Very Much 1, 2, And 4

A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.” A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend. Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.

— Ira Byock, The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life (x)

WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;

Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);

BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;

Charlotte Dillon - Research links;

Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;

One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;

One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!

Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;

National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;

Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;

Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;

The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;

Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;

QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);

Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;

Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

(Also, check my blog if you want to!)

Guide to Story Researching

PLEASE REBLOG | Tumblr suppresses posts with links :/

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

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Start With Broad Subjects

When you begin a story that is heavy with technical detail that must be checked for accuracy, the most efficient way of going about it is approaching the first draft with a general sense of the topic. Then, as you write more and more, keep note of details you don’t have or facts you need to find. When you reach the second and third drafts, turn that general idea into specific detail. You’ll know what you need to know at that point, and you won’t waste valuable time doing unnecessary research instead of revising.

Keep Track of Your Resources

Hoard. Your. Sources. Not only so you can cite them to any editors or beta-readers whose knowledge may conflict with what you’ve researched, but so you can refer back to them if you decide to elaborate on the part of the story that required that information in the first place. Always keep a list of links in a document with the specific information you’ve gleaned from it, listed in a way where you can easily navigate and revisit sources and information.

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I write fantasy.

Current WIP - A Thief's Story: there's a thief and he steals things

Reblog this if you write fantasy/scifi

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Writing 101: Characters with Medical Issues

Part One - Mobility Aids and/or Prosthetics

Aka, me doing research for you!

TW: talks about what leads to a prosthetic… obviously

Ah, yes, I get it. Having more diverse characters, more things that can go wrong, more hurdles — it’s all a nice addition to a story. But slow down! Don’t just shove an issue at a character because you like the idea! You need to research and decide if you actually want them to have that or if you just got a little excited. I’m here to provide you a bit of base research on a commonly used issue. Today: Prosthetics and Mobility Aids.

First of all, mobility aids are exactly what they sound like — things that aid someones mobility. These include wheelchairs, crutches, braces, walkers, canes, forearm crutches, etc.

Prosthetics are artificial devices designed to replace a missing body part. Most commonly, legs and arms.

How Someone Gets Prosthetics or Mobility Aids

The most common way for someone to get a Prosthetic is, obviously, for them to lose or severely damage a limb in an accident. For example, a soldier stepping on a mine, a car crash that completely crushed an arm, heavy machinery full-on chopping off a hand. See: Proctor Ingram, Fallout Four (2015) You can also lose extremities from diseases like bone cancer, where surgeons must remove it to remove the cancer. See: Leo Roth, Red Band Society (2014)

It is more common for people to have mobility aids for temporary amounts of time, for example, a broken leg or twisted ankle resulting in having crutches. For long lasting or life long mobility aids, you’ll need to look into physical disabilities, different types of muscle trauma and nerve damage, or an injury that wasn’t able to heal properly. See: Freddy Freeman, Shazam (2019)

Choosing When to Add Prosthetics or Mobility Aids

First things first — you should design your character with the mobility aid or prosthetic already in mind. They can affect the entire personality of a person, so I wouldn’t recommend creating a character and then deciding their mobility aid. For example, a child with forearm crutches due to a physical disability probably won’t like doing all the same things the other kids do on the playground, or the same sports their friends at school like. There’s also the unavoidable issue of them feeling out of place or “weird” no matter the age. So, obviously, there are some aids more suited for different genres of writing. For example, a long journey like Lord of the Rings would be tough for someone with a wheelchair or walker, but it’d be okay for a romance. That’s why it’s so important you don’t spring something like this on a character in a spur of the moment thing. Here are a few things I’d recommend deciding beforehand: 1 - What type of mobility aid or prosthetic is best for your type of story? You can choose any you like, but it’s good to consider if you want to write everything that comes with pushing a wheelchair to Isengard. 2 - Would your character have access to these aids or prosthetics, or would they have to settle with something else? If your story is post apocalyptic, they probably wouldn’t have access to the same things, or if your story is set in the past, you’d have to research aids and prosthetics from that time period. Even consider characters making their own — which is also a good way to mold it to your needs.

What Comes Along with Prosthetics and Mobility Aids

Okay, so you’ve decided you want your character to have a prosthetic or mobility aid. You’ve weaved it into their personality and your story. Now comes making it realistic… what do people with these things experience? Think about? People with prosthetics have challenges and additional baggage that comes along with having a prosthetic. First of all, if your character just got this prosthetic, it’s gonna be hard to walk on and even harder to wrap their head around. Sometimes, prosthetics hurt. There’s several different kinds and different activities each one can do. They change size as the person changes size. There are many different ways they attach to the body that suit different needs. Mobility aids have their own set of challenges as well. For example, fitting a wheelchair, walker, or crutches through a tight space. Fitting braces under or over clothes. Stairs. You have to think about enclosed spaces like cars, public transport, planes, elevators, bathrooms. These challenges will change with your story. For example, on a long outdoor journey, how will each different aid or prosthetic react to the temperature, humidity? How will the one in the wheelchair or with crutches get up that mountain? While the aids and prosthetics come with their own challenges, new ones are gained based on the genre of your WIP. This includes what your character thinks about. In a post-apocalyptic work, they might not worry about being different or out of place, but they might spend every day hoping and praying their homemade leg brace doesn’t break.

Reminder!

⚠️ DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH IF YOU INTEND TO ADD A CHARACTER WITH THIS INTO A WORK OF YOURS. STUDY HOW THESE THINGS EFFECT THE COMMON LIFE OF A PERSON. IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS ONE OF THESE THINGS, ASK THEM. MURDER YOUR EYEBALLS BY RESEARCHING ON YOUR COMPUTER. WATCH A SHOW WITH A CHARACTER WHO HAS ONE. KNOW YOUR STUFF BEFORE YOU MAKE YOUR CHARACTER, I BEG.

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

Last Name Masterpost

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Tilda Swinton risked arrest waving a rainbow flag in front of the Kremlin in violation of Russia’s new homosexual propaganda bill. And she wants everyone who can to reblog it in solidarity.

Guys please reblog this, it won’t ruin your blog, this is important