How To Write Non-binary Characters: Part II

This is a great idea and it looks so pretty!

What have I been up to, you ask?

Oh, I've started a bullet journal for what else my WIP, Forsaken Gods. It's the first time I've tried it since I'm not very artsy or crafty and my color coordination sucks,

If you have the time and resources, I encourage you to try it!

Pros:

Fun and relaxing!

Helps you keep track of your WIP

And keeping it organized!

Gets your creative juices flowing

Passes time while you're trying to get your writing mojo back

challenges your artistic skills especially if you're someone like me who badly needs improvement

Doesn't have to be expensive unless you want fancy stuff

Cons:

you're still gonna need a couple of things so a budget might be required.

Time consuming esp if you want to make it pretty

Messy. So messy.

Right now I'm making character spreads for the Main Squad, which I might also post here or a second tumblr idk yet.

“Show Don’t Tell”? Not Always. Here’s When to Use Summary.

I was inspired to write this post after getting a great anonymous question in my Ask: “What’s your opinion on the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice? Do you have any tips for when to show and when to tell?”

Here’s my response:

I honestly think that “show don’t tell” is one of the most over-quoted and least-understood pieces of writing advice out there.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, “show don’t tell” means that instead of explaining or telling something to your reader (“Sheila was reckless and impulsive”), you should show Sheila’s impulsiveness through action or dialogue. For example, “Even though her rent was overdue, after she got her paycheck Sheila spent $400 on an antique toilet.” This would allow the reader to draw the conclusion that Sheila was impulsive for themselves, rather than being told.

Theoretically, this is great advice for new fiction writers, who, left to their own devices, tend to write their stories entirely in “telling” mode.

But summary (telling) has a place in fiction as well, and it’s an important one.

Lees verder

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

WRITBLR A-Z CHALLENGE

hi, friends! i simply cannot believe the amount of interest in this project!

and credit where credit’s due: i became exposed to the idea through @ibuzoo’s multiple [a-z aesthetic challenges]. i highly recommend following them, their graphics are always so lovely and i periodically look through their blog for inspiration. c:

anyways, i thought the idea seemed like a great way to explore themes and aesthetics for my project [holiest], and i made myself some guidelines/instructions when i started working on it. since so many of you are also interested, i’m posting them here!

GUIDELINES / INSTRUCTIONS

write out the letters A through Z on a paper or in a document, and brainstorm any/all words you can think of for each letter that relate to your WIP or project.

decide on a template. i like @ibuzoo’s idea of the 8 or 10 panel layout because it challenges me to come up with as much visual information for each word as i can. but it doesn’t have to be that many panels, it can really be any template or number of images you like! here is a link to [the template i use] by @dreamsymphony

gather your visuals! i like to compile images in folders on my computer or in pinterest boards. again, try to come up with as much visual information as you can. i also use this part of the process to decide on a color palette for each word.

start designing your graphic! and honestly, you don’t even need photoshop in order to do this. you can even use instagram and the layout app to make it!

optional: for [my own graphics], i chose to exclude characters and specific places, since i’ve already made a good amount of character moodboards and have a different project in mind for places. but you can use whatever options for words that suit you!

optional: to relate the words and aesthetics to my WIP more, i decided to search for the words in my draft to see the different ways they were used in my story! i will then choose one of the lines containing the word and use it as a caption. this also lets me know which themes i need to expand upon or include more about in my second draft.

and that’s it! feel free to add or change any of these to suit you! and anyone can do it, no need to sign up or ask to join! c:

you are also more than welcome to tag me (@sancta-silje) in your posts! all my reblogs go to @saintcherubim, and i absolutely will check out your graphics! :3 and if you like, feel free to tag it with ’#writblr a-z challenge’, i’m following this tag now and will peruse it periodically!

Welcome to the first in a very long series of posts in which I talk about my writing process from conception to the end of my first draft. I wanted to do this series for a few reasons: 

I think that learning about others’ writing processes is really interesting. I get to see other ways of going about my work, thinking either wow, that’s really insightful, and I should implement that or I definitely won’t be using that, but now I know that about myself. 

I also think it’s important to understand others’ processes is important, because it allows you to see other views of writing besides your own. You will learn very quickly that I am a planner (or, as George RR Martin says, an Architect, which I prefer). I sit down and plan everything. Some people can’t fathom that, but I hope those people will come to understand why I do it this way, rather than the Gardening way. 

Before we start, I want to add a little disclaimer: what works for me might not work for you. I’m not presenting this, or any of the subsequent posts in this series, as fact, but just my own way of going about our shared profession. 

Also, finally, I will be discussing all of these steps in greater detail. Don’t worry. 

Let’s go!

THE STEPS

1. GENRE. Before I start with anything, I start with genre. Genre is the flavor, it’s the broad idea of a story. It colors everything that comes after.  

2. CHARACTERS. Characters are the next thing on my list. I can’t develop my plot until I have my characters, because I want to tie my plot to my characters and their backstories and motivations. 

3. WORLDBUILDING. Not everything I write needs a lot of worldbuilding, but worldbuilding comes right around here. It’s often combined with steps 2 and 4, but a large bit of it gets done after character creation. 

4. PLOT AND OUTLINE. This is the part of the process when I start coming up with the plot and working on my outline. This part takes a while! My outline is essentially my first draft, so I need a lot of time to work on the pacing and flow.

5. FIRST DRAFT. The first draft is definitely the hardest, I think for anyone. I don’t have a lot to say here, other than just get through it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes - I’m definitely not one of those people who can slam out a draft in a month - just do it. Start, and keep working on it until it’s done. 

And that’s about it! I’m planning on talking about my drafting and editing process at some point, but I need to finish My Heart is a Concert first. Let me know if you found this helpful or insightful, and look forward to my upcoming articles!

About Conflict by Sacha Black

Isn’t “complex, nuanced, morally gray villain” and “villain who is just evil with nothing more to it” a false dilemma?

I contend that villains don’t have to be morally gray to be complex. Your villains can have complex reasons for what they do, and internal conflicts, and still be completely vile. Their motivations can be nuanced and still be fundamentally twisted. Their internal conflicts can be between multiple awful, fucked up, selfish sides of themselves. Villains can be complicated by differing drives and motivations and viewpoints even if none of them are good.

Give me a villain who is like...for example, conflicted between killing his son to eliminate a threat to his power, and keeping him alive so he can continue to exercise his abusive, fucked up control and twist his son into what he wants. He’s stuck between hating his son and desiring him as a possession and puppet, but neither of his conflicting motivations are The Good One.

Give me a villain who has to choose between the ideology of the violent, corrupt organization that groomed and trained him and the desire to betray everyone, strike out on his own with no support, and begin his own genocidal terrorist group. There can be a lot of complicated, shifting emotions over this, but it’s far from being a battle between an evil path and a good path.

Idk. “purely, disgustingly evil villain” is not the same as “one dimensional villain”

Advice and a Pep-Talk from one Autistic Writer to Another

I’ve seen enough “how to write autistic characters” directed at allistics but I’m not sure I’ve really seen any posts directed at autistics written by other autistics that’s just general writing advice. So here’s some tips and tricks and a pep talk.

1.   Write as many autistic characters as you want. It’s totally ok for every single one of your characters to be autistic. If other people can write stories without any autistic characters, you can write ones without any allistic characters. (After all, how can you write an autistic allistic character if you’re not autistic allistic. /s)

2.   Let your characters stim! It’s a great way to include body language in a way that feels natural for us.

On the topic of stimming, try and vary the stims your characters use. This is something I generally take care of in editing. Everyone would run their hands through their hair, but when they did that, it just became a filler description, so I cut the action from most of the characters and left it for a few. At that point, the stim became theirs. (I also then got to have lines like “Den ran his hand through his hair to calm his thoughts, a motion more like his brother than him.” which is like Look, characterization!)

3.  Body language and facial expressions are hard. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve described the body language or facial expression without actually saying what the character was feeling while writing, and then in editing have no idea what they were feeling.

It’s totally OK to write something like “their eyebrows jumped up in surprise as their jaw dropped towards the floor.” It’s descriptive enough to follow the “show, don’t tell” rule, but still names the emotion the character is feeling. It also lets you use non-standard body language (aka autistic body language and stimming) in a way that allistic readers can pick up on.

Reference sheets are a great way to have some standard allistic ways of expressing emotions via body language. This is a great way to make sure that if a character is expressing an emotion but it’s not something you can state in the story (or that your character is unaware of), that it’ll still be something your audience can pick up on.

4.   It can take a while to really get a feel for your characters. I tend to only really have their characterization solid enough to keep them consistent after I’ve written the initial rough draft. This is one of the reasons my first step after completing my initial draft is to rewrite everything. It’s just the easiest way I’ve found to make sure all the characters are in character - because if I tried to go through every single line and figure out what wasn’t in character, I’d be lost.

If you’re confused about why a character is doing something because you forgot what you were thinking and are having trouble figuring it out from context, it’s ok to take that bit out and rewrite it. Sometimes it might be because a character is acting out of character, and in that case it’s a good thing you’re fixing it.

5.      The details you include in your writing because you’re so detail oriented really makes the story come alive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten told it feels like my world exists beyond the story and that my characters have lives beyond what’s mentioned on the page because I think about every little detail and make mentions of them.

Our attention to detail also tends to let us do unintentional symbolism and foreshadowing really well. We try and make every little thing relevant and tied into everything else, which is something that comes naturally to us and I’ve seen so many writers struggle with.

6.     Infodump in the rough draft as much as you want. If it keeps you writing, go for it.

You can remove (or better integrate) infodumps (because they tend to not be all that interesting to readers since they stop the story in their tracks) and any inconsistent details when you edit.

If you want to avoid just infodumping in the story itself, write down EVERYTHING about your characters, your world, your plot, everything you want to explain and anything that is relevant to know for the story in a separate document(s). For me, it gets the urge to explain EVERYTHING out of my system and helps me include only what’s needed when I’m writing. (Plus it makes a GREAT reference material for when you’re writing.)

7.      If you don’t explain something well enough, that can also be fixed in editing. This is where beta readers are useful since they can let you know where they’re confused and where more information is useful. This is also where taking a break between writing and editing can help, since if you’re confused it’s likely a spot where you need to include more information

(Again, this is advice for autistic writers from an autistic writer. Allistics and Writing blogs are encouraged to reblog this since this is writing advice, but unless you are autistic, please do not comment.)

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. 

Quick And Dirty Tips For Creating Subplots

– Not everyone should love the hero.

– The more antagonists you have the more conflicts you create.

– Real life should happen to the characters, even if they are saving the world they have jobs and responsibilities.

– Give the character interests and friends outside of work.

– Multiple point of views aren’t a bad thing if you know how to juggle them.

– It all needs to come together at the end.

– Not every antagonist needs to be vanquished at the end.

– – Give us more than one character to love– (from Diantha)

— Make each and every character count — (from Diantha)

Stories need subplots. Make sure yours has one.