second highest range of voices in a choir

Tenors: The second lowest range of voices in a choir

Bass/Baritones: The lowest range of voices in a choir

Some people fall in between these ranges or span more than one, which is normal. Also, the average singer’s vocal range is 2-3 octaves on a piano.

Characteristics of a chorister

Choristers typically have or should have the following traits:

A keen sense of pitch, rhythm, and hearing

Strength in sight reading and in reading musical score

The ability to sing as a group and blend well with other voices

Leadership! Being a leader helps you as well as everyone else

Types of choirs

Choirs usually organize and limit themselves according to voicing and/or age of the singers as well as by the size of group or the type of music they sing. Here are some types:

Mixed choir: A group with changed (usually male) and unchanged voices (usually female or children); the voicing for this group is typically expressed as SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). This is the type of choir I currently sing in!

Equal voice choir: A group for either changed (usually male) voices or unchanged (usually female) voices. Sometimes these choirs are called men's choirs and women's/ladies' choirs. Sometimes they are referred to by their voicing: a TB or TTBB choir and an SA or SSAA choir

A youth choir varies widely in its voicing since adolescence is the time when most male voices transition from the soprano or alto vocal range to the tenor or bass vocal range. For this reason, youth choirs can have any combination of voice parts, including SA, SAB, and SATB

A children’s choir is most typically an equal voice group for pre-pubertal singers. Some children's choirs also include youth and may include changed voices (tenor and bass)

Choirs can also organize themselves by size or repertoire type:

Chorus/choral society/large ensemble: Usually a choir of 40 or more singers and often includes 100+ people. These groups typically sing large works, including operas or oratorios or similar pieces

A chamber choir will never include more than 40 singers and will often be considerably smaller (For example, the chamber choir I’m in has 17 singers.)

Small vocal ensemble/group: Ranges in size from 3 to 12 singers

A cappella choir: Sings only music that has no pitched instrumental accompaniment. A great example is the group Pentatonix (which many choir directors absolutely adore)

Choirs that organize themselves around specific cultural or religious music traditions

How singing in a choir can affect you

You can learn many useful talents from choir, such as:

Learning to work with other people and form bonds with them. The better the members of a choir know each other, the better they will sing together!

Growing more confident in your abilities and improving your musical talents

Singing with like-minded people

Harmonizing to pop songs on the radio

Impressing people in karaoke

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

How Not to Fantasy Worldbuild

Intro

Yes, you read that title right. Today I’m going to be giving advice on how you should not fantasy worldbuild. I’ll be exploring the mistakes people frequently make when worldbuilding foreign fantasy peoples, countries, and cultures, and how to avoid those mistakes. Please note that this advice doesn't apply to books where foreign countries do not play a significant role. However, if you have a book like Six of Crows or Blood Heir where foreign countries are significant, then this post may be more immediately useful to you.

Disclaimer: Remember that these are my opinions, and you are fully entitled to your own!

Put the same level of effort in for all worldbuilding

As an example: don’t come up with an entire history, economy, government, culture, etc. for one country, and then completely neglect another country because its inspirations lie in a country you aren’t familiar with.

@joonmono puts this best in their Tumblr post: “i will never not be angry at white fantasy authors being like ‘this is fake russia and this is fake germany and this is fake scandinavia and this is fake netherlands and this is fake amsterdam' then turn around and be like ‘oh but there's only one fake collective african country and one fake collective asian country.’”

Many fantasy authors, not just white authors, make this mistake too, because it saves time and effort. However, this is lazy and shallow worldbuilding at best. It shows you don’t care enough to research other countries/cultures and honor them. Yet taking the time to research for your worldbuilding both improves the depth of your worldbuilding and opens up your own worldview. When you enrich your worldbuilding, you also enrich yourself. That should be incentive enough to not half-ass the worldbuilding. So just don’t do it. Trust me, your readers will notice and appreciate it.

Don’t mix and match cultures

Mixing and matching cultures is a surefire way to make them inaccurate. For example, don’t group a bunch of East Asian cultures together into Fantasy China or a bunch of South Asian cultures into Fantasy India. It’s lazy, inaccurate, and quite frankly, offensive. And unfortunately, it’s very common in modern fantasy books.

Even among common aspects of culture, there are huge differences as well. For example, there’s no such thing as one Indian people: there are thousands of ethnic groups in India, however. So, to avoid mixing and matching ethnic groups, focus on one specific group for inspiration.

Whatever you do, don’t consolidate an entire country, with various different languages, cultures, and traditions into a single monolith. That’s ignorant and harmful to the people who are part of those cultures.

Avoid stereotypes and generalizations

I really, really dislike it when writers fill their only foreign cultures and countries with rife stereotypes and outdated misconceptions. As a result, the fictional country/culture/people becomes a caricature of whatever reality the writer is attempting to imitate. It has potential, but it remains undeveloped in favor of stacking stereotypes and/or generalizations on top of each other.

This all ties into the first point I made: readers can tell when you don’t put effort into building foreign countries and cultures. Stereotypes and generalizations is where perhaps the largest harm takes root. This may not seem important--isn’t it all just fiction? But fantasy frequently draws from reality, and that reality may be that of a narrow, ignorant lens.

Be careful and mindful about how you draw inspiration from foreign cultures and countries, because the people who belong to them can very much be affected today.

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the-writer-muse

2 years ago

i think that all stories are about consumption, performance, and/or narrative, and the best combine elements of all three

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

Having A Meltdown Over What I’m Gonna Do When I’m Not Seventeen And Songs Don’t Mention Me

having a meltdown over what i’m gonna do when i’m not seventeen and songs don’t mention me

How to Write a Love Letter

Intro

Today I'm going to be talking about love letters, also known as one of the best (and oldest) motifs in literature. From Pride and Prejudice to The Cruel Prince, people have loved reading about love letters from the beginning, which means there's a lot of pressure to get it right!

I believe there are two main standards/challenges to consider when writing a proper love letter: 1.) it must sound genuinely impassioned and 2.) it shouldn’t sound like it’s been written before. This post is going to hopefully help with those two standards. Without further ado, let's dive in!

The unspoken is spoken

Many times, people write love letters because it’s easier to put their feelings and thoughts on paper than to speak them aloud. Maybe they’re afraid to express those feelings and thoughts, or maybe they don’t have the time or ability to do so. Whatever the case, these emotions likely build up in them over time, so that when they write a love letter, their words are passionate and intimate. There are many different core emotions that could be at the heart of a love letter (sorry for the pun), including fear, hope, longing, curiosity, grief, and uncertainty. Love letters can be addressed to anyone--people who are alive, missing, lost, or dead--and often many different emotions are involved with it.

How to open a love letter

“Dear [name]” is a classic, if somewhat overused, way to begin a love letter. Ways to switch it up would be including an inside joke, pet name, or a memory from the past. Or, you can forgo the “Dear” altogether and just write the name, which implies that the letter-writer is desperate to get to the point.

There are many different ways to begin the content of the letter. Typically the first item on the agenda is for the letter-writer to explain why they are writing the love letter. You can talk about recent events, past events, or launch into a description of the letter-writer’s predicament. Or you could begin by writing about something seemingly unrelated to love, that eventually connects to the recipient of the love letter in some way.

Figurative language

However much figurative language you use, it has to make sense for the character who’s writing the letter. If they’re typically a blunt person, then their letter will likely be blunt. If they’re a poetic person, then their letter will probably be poetic. Basically, the voice of the letter should sound authentic to the person writing it! Sometimes, the letters that use flowery language aren’t the best letters. Sometimes it’s the letters with simple images and language. Another thing to keep in mind is that specificity conveys even more emotion than five similes in a single sentence ever does. Have the letter writer remember a single moment, or a few events that were significant to them, and include as many details as you can.

The heart of the letter

(Did I really just make the same pun twice in a post? Yes, yes I did.) In fiction, the letter-writer always has a purpose with their letters. Sometimes they’re trying to communicate with the recipient of the letter about a misunderstanding. Maybe they even want to apologize for that misunderstanding. Or maybr they've been separated from their partner, by choice or circumstance, and desperately want to reconnect with them. Whatever the case, the letter should have a point--what is the writer hoping to take away from this? What are their hopes and goals? Keep this in mind the entire time you're writing the love letter.

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

“feminine urge” this and “masculine urge” that, what about the urge to stop procrastinating writing your wips?

How To Write The “Gifted” Kid