Resources For Plot Development

little wip

there’s something so insane about people who used to love putting “free Palestine” in their bio now deciding they have pearls in need of clutching. how did you think Palestine was going to be freed? did you think that if we all wrote “free Palestine” in our blog titles the world would just say oh you know what, our bad? did you think if Palestinians protested really, really peacefully, that Netanyahu would be moved? did you think that essays about decolonization published in the neoliberal academy would do the trick?

or did you simply expect Palestinians to wait? to wait and watch every day as their loved ones are killed because they step out of line? as the journalists and medics are shot around them? as Israel commits war crimes against them and the world does nothing? raining white phosphorous down on an open-air prison where the exits are controlled, closed, bombed out? as the Sabra and Shatila massacres are forgotten and repeated and forgotten and repeated and forgotten and repeated in an endless cycle?

when you wrote “free Palestine” in your bio, what did you think it meant?

writing resources masterpost

i am just CRANKING out the masterposts. linked to original posts whenever possible. enjoy!! 

100 beautiful words

name generators

plotting made simple

places to put character descriptions

guide to fantasy

how to passive voice

research resources

regular masterpost i’m including bc of all the writing/grammar links

for writers creating their own worlds/characters

who and whom how to

ways to avoid saying the word ‘very’

several ways to find the word you’re looking for

look up illegal stuff in a legal way

deflate inflated phrases

rhymes made easy

start the story

good character traits ref sheet

character traits generator

write real people

limits of the human body

best yet most infuriating writing advice

seven steps to the perfect story

100 ugly and beautiful words

quick guide to myers briggs personalities

eye shapes for writers

four temperaments

tip top writing tip

visualize your character’s house

random writing tips

castle terminology

kurt vonnegut’s rules for writing fiction

words that describe a voice

surnames/last names masterpost

random city/name generators

character building stuff

size comparison

build a realistic character

here’s why every word is important

hemingway writing checker

ideas for character flaws

if you think writing a book is easy, read this

cis person writing trans character? read this

stages of deterioration in the human body

resources for writing character bios

stuff u should know about all ur characters

You live in a very haunted house, but it’s not that bad. The voices in the basement remind you of your laundry and tell you to check the boiler, the rat size talking spider keeps the pests away and is a pretty good therapist, and the victorian ghost children are great friends with your kids.

prompts for two characters moving in together??

yes ofc!!

prompts for characters moving in together

written

 painting the walls together. no talking. just kind of enjoying eachother’s company as they focus and music plays in the background. 

 shopping for furniture together 

 being too lazy to even unpack the rest of the bedding on the first night in, so they camp out in the empty living room with a blanket and some throw pillows. 

 bickering when they realize a lot of small differences while unpacking. (like arguing over where certain things in the kitchen go) 

 lovingly staring at eachother when it all just finally clicks for the two of them. 

 giving them a massage when their shoulders ache after carrying boxes all day. 

dialogue

 “OKAY WAIT PUT IT DOWN IT’S TOO HEAVY.” 

 “there’s no pets allowed in the apartment? how could you have missed that?” 

 “i’m pretty proud of us.”

 “i wouldn’t have done this with anyone else.” 

 “are you ready?” 

 “no way, your mom baked her pie for us as a welcome!”

Petition to add more disabled magical creatures in fantasy

Like picture a mermaid. When they have to be on land their tail turns to legs, but because their body is used to lower gravity their joints tire easily and are chronically in pain.

Also depending on how deep in the ocean they live, it’s likely they have circulation problems because their body is used to the water pressure holding everything where it needs to be and now their blood is always fucking pooling in their legs and they have to wear compression socks everywhere.

Wheelchair user mermaids. Partially/fully blind mermaids because who needs to see when there’s no light at the bottom of the ocean?

Mermaids with sensory issues who have to wear headphones all the time because sound is so much louder up here on land and they are constantly overstimulated. And also the sun is simply Too Bright™.

Mermaids who have POTS because in the water postural changes make no difference and their bodies don’t know how to stabilize with so much gravity.

I’m really fixated on the mermaids rn but PLEASE feel more than welcome to add more!!!! I wanna hear about disabled dragons

DON"T Sit THEREE

Got inspired by Scumbagdad to make this vid but with my Slasher frat bros~

A Guide to Making Up Diseases (as Explained by a Biologist)

So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body. 

If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.

But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:

DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.

Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.

Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.

(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)

headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.

Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.

fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!

here is a fact:

during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.

So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.

Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it. 

Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever, for example.

So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. 

This has been a rant and I apologize for that.