I Wrote A Novel… Now What? Your Revision And Editing Checklist

Quick and easy way to establish rules in your fantasy/scifi universe!

This can apply both to magic and fictional science, because it’s essentially just a magic system in disguise!

There is a whole spectrum from hard systems (with a very particular set of rules that can’t be broken) to soft systems (characters don’t know everything about the rules and the workings or the rules are flexible). Where on this spectrum your system falls depends on you and your story.

A good way to start out is by asking three questions:

What is possible? What is impossible? What is the price?

Two stupid examples:

Fantasy: With this magic shoes you can fly ten feet above the ground. But you can only fly up, not forward. And your feet will hurt like hell for the next three days after you’ve used them.

Scifi: With this laser gun you can shoot people to stun them. But you can’t kill them with it. And to power it you need to buy a bunch of those little button batteries you never seem to get anywhere.

Try starting with those questions and work from there.

If you want to learn more about building a magic system and scifi/fantasy writing in general, check out these free lectures on youtube by author Brandon Sanderson, I learned a lot!

more rayllum screencaps bc they are precious beans

a word of advice for my writer buddies that took me way too long to realize – your story doesn’t have grand to be great. Your dystopia doesn’t have to end with your protagonists changing the world, making it a great place. Your fantasy doesn’t have to end with your protagonist overthrowing the malevolent ruler. You don’t have to worry and fret over your plot not being too complicated, too large, too exciting. Sometimes less is more! If your character doesn’t end up saving the day for the rest of the world, that’s okay. They don’t need to. Succeeding in their own goal is just as good. You don’t need long, overarching plots that effect your entire universe in order to make a great story. You just need your passion and motivation- you just need to write

Drawing Men’s Shirt Collars Row 1 & 2 Row 3: Left(Unknown), Right Row 4: Left(Unknown), Right Row 5 Row 6

sadly

Small Tips For ClipStudio

I have some hours before work so I’ll use them to actually detail why I’ve found CSPaint to be so efficient for bastard-aligned painters who like to take shortcuts.

This will seem familiar to most of you guys, but this functions a little bit different from Photoshop. It turns everything you draw on the layer into editable curves, but retains the aliased smoothness of an ordinary raster layer. Practically a cheat to access the whole suite of amazing tools CS offers for lineart. Such as:

The vector eraser is The Best™. You can be as messy as possible and this tool erases the excess. One pen-flick and it’s done. Much faster than cleaning it up by hand. You can also tweak the settings of this brush to encapsulate more/less lines as you erase but that’s getting a little more involved. Anyway, last thing:

Maybe the only thing better than the vector eraser. There are multiple settings, but these three are the most handy. You can smooth wiggly edges, connect broken strokes, and tweak the width/weight to exactly how you want it. This also has a ton of settings you can play around with. It’s great!

There’s a lot more tools you can use, but you get the point! It’s a really good drawing program. I recommend it!

For artists who have problems with perspective (furniture etc.) in indoor scenes like me - there’s an online programm called roomsketcher where you can design a house/roon and snap pictures of it using different perspectives.

It’s got an almost endless range of furniture, doors, windows, stairs etc and is easy to use. In addition to that, you don’t have to install anything and if you create an account (which is free) you can save and return to your houses.

Examples (all done by me):

Here’s an example for how you can use it

attacka you with a branch

Just like in martial arts, conveying power is a matter of chaining things together.

i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage.