“Every First Draft Is Perfect, Because All A First Draft Has To Do Is Exist.””

writing characters with dyslexia

by me !! a dyslexic

hopefully this might be a useful little guide so you can avoid the misconceptions and any stereotypes - I saw someone do this with adhd and I thought a dyslexia one might be interesting

reading

this differs from person to person but for me I have to read over things four or five times before they actually go into my head, sometimes this gives people headaches or makes them nauseous. letters often “jump” or sentences merge into one long word; people often have trouble with light sensitivity and pages can seem too bright

writing

some people have vary varied handwriting and can go from neat to messy to big to small within minutes, spelling is often phonetic but PLEase doNt Talk AbOUt thIS For AgEs it’s only a very small part of being dyslexic

speaking

dyslexic people often speak faster than their brains create sentences so can trip over words or stutter or mix up words (par kark instead of car park), this can be embarrassing so could make for a good scene ?! people also get a lot of tip of the tongue experiences where they can’t find the right word (I once couldnt remember the word ‘embarrassed’ and I called it ‘when you go red and nervous’) so that makes for more interesting speech patterns in your characters

memory

oh my lord this is so overlooked but lots of dyslexic people have really bad short term memories - things like listening to instructions and forgetting them immediately, or forgetting that they were saying mid sentence

sense of direction

not so common but people often lose their sense of direction and can struggle telling left from right - I don’t know too much about this one though so I’m not going to go into it too deeply !!

hearing

filtering out background noise can be super difficult so people can seem like they have poor hearing but really everything can just seem very loud - this can be distracting and frustrating too and it bugs my friends so much because I make them repeat everything whoops

I’m sure there’s more things but this is just a short list, I’ll add anything if I think of it - feel free to add anything yourselves !!

Acing pacing in your writing

I’ve read too many books and watched too many shows where pacing has ruined a good story. So, here are some of my tips for getting pacing right:

1. Don’t take too long to get to the inciting incident

Look, showing the ordinary life of your protagonist might be interesting if there’s something strange about their life, but readers want stuff to happen.

At least with genre fiction, you shouldn’t take too long to get to the action - the event that gets the story going.

If you can do it well and have readers invested from the start, you can start with the inciting incident. However, for most works I would recommend having it in the second chapter.

Your readers want to know what the story is about, not what the character thinks of his English teacher

2. Keep it moving, but don’t rush

Action is important. It drives the story and it’s interesting. You should make sure to put enough action in your work. Things should be happening.

BUT a novel is not a play or a movie or a comic. What makes reading a full-length novel so entertaining is the detail. The in-depth characterisation and description. The emotion and thought processes.

So, keep it moving, but don’t sacrifice the juicy details. Don’t skip from one action or dialogue scene to the next without taking your readers deeper into the intricacies of the story and characters.

It’s a delicate balance that can only truly be found by reading a lot and practicing.

3. Avoid a sagging middle

Your beginning is solid. Your end is exciting. But the middle is a chaotic mess that bores the reader. Trust me, it happens more than you might believe.

Sagging middle syndrome is a thing, and the only way to avoid it is to plan.

Look, I like pantsing, but planning the middle of your novel will help your pacing exponentially.

Make a rough outline of what needs to happen to get your characters to the climax. Add a few lighter/character-driven scenes where there are too many action scenes in the sequence. Remove events which are unnecessary. And make sure that everything makes sense!

This counts for second books in series as well. It should be good on its own, not just as a filler.

4. Don’t fast forward to the end

I’m looking at you, Game of Thrones.

If you’ve built up the story and set up everything for the final big bang, you have to deliver.

Keep the pacing somewhat similar to that of the rest of the story. Your readers have gotten used to it. And if they’re still reading at that point, they probably like that pace. Don’t write a relatively slow book and then have the climax be over in three pages.

I know you want the climax to be exciting. So, yes, make it a little more fast-paced than the middle. But not massively different.

5. Trust your characters

As with every aspect of creative writing, character is most important.

Is your character experiencing the scene quickly and choppily? Or are they slowing down and taking in everything?

If you stick with what your characters are feeling, you will get it right.

Look, exams have fried my brain. So, this isn’t the most well-formulated post I’ve made. But I hope that it can be helpful.

Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment with your own pacing tips. Follow me for similar content.

Contemporary F/F Audio Books

Here’s a list of contemporary wlw books you can listen to on audiobooks.com. You can also check my list of sci-fi & fantasy audio books.

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura

The Brightsiders by Jen Wilde

Winning by Lara Deloza

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour & David Levithan

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me by Julie Anne Peters

Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee 

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

People Like Us by Dana Mele

Happy listening~ 🎧 

I'd love to hear more about the characters! And about the city, it seems so cool!

hi i want to post stuff about hound isle as we get closer to nano but i don’t know what to post so if anyone wants to know anything pleaseeeeee let me know

(i’m tagging the people who reblogged the wip intro bc maybe one of y’all will have an idea or like. info you want idk pls help: @patiwritesstuff, @ditzysworld, @wildswrites, @bexswritingadventures, @gaybullies, @vviciously)

hitch your heart to one small thing

writeblr introduction!

about me

li/lou whatever nickname is fine

i’m also @studylikeathena (i follow from there)

about my writing

i’ve previously written a novel. i will not be posting about it here

what i will be posting is my current wip novel, wintersong

i like first person and unreliable narrators and summer nostalgia

i used to write it’s always sunny in philadelphia fanfiction and if you’ve read it i’m sorry

what i’ll post

excerpts from wintersong

inspiration pictures/text for the novel

please rb if you’re a writeblr! i really want to get involved in the community :)

Brief summary of my wips

(inspired by @titaniaen) 

Bloodlines: what if you meet your soulmate during a war between your people and have to deal with the unexplainable emotional consequences while also realizing that your family has been lying to you about your heritage for the past twenty years

Solene’s verse: local gang of queer orphan street kids feat. a narcissistic wizard and a cowardly wallflower work together to rescue their friend from the authorities before everything goes to hell

Star White: ageless dark cosmic entity abducts a man’s boyfriend, so he gets a dog and finds a ship that turns him into Nicholas Flamel to search for him across the entire universe the longway round

The Wasteland / the waste wip: area man goes on the world’s worst walking roadtrip with a light necromancer after his girlfriend blows up their entire village and herself with it. the world is horrible and on fire and all we know but somewhere else there might be green things and mud and a pseudo-goblin king

Revenant wip: a war machine woman who can come back from the dead and her snarky crossbow-slinging longtime best friend turned boyfriend are your token straight couple, leading the equivalent of a medieval biker gang to tear the castle down

Huevember -green

the only real thing

you loved me like it was routine the kisses felt like chores you held me out of necessity and you touched me in familar steps

the i love yous were repetitive and the good nights felt compelled your eyes no longer looked at me whenever we collided and your skin no longer electrified at my touch the smiles you’ve been giving me were calculated and the days when you loved me were on schedule

the only real thing that was out of the plan and the only real thing that broke our little pattern was the only real thing that i never thought twice on it was deciding that i had to leave right then and there

WHY DO CHARACTERS MATTER? 

I’m a big fan of characters, obviously. (That’s not even all of my characters. I have two BINDERS worth of character sheets.) But why? Surely other elements of story are just as important, like the plot, setting, tone, etc. And they are! But I think characters are the most important aspect of the story, for a few reasons: 

They are the lens through which we view everything else. Characters color the world we create. Sure, you might write a world guide, but largely, we see the world through the eyes of the characters, so they have to be good eyes to see through. (Even if they’re blind.)

They can save a bad story. Not to say any of you have bad stories, but they can add something to a lackluster story that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Think about Bioshock Infinite. It’s one of my favorite games, even though the gameplay is okay and the story is convoluted at best. I praise it almost entirely for the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth. They make that game, and if the characters (especially Elizabeth) weren’t as memorable as they are, I doubt anyone would really care much about Bioshock’s failed prequel. 

The more complicated and intricate a character, the more you can do with your plot. If you have a flat character, you can’t make them act. They can’t do much except react to the plot happening around them. But a complex character with a good backstory and interesting motivation will interact with the world and change things in it, which is the basis of plot. 

HOW I MAKE MY CHARACTERS

I’m going to walk you through my process, and hopefully do my best to make it easy for you to understand.

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