OH, GLORY - a Wip Introduction By @whorizcn​​​​.

Something that’s helped me a lot when writing/designing characters is to make associations with them. Usually I pick an animal, a season, or an abstract concept to define them, and I keep metaphors and similes relating to that character within those categories. It adds a nice bit of symbolism, plus it gives the story more of a mythical feeling. It also lends more weight to interactions. If character x is the moon, and character y is the sun, then their interactions are suddenly more meaningful, especially if they have a relationship that is like that of the sun and moon in mythology or astronomy. 

Thanks to @inkingfireplace for tagging me!

1.     Name: Anthea

2.     Nickname: Ann

3.     Star Sign: scorpio

4.     Prefered pronouns: she/her

5.     Sexuality: lesbian

6.     Favourite Color: blue

7.     Time Right Now:  14:59

8.     Average Hours of Sleep: seven hours

9.     Lucky Number(s): nine

10.  Last Thing I Googled: corona universities

11.  Number of Blankets: one

12.  Favourite Fictional Character: Luna Lovegood

13.  What are you wearing: green jeans and a grey sweater

14.  Favorite Book: Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe by Benjamin Alire Saénz

15.  Favorite Musician(s): Coldplay, Muse, Racoon, U2

16.  Dream Job: astrophysicist or writer

17.  Number of Followers: 33

18.  When Did You Create Your Blog: a few months ago

19.  What Do You Mostly Post: things about my wips or about writing in general

20.  What Made You Decide to Get a Tumblr: I thought it would be fun

21.  When Did Your Blog Reach Its Peak: not yet I guess

22.  Do You Get Asks on a Daily Basis: no

23.  Why Did You Choose Your URL: I wanted a username related to writing and this one wasn’t taken yet.

Tagging: @dowings, @myhusbandsasemni, @poeticparchment, @inklingsoflaura, @epicpoetry

Hey I love your blog, it helps me a lot and now I've a question myself. How can you write about older people while you're still young yourself? The main character of my story is 43 years old but I'm 17... I try to pay attention to how her life experience has shaped her personality but sometimes I feel like she seems too much like a teenager. Have you ever written about characters older than you? And what helped you the best to make them realistic? Do you have any general tips on writing adults?

Thanks for asking, this is a good question, and I like that your MC is much older than you. You'll learn a lot by writing them.

I've written for a number of ages, and aside from some extremely minimal research online, I just started paying attention to other people. I watched films about X age group, read books by/about X age group, listened to interviews of adults with certain fields and backstories, listened to people older than me at work, listened to customers, neighbors, relatives, my own parents. Kids are tougher since I don't know many little kids, but just asking questions of teachers and family friends gave me insight into the lives of people older than me.

Once you know what a person is like on the inside and why, writing their dialogue and behavior is a piece of cake. Surely you know some adults or can look up some public figures and study their lives, dialogue, and behavior. Base your character off several real people and they will come across as more authentic.

Give yourself freedom to create something different.

Never mow the same grass twice — How to improve faster as a writer

One of the most important writing lessons I ever learned came, surprisingly, from my college trumpet instructor.

“Michael,” he’d say with a heavy sigh, pulling off his glasses and rubbing the lenses with the bottom of his shirt. “You know I hate to mow the same grass twice.”

It was a phrase he used a lot, in band and private lessons, whenever someone made a mistake he’d already told them to correct. Because in his mind, once he’d identified a mistake in your performance, you needed to do everything you could to keep it from happening again, for two reasons.

First, because as he said, he doesn’t like to mow the same grass twice. And second (and more importantly), because if you let yourself repeat a mistake, that mistake will start to become a habit.

A bad habit.

And the more you let yourself repeat that habit, the more deeply ingrained it becomes, making it increasingly difficult to fix and slowing your progress as a musician (or artist, or writer). So his suggestion was this: Identify what needs to change, and firmly commit to fixing it now.

Confession Time

So. I was a very average trumpet player. My instructor and I had a great rapport, but he had to tell me to mow the same grass twice, three times, and more often than he ever would have liked, because I just wasn’t focused or passionate enough about trumpet to fully commit to his advice.

But I was focused and passionate enough about fiction to commit to his advice when it came to writing. So I applied his mindset in my creative writing workshops, particularly when I started my MFA.

And I tell you what, everybody. It worked wonders — helping me improve enough in that first year alone to win our MFA program’s top fiction prize and to earn a teaching assistantship.

3 Steps to Quickly Improve Your Writing

With my trumpet instructor’s advice in mind, I put a 3-step process on loop throughout my time in the MFA:

Share a short story with your fellow writers. (A workshop is great, but online writing friends work too.)

Sift through everyone’s feedback to find one high-priority “bad habit” in your writing that they seem to be honing in on.

When you sit down to write your next story, commit to breaking that habit at any cost, even if it means making other mistakes because of it. (New mistakes are better than old mistakes.)

This is How it Went for Me

The first short story I shared in my MFA workshop had a clear issue: the narrator was passive and underdeveloped. One of my classmates called him a “window character,” someone through whom we could observe the other, more interesting characters who actually drove the plot. The rest of the workshop agreed, and looking back at some of my past stories, I realized that passive narrators had become a deeply ingrained habit of mine.

So the next time I wrote a story, I strictly committed myself to writing a more active narrator.

The Result?

A moderately active narrator. Not perfect, but better than I’d done in a long time. It was progress — me chipping away at the bad habit.

The next story I wrote showed much more progress. It had a highly active narrator, and so did the story after that. And that’s when a new, better habit formed: writing active narrators without even thinking about it. And that let me shift my focus to improve upon something else (such as making all my narrator’s actions stem from their core emotional struggle). And something new again after that (using more figurative language, loosening up my writing voice, etc.).

And that’s how you can improve, too. The goal, again, is to use peer feedback to identify habits in your writing you don’t like, and then to mentally commit to replacing them with habits you want, one by one.

It’s a slightly different way to approach feedback. We tend to primarily use feedback as a way to help us improve an individual story — but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to improve your future first drafts.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your writing improves when you do this.

The key, though, is to commit to tackling just one major habit at a time. Why? Because writing is hard, friends, and fiction is a complex tapestry of various techniques, all coming together at once. That means your attention is always inevitably split while writing, so if you try to fix multiple habits at once, you’ll likely spread your attention too thin to succeed.

So identify a single change you want to see in you writing. Make it happen the next time you write a story, no matter what. Then, before you sit down again to write the next story, find something new you want to change or improve.

You’ll love what happens to your writing when you commit to never mowing the same grass twice.

And when you do, far away, in a brightly-lit college band room in Minnesota, my old instructor will raise a hand to conduct a trumpet ensemble, pause — and smile.

— — —

For writing advice and tips on crafting theme, meaning, and character-driven plots, check out the rest of my blog.

And if you’re feeling discouraged, remember this: Every story has something wonderful inside it, including your own.

Science Fiction Subgenres from A to N

So, to start this blog off with something fun, I thought I’d do a series of big ol’ masterlists covering sci-fi and fantasy subgenres!  There is a heckin’ large amount of them, so I’ve split it up into four sections with about five or six posts- this one right here is for, you guessed it, science fiction, from A to N.  *cue distant cheering*

First up, a little recap:

Science Fiction: This can be considered a difficult genre to define, simply because it can encompass nearly anything- but the best definition I’ve heard is that it’s “the literature of change”, particularly in areas of scientific advancement and technological growth.  According to Wikipedia, this is a genre of speculative fiction “typically dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.” (x)  Science fiction generally encompasses imaginary worlds and universes bound to laws of physics (although not necessarily the laws we know of or follow) that are advanced in some way by science and technology, and experiencing some form of change because of that.  To put it very simply, science fiction can be viewed as fiction based upon science.  Science fiction tends to evoke thoughts of aliens, spaceships, robots, AI, new planets, futuristic cities, flying cars, high-tech things made of shiny metals, lightsabers and phasers, environmental sustainability, and far-future social themes.  Examples include Dune (Dune series) by Frank Herbert, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley, 1984 by George Orwell, Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse series) by James A. Corey, Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, and Parable of the Sower (Parable series) by Octavia E. Butler.

With that refresher in mind, let’s begin!  (I’d apologize for the word count, but we’re all nerdy writers here.)

Lees verder

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 :)

The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot

One of my favorite studies of Harry Potter is that of the ring composition found both in the individual novels and overall composition. That very composition is what makes Harry Potter such a satisfying story. It’s a large part of the reason Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. 

And it’s an integral part of the series many people are completely unaware of. 

So what is ring composition? 

It’s a well-worn, beautiful, and (frankly) very satisfying way of structuring a story. John Granger, known online as The Hogwarts Professor, has written extensively on it.

Ring Composition is also known as “chiastic structure.” Basically, it’s when writing is structured symmetrically, mirroring itself: ABBA or ABCBA. 

Poems can be structured this way. Sentences can be structured this way. (Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.) Stories of any length and of any form can be structured this way.

In a novel, the basic structure depends on three key scenes: the catalyst, the crux, and the closing. 

The catalyst sets the story into the motion. 

The crux is the moment when everything changes. (It is not the climax). 

The closing, is both the result of the crux and a return to the catalyst. 

In Harry Potter, you might recognise this structure: 

Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and doesn’t die. 

Voldemort attempts to come back to power

Voldemort comes back to power.

Harry learns what it will take to remove Voldemort from power.

Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and dies.

But all stories should have this structure. A book’s ending should always reference its beginning. It should always be the result of some major turning point along the way. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be a very good story.

What’s most satisfying about chiastic structure is not the basic ABA structure, but the mirroring that happens in between these three major story points. 

To illustrate what a more complicated ABCDEFGFEDCBA structure looks like, (but not as complicated as Harry Potter’s, which you can see here and here) Susan Raab has put together a fantastic visual of ring composition in Beauty and the Beast (1991), a movie which most agree is almost perfectly structured. 

source: x

What’s so wonderful about ring composition in this story is that it so clearly illustrates how that one crucial decision of Beast changes everything in the world of the story. Everything from the first half of the story comes back in the second half, effected by Beast’s decision. This gives every plot point more weight because it ties them all to the larger story arc. What’s more, because it’s so self-referential, everything feels tidy and complete. Because everything has some level of importance, the world feels more fully realized and fleshed out. No small detail is left unexplored.    

How great would Beauty and the Beast be if Gaston hadn’t proposed to Belle in the opening, but was introduced later on as a hunter who simply wanted to kill a big monster? Or if, after the magnificent opening song, the townspeople had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Or if Maurice’s invention had never been mentioned again after he left the castle? 

Humans are nostalgic beings. We love returning to old things. We don’t want the things we love to be forgotten. 

This is true of readers, too. 

We love seeing story elements return to us. We love to know that no matter how the story is progressing, those events that occurred as we were falling in love with it are still as important to the story itself as they are to us. There is something inside us all that delights in seeing Harry leave Privet Dr. the same way he got there–in the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike. There’s a power to it that would make any other exit from Privet Dr. lesser. 

On a less poetic note, readers don’t like to feel as though they’ve wasted their time reading about something, investing in something, that doesn’t feel very important to the story. If Gaston proposed to Belle in Act 1 and did nothing in Act 3, readers might ask “Why was he even in the movie then? Why couldn’t we have spent more time talking about x instead?” Many people do ask similar questions of plot points and characters that are important in one half of a movie or book, but don’t feature in the rest of it. 

Now, ring composition is odiously difficult to write, but even if you can’t make your story a perfect mirror of itself, don’t let story elements leave quietly. Let things echo where you can–small moments, big moments, decisions, characters, places, jokes. 

It’s the simplest way of building a story structure that will satisfy its readers.

If there’s no place for something to echo, if an element drops out of the story half-way through, or appears in the last act, and you simply can’t see any other way around it, you may want to ask yourself if it’s truly important enough to earn its place in your story. 

Further reading:

If you’d like to learn more about ring theory, I’d recommend listening to the Mugglenet Academia episode on it: x

You can also read more about symmetry in HP here: x

And more about ring structure in Lolita and Star Wars here: x and x

And about why story endings and beginnings should be linked here: x

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.

I’m wondering, how do I come up with good ideas to write a sub-plot that actually fits into the story and won’t make the reader lose the connection with the main plot?

How to Write A Sub Plot

If you look back on every single bestselling book ever printed, the chances are that most, if not all of them, contain sub-plots.

A sub-plot is part of a book that develops separately from the main story, and it can serve as a tool that extends the word count and adds interest and depth into the narrative.

Sub-plots are key to making your novel a success, and, although they aren’t necessary for shorter works, are an essential aspect of story writing in general.

However, sub-plots can be difficult to weave into the main plot, so here are a few tips on how to incorporate sub-plots into your writing.

1. Know Your Kinds of Sub-Plots and Figure Out Which is Best For Your Story

Sub-plots are more common than you think, and not all of them extend for many chapters at a time.

A sub-plot doesn’t have to be one of the side characters completely venturing off from the main group to struggle with their own demons or a side quest that takes up a quarter of the book. Small things can make a big difference, and there are many of these small things that exist in literature that we completely skip over when it comes to searching for sub-plots.

Character Arcs

Character arcs are the most common sub-plot.

They show a change in a dynamic character’s physical, mental, emotional, social, or spiritual outlook, and this evolution is a subtle thing that should definitely be incorporated so that the readers can watch their favorite characters grow and develop as people.

For example, let’s say that this guy named Bob doesn’t like his partner Jerry, but the two of them had to team up to defeat the big bad.

While the main plot involves the two of them brainstorming and executing their plans to take the big bad down, the sub-plot could involve the two getting to know each other and becoming friends, perhaps even something more than that.

This brings me to the second most common sub-plot:

Romance

Romance can bolster the reader’s interest; not only do they want to know if the hero beats the big bad guy, they also want to know if she ends up with her love interest in the end or if the warfare and strife will keep them apart.

How to Write Falling in Love

How to Write a Healthy Relationship

How to Write a Romance

Like character arcs, romance occurs simultaneously with the main plot and sometimes even influences it.

Side-Quests

There are two types of side-quest sub-plots, the hurtles and the detours.

Hurdle Sub-Plots

Hurdle sub-plots are usually complex and can take a few chapters to resolve. Their main purpose is to put a barrier, or hurdle, between the hero and the resolution of the main plot. They boost word count, so be careful when using hurdle sub-plots in excess.

Think of it like a video game.

You have to get into the tower of a fortress to defeat the boss monster.

However, there’s no direct way to get there; the main door is locked and needs to have three power sources to open it, so you have to travel through a monster-infested maze and complete all of these puzzles to get each power source and unlock the main door.

Only, when you open the main door, you realize that the bridge is up and you have to find a way to lower it down and so forth.

Detour Sub-Plot

Detour sub-plots are a complete break away from the main plot. They involve characters steering away from their main goal to do something else, and they, too, boost word count, so be careful not too use these too much.

Taking the video game example again.

You have to get to that previously mentioned fortress and are on your way when you realize there is an old woman who has lost her cattle and doesn’t know what to do. 

Deciding the fortress can wait, you spend harrowing hours rounding up all of the cows and steering them back into their pen for the woman.

Overjoyed, the woman reveals herself to be a witch and gives you a magical potion that will help you win the fight against the big bad later.

**ONLY USE DETOUR SUB-PLOTS IF THE OUTCOME HELPS AID THE PROTAGONISTS IN THE MAIN PLOT**

If they’d just herded all of the cows for no reason and nothing in return, sure it would be nice of them but it would be a complete waste of their and the readers’ time!

2. Make Sure Not to Introduce or Resolve Your Sub-Plots Too Abruptly

This goes for all sub-plots. Just like main plots, they can’t be introduced and resolved with a snap of your fingers; they’re a tool that can easily be misused if placed into inexperienced hands.

Each sub-plot needs their own arc and should be outlined just like how you outlined your main plot.

How to Outline Your Plot

You could use my methods suggested in the linked post, or you could use the classic witch’s hat model if you feel that’s easier for something that’s less important than your main storyline.

3. Don’t Push It

If you don’t think your story needs a sub-plot, don’t add a sub-plot! Unneeded sub-plots can clutter up your narrative and make it unnecessarily winding and long.

You don’t have to take what I’m saying to heart ever!

It’s your story, you write it how you think it should be written, and no one can tell you otherwise!

Hope this Helped!