Mellow Yellow

Hello. I am the color yellow--but not like a normal yellow, a mellow yellow. I'm also very shy. 

[writingquestionsanswered]

This may seem dumb but how do you decide on unique personalities for your characters? I have 3 MCs in my story and two of their personalities seem too similar and very cliched.

Making Personalities Unique & Keeping them Straight

There are several different tricks you can try to make sure you’re varying your characters’ personalities. Here are a few:

1) Make a list of three people you’re familiar with. They can be real people or characters, just make sure you have a good grasp on their personalities. Next to each name, write down three things you like about their personality and three things you don’t like. You will end up with nine good traits and nine bad traits. Now, go through those and choose four good traits and four bad traits, and give those to your character. Very often, additional traits will emerge naturally as you write.

2) Alternatively, you can find a list of personality traits (you can find several via Google–like this one) and choose the traits that appeal to you. Be sure to choose a mix of both positive and negative traits.

3) Find an online personality test and take it from the perspective of your character. Try to choose different answers than you would for yourself or for your other characters. At the end of the test you should get a summary of your character’s personality, sometimes along with an analysis or other helpful information. You can also research your character’s personality type to find out more information. Some tests to Google: The Big 5 Personality Test, You Just Get Me Test, Myers-Briggs Style Cognitive Inventory, Jung Typology Test.

4) An alternative to taking a personality test is to just sift through the various personality types and choose one that sounds best for your character.

To keep your characters’ personalities straight, list them all out along with a summary of their key personality traits, and keep that handy as you write. Another trick that can help is before you write each scene, break it down into all the little moments that happen. Then, for each moment, record how each character should respond according to their personality. This will help you keep everyone on track with their individual personality. :) 

I hope that helps! :)

[thatfizzyyyy]

FIRST SENTENCE IS A FRAUD

Stop trying to make your first sentence perfect! How many first sentences do you remember, honestly? I can count them with one hand. You could cut off almost all the fingers on that hand and I’d still be able to count how many fingers I have.

You don’t get much out of a first sentence. The reader won’t put your book down if you don’t have a eye catching first sentence. I mean, would you? When do you stop reading a book if you don’t like it? The point is, you have a good few pages to make things interesting. Your first sentence might be an attention grabber, but it doesn’t hold the value of the rest of your story.

I only remember 1 first sentence. “The sky was the color of cat vomit.” (Or something along the lines of that.) Very interesting. Maybe it’s stormy weather? No. The next sentence, the very next fucking sentence, goes, “If the cat ate shrimp all its life.” No. Don’t do this. That is what we call clickbait. 

Instead of worrying about the first sentence, just worry about the scene. The chapter. Focusing on only the chapter has its pitfalls too, but it’s better than being stuck on a sentence. There’s only so much you can offer between a capital letter and a period. There’s so much more you can fit in a page, a scene, a chapter. 

[writingguardian-deactivated2024]

Why every writer needs to write a play

Yes!! Even you! 

Basically, a few months ago, I was approached and asked to write a script for a play somebody had an idea for, and wanted to direct. Had I ever written anything like this before? Nope. Anyway, ‘she.’ came to be - the story of a voiceless assault victim. The experience was incredible, we worked with such an exciting cast, and donated the money to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. But I took one thing away from it - writing a script is life changing. Here is why EVERY WRITER needs to write a play.

1. Writing exclusively dialogue is hard.

Are you one of those writers who can write enthralling, captivating descriptions, but every conversation is an identical flop? Writing a script will challenge you - all you have to work with is dialogue! And the odd ENTER STAGE RIGHT.

2. Your audience is entirely under your control.

A novel is a private thing. A novel is for you to read, curled up in your room, to react to alone. At your own pace, you can take the time to think about it as the story unfolds overtime. But when you’re writing a play, all the information is revealed to the audience at exactly the moment you want. You (hopefully!) have the audience’s entire attention - the pauses are as you want them to be, not for as long as somebody wants to put the book down. You give them exactly as much time to think about something as you want them to. The play doesn’t have to make it to the stage for this experience. It’s all about thing about how your story  processed.

3. You can experiment with things you just can’t do in a novel.

bUt yOu CaN dO whatever YoU WaNt iN yOuR NoVEl. Not as much as you can do on a stage! In terms of narrative, and plot development, and backstory - again, it doesn’t have to make it to a stage, it’s just about changing the way you think as a writer. In a play, you can put scenes wherever you think works, make everything a mess which suddenly dawns in the last scene. The world is yer erster!

4. You unlock a whole new world of tools to work with.

Lemme say it one more time - YOUR PLAY DOES NOT HAVE TO MAKE IT TO A STAGE FOR YOU TO LEARN FROM THESE  But you suddenly have several new ways to tell your story. Lighting! (COLD LIGHT floods the stage.) What a way to convey a mood! Stage directions! Parentheticals! Cuts and transitions!

5. Wait, so how am I meant to apply this to my novel?

How, exactly, are you meant to apply this to your beloved WIP? I don’t want to be a playwright, you say! I’m a novelist! Well, let me tell you, your dialogue will have improved. Massively. You’ll have a new, interesting mindset on writing stories. And maybe, someday, you’ll make it to Broadway..

-

I hope this was helpful! As always, if anyone has any writing related questions, feel free to message me, Aoife, @writingguardian

My next post will likely be some with actual play writing advice - so stay tuned! X

[thewriterswitch]

Write what you want to read. Once you do that, you’ve created a book that has everything you love within it, and chances are, other people will love it just as much as you.

[a-mellow-yellow-blog]

Me: a giant thrill seeker who’s favorite moments were spent on roller coasters

Me: somewhat arrogant, always thinks I’m write

Me: the eldest sibling friend who recommends the most impulsive thing

Me: values beliefs and sticking to those beliefs above almost anything

Me: loves doing things just because they’re nerv-y

Me: extremely short-tempered

Also me: I’m not a Gryffindor wtf how dare you say such a thing

[i-am-a-fish]

Im single and incapable of mingle 

[a-mellow-yellow-blog]

Writing

Hey everyone, I’m not like a master writer or anything, but I have some quality advice for you all, if anyone cares.

Here’s the thing: HAVE FUN WITH YOUR WRITING. I’m sure you’ve been told this, but among the shouts of kill your darlings and “only write scenes that forward the plot”, I just want to say hell no, love what you write above anything else.

Look, I totally get the point of editing and stuff and there is a time and place for it. However, don’t you dare edit the fun out of your book! Keep the laughter and the characterizations. Keep the scene that almost feels like a dance-dress up montage in a teen movie. 

There are a ton of reasons for this! First of all, if you have fun, the reader has fun. Generally what we like doing is what we’re GOOD at doing. I for one, LOVE descriptions. Usually, they’re too melodramatic and I edit them out of my formal writing--or at least I used to. However, now, I just write them all and keep them and my writing is LONGER and I’ve been getting MUCH better feedback.

Another very important reason (and probably the final one I’ll list here) is that nobody enjoys reading anything that’s all sharp corners and sadness. I mean, if that’s your jam, go for it, but I doubt anyone has lived a moment without a little bit of hilariousness to it, lived a life so fast paced there’s no time for dialogue that characterizes people sure, but there’s no further plot.

Anyway, this probably doesn‘t make any sense but... Just wanted to put in my two cents. 

[alphabetaus]

Any tips on writing a completely platonic friendship between a boy and a girl?

How To: Write Platonic Friendships

I can actually help with this! One of my best friends growing up was a boy so I’d like to think that I have some real-life experience that can help with this :) These are just some quick-fire tips that I think would help.

1. Set Boundaries

So, you’ve got your characters, brilliant. Now, all you’ve got to do is write their friendship. But, before you can even set that pen on that paper, you have to consider boundaries. It’s important that you are aware of the fact that personal boundaries between boys and girls are different from same-sex friendships. 

Of course, personal boundaries are important in any friendship. However, it’s keen that you keep in mind that personal boundaries change depending on the characters’ personality. When I was growing up, me and my male friend hardly ever touched. We hugged as a hello and would occasionally punch each other but other than that, there was little to no contact. Keep in mind that we’ve known each other since we were five; so, no, knowing someone for ages (even if they’re the same sex) does not automatically result in being comfortable touching each other. 

This doesn’t mean that touchy-feely relationships are frowned upon or in fact discouraged, but be careful when approaching them as they can be misinterpreted as romantic signals by your readers. This means to try and avoid the following:

electric touches

slow/explicitly described descriptions of contact

any hints of sexual tension

Of course, if you want to include some sort of underlying crush in your friendship, then please; do some of the above! They’re the easiest ways to convey to your reader that there’s much more than friendship going on with your characters. 

Setting boundaries also include conversation topics. I won’t go into this in too much detail as it’s pretty simple once you get the gist of it. If they’re members of the opposite sex, it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll share explicit details of their hygienic habits. I know this is a bit of a weird point to make, but I have seen it done before and for me, it just didn’t really work. Considering that they do not share the same organs/bodily experiences, as understanding as this friend may be, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to relate to the same level as that person. This doesn’t mean avoid it entirely, just try and keep this in mind as you’re writing about this because whilst you may be able to relate to one of your characters’ situations, a character of the opposite sex may not have the same reaction due to a lack of personal experience.

Setting boundaries doesn’t only let your reader know what they’re in for, but it helps you know what would be deemed normal in this friendship and what could be crossing the line into a potentially romantic relationship.

2. Surrounding Opinions

Your characters will almost certainly experience some stigmatisation from their friendship with the other character. Perhaps more obvious and stereotypical if it’s between a boy and a girl, but with all friendships. If a friendship is formed that isn’t normally expected in a society which would normally be considered a romantic one, they’ll certainly receive some criticism or strange looks over that. 

These surrounding opinions are key, as the reaction with each of your characters will be a clear sign as to whether there is any possibility of a romantic relationship between your characters. I’ll give you two examples (each within the same scenario) but with two different responses. Keep in mind that these examples are extremely exaggerated. 

Example 1:

“So, you two are dating?”“Dating?!” Person A blurted, their face immediately flushing red at the very thought of any romantic relationship with Person B, “No, it’s not like that at all! We’re just friends — Just friends.”

Person A didn’t dare to look over at Person B, in fear of a few seconds of prolonged awkward eyecontact. Person B, however, had no intention of looking at Person A. Instead, they simply looked down at their feet in shame; scared to look up as to give away any indication of their true feelings. They scuffed their feet at the pavement, biting their lip as the temperature of their face began to rise. Person A turned their head away in shame, frustrated that someone would even bring up such a concept just to complicate matters further. 

I hope it was obvious in this example, but I used several techniques in this paragraph to display secretive feelings between the two characters. Now, I’m going to look at this paragraph in a very analytical point of view. Of course, your readers would not analyse the language in this much detail but by simply using the wrong description of body language can result in misconceptions of your character’s friendships.

The sudden response from Person A shows that the character had already been considering the possibility. If the character had never come across this topic before, there would perhaps be a prolonged silence or a moment of awkward eye contact between the two characters before Person A would respond. Person A continues to speak at a rapid pace, rambling and jumbling their sentences together; clearly keen to reinforce how absurd the idea was. Person A’s obvious need to display how the idea would be strange and ludicrous reflects on their own fear of their true feelings being revealed. Person B displays evident embarrassed and mischevious behaviour, to a reader it may appear that Person B has also considered the possibility of a friendship. I’m not gonna prattle on about this any longer, but I just wanted to make it clear that any incorrect body language can give the readers the completely wrong idea. 

Here’s another example:

Example 2:

“So, you two are dating?”

A moment of shocked silence fell between them. Person A scrunched up their nose in disgust. Person B blinked slowly. Simultaneously, Person A and Person B turned to each other and threw their heads back laughing. 

“You — You seriously think that we’d — we’d ever date?” Person A said, wiping tears from their eyes. Meanwhile, Person B held their stomach in disbelief at such a prospect. After the two had caught their breath, Person A shook their head.

“Gosh. That’s hilarious.” Person B commented, and cleared their throat, “Anyway, on to more realistic things.”

Again, I’ve overexaggerated. But, the fact that a moment of silence fell between them shows that each of them was shocked by the question. I’ve reinforced how absurd Person A and Person B thought the idea was to, first of all, make eye contact and then laugh. Whilst a non-platonic friendship would avoid eye contact in fear of any awkwardness between them, the two shared eye contact to show how they both immediately dismissed the idea. 

It’s important that approached with the question of dating that your characters have the appropriate reaction so as to not mislead your readers. This will allow your readers to focus on the solidity of your characters’ friendships rather than the possibility of a romantic relationship.

3. Friendship Flaws

To show the solidity of their friendship, it’d be a good idea to discuss flaws in their friendship. This may only be relevant to newly formed friendships, but it can still be applied to long-term platonic relationships.

During a new relationship in fiction, there is a time where the flaws in each other’s personalities go ignored. The two characters are blinded by their infatuation so it would be normal for the small annoying habits to be forgotten. It’s common that when two characters meet; they’re likely to not notice their flaws straight away — especially if there is no romantic or sexual attraction between them. 

In fact, your characters may even begin hating each other; however, if you take this approach you’ve got to keep the competitive strictly friendly and platonic. This avoids any confusion that your readers may have about their relationship.

I hope this helps!

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Happy writing!

- Jess

[heywriters]

Quick Analysis: Romantic vs. Platonic Interaction

Was just working on a scene where two non-related characters with a brother/sister dynamic are talking. The female is lying in bed with the bedroom door on one side and the male character on the other. They’re exchanging banter and it ends with her telling him to get out so she can go to sleep.

Since they’re “siblings” I wrote him doing something my actual sibling has done to me: climb right over the bed to get to the door. It’s a goofy, harmless act that shows how comfortable they are with each other, and also that he’s trying to annoy her.

This is how the scene basically turned out:

He clambers over the bed, jostling her. She squeals with laughter and smacks him yelling, “No, stop it!” 

Nah. Nah, that’s not how you react to your stupid sibling being a jerk. That’s how you react to your stupid crush being flirty. I wanted 0% flirting between these two. So, I deferred to how I reacted when my sibling did the same thing to me:

He clambers over the bed, jostling her. She raises one hand and limply gestures “why?” with a blank expression before telling him to turn off the light on his way out.

#realism

I’m sure every set of siblings is different, but the rewrite sounded more natural to me given that these aren’t true siblings and I don’t want them mistaken for love interests.

[brynwrites]

You fantasy writers trying to make your maps all pretty and even with a nicely dissectable “north” and “south” and neat kingdoms in boxes, but have you ever seen a real map before?

Croatia steals three county’s shares of the waterfront on the Adriatic Sea.

Lesotho is literally encircled by the country of South Africa on all sides.

Chile spans half the length of a continent but it’s the width of the world’s largest needle.

Half the fucking globe is a peninsula on top of a peninsula, reaching for a damn island.

Except those islands, everything connects to something else.

Stop making worlds that look like Westeros Great Britain had a child with a rectangle! Be creative! Give your maps some diversity and life and story! Have fun with it!

[thatwritergirlsblog]

Writing great friendships

Some of the best chemistry/relationships in fiction exist between characters who are/become friends. Here are some tips for making friendships come alive on the page:

1. Banter

One of the most interesting aspects of fictional friendships is the way the characters interact with each other whilst important plot points are occurring.

If your characters have easy banter, teasing one another without missing a beat and managing to bounce off each other even in the toughest circumstances, it will be clear to the reader that these two are/should be good friends.

Friends know each other well. They know the other’s character so well that they can easily find something to tease each other over. However, this also means knowing which topics are off-limits.

If you want to write a good, healthy friendship, your characters shouldn’t use humour/sarcasm as a way to hurt the other. It should be good-natured and understood as such from both sides.

Different friendships will have different types of chemistry. Some friends may tease each other with facial expressions. Others may already anticipate a snarky remark and counter it before it’s been spoken. Others will have physical ways of goofing around. 

Some friends might not tease each other at all. Banter isn’t necessary; it’s just a good way to make your characters come alive and make their friendship one that is loved by readers.

What’s important is chemistry - the way they automatically react to each other.

Think Sam and Dean in Supernatural or Juliette and Kenji in the Shatter Me series.

2. Mutual support 

Unless you purposefully want to write an unhealthy/toxic friendship, your characters should both be supportive of the other. 

This means that, even if one is the MC and the other the side-kick, both should be cognisant of the other’s feelings and problems, and should be considerate in this regard.

Few things will make your MC as likable as remembering to check in and be there for their best friend even when they are in the thick of a crisis.

You need to show your characters being vulnerable in front of each other and being supportive in ways that are tailored to the needs of each friend.

So, if one of the characters really responds to physical comfort, the other should know to give hugs/rub their back when they’re not feeling well. Similarly, if one of them doesn’t like being touched and responds to material comfort, have the other bring them ice cream and join them for a movie marathon. Whatever works for your characters.

What gets me every time is when a character is falling apart and won’t listen to/be consoled by anyone but their best friend (but this is just personal preference).

3. Knowing the other’s past/family life

This really only applies to characters who have been friends for quite a while.

Good friends know each other’s backstory - the highs and lows and mundane details. They know they layout of their family home and they probably know their family members well.

Friends will often talk about these things, only having to mention a few words for the other to know what they’re talking about i.e. “The ‘09 Thanksgiving disaster” or “You know how Uncle Fred is”

This will instantly make it clear that your characters are close and have come a long way together. 

Perhaps there are issues at home/trauma from the past that the other character will immediately understand. So, if one character appears with a black eye, their friend might know that the father was probably drunk the night before and got violent. Or if the character has a nightmare, the friend might know that it was about childhood abuse etc.

This can also apply to good things i.e. if one of the characters gets a nice note in their lunchbox, the other might know that their grandma is in town.

Whatever works for your story should be used to indicate the level of unspoken understanding the friends have.

4. Being protective

Few things will make your readers love a friendship more than the friends being fiercely protective of each other (in a healthy, non-territorial way).

Has someone hurt one of the characters? The other should be furious and want to exact revenge. Does someone say something demeaning to one of the friends? The other should defend them immediately and vehemently.

This can also take on a humorous twist if one of the characters starts dating someone. The friend can make extra sure that said date is sincere and promise to exact vengeance if their friend is hurt.

This can also be a great plot device, since it could explain why the MC’s best friend joins the quest/goes along on the journey. Perhaps this is the main plot point: a character seeking to protect/avenge their friend.

If you want to go in a toxic direction, this can be taken too far i.e. a friend who never lets the other spend time with anyone else/stalks the other/is patronising etc.

5.  Common interest(s)

Even if the two characters are vastly different, there should be something that keeps them together besides loyalty.

This is especially important for characters who become friends throughout the course of the novel.

This doesn’t have to mean that both of them go hiking every weekend or want to become pilots one day. It could be something small, like a love of cheesy movies or a shared taste in music. Maybe they both enjoy silence/don’t like other people. Maybe they are both social justice warriors, but for different causes. 

This could also be common characteristics instead of interests. Perhaps both are very ambitious/funny/social.

There should just be some factor that ignited the friendship and brings the two of them together.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big part of your story, but you should at least have it mentioned to make the friendship appear more authentic.

Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment if you would like a Part 2. Follow me for similar content.

[fuchsiamae]

an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks

the scarlet ibis

marigolds

the diamond necklace

the monkey’s paw

the open boat

the lady and the tiger

the minister’s black veil

an occurrence at owl creek bridge

a rose for emily

(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)

the cask of amontillado

the yellow wallpaper

the most dangerous game

a good man is hard to find

some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15

add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed

[a-mellow-yellow-blog]

Working on reading through all of these now. 

[a-mellow-yellow-blog]

Do you like the color yellow? Well, I am the color yellow.