My thoughts.

Elena | Sometimes I write stories | Sometimes I put my thoughts into words | Always guilty

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we came into this world alone but only for a second because then we are surrounded

my mind

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Scared

They smile and tell me there’s nothing to worry about

My heart is pounding

Beating out of my chest but it isn’t

Simply smile and nod away stop breathe

Be productive you’re fine

Go see a movie it’ll be fun

I wake up one morning the beast

I can smile and laugh has once again emerged

I am frozen captive

I cannot think whatever “demon” is inhabiting me

My inability to think

or breathe

or feel

It is literally paralyzed

They smile and tell me there’s nothing to worry about

It is stuck in some kind of limbo

No doors or windows or exits of any kind my heart is pounding

I’m completely alone in there

Simply smile and nod away.

[anomalously-written]

Let's Talk About: Minor Character Development

“Creating one interesting character is hard enough — but when it comes to writing a whole novel or series of books, you have to create dozens of them. How can you keep your supporting cast from seeming like cookie-cutter people? There’s no easy answer, but a few tricks might help you create minor characters who don’t feel too minor.” [x]

10 Secrets to Creating Unforgettable Supporting Characters

Give them at lease one defining characteristic. “…lots of people have one or two habits that you notice the first time you meet them, that stand out in your mind even after you learn more about them.”

Give them an origin story. “…Your main character doesn’t necessarily need an origin story, because you’ve got the whole book to explain who he/she is and what he/she is about. But a supporting character? You get a paragraph or five, to explain the formative experience that made her become the person she is, and possibly how she got whatever skills or powers she possesses.”

Make sure they talk in a distinctive fashion. “…you still have to make sure your characters don’t all talk the same. Some of them talk in nothing but short sentences, others in nothing but long, rolling statements full of subordinate clauses and random digressions. Or you might have a character who always follows one long sentence with three short ones.“ ”…One dirty shortcut is to hear the voice of a particular actor or famous person in your head, as one character talks.“

Avoid making them paragons of virtue, or authorial stand-ins. ”…People who have no flaws are automatically boring, and thus forgettable.“ ”…Any character who has foibles, or bad habits, or destructive urges, will always stand out more than one who is pure and wonderful in all ways. And nobody will believe that you’ve chosen to identify yourself, as the author, with someone who’s so messed up. (Because of course, you are a perfect human being, with no flaws of your own.)“

Anchor them to a particular place. ”…A huge part of making a supporting character “pop” is placing her somewhere. Give her a haunt — some place she hangs out a lot. A tavern, a bar, an engine room, a barracks, a dog track, wherever. It works both ways — by anchoring a character in a particular location, you make both the character and the location feel more real.“

Introduce them twice — the first time in the background, the second in the foreground. ”…You mention a character in passing: “And Crazy Harriet was there too, chewing on her catweed like always.” And you say more about them. And then later, the next time we see that character, you give more information or detail, like where she scores her catweed from. The reader will barely remember that you mentioned the character the first time — but it’s in the back of the reader’s mind, and there’s a little “ping” of identification.“

Focus on what they mean to your protagonists ”…What does this minor character mean to your hero? What role does he fulfill? What does your hero want or need from Randolph the Grifter? If you know what your hero finds memorable about Randolph, then you’re a long ways towards finding what your readers will remember, too.“

Give them an arc — or the illusion of one. ”… You can create the appearance of an arc by establishing that a character feels a particular way — and then, a couple hundred pages later, you mention that now the character feels a different way.“ ”…A minor character who changes in some way is automatically more interesting than one who remains constant…“

The more minor the character, the more caricature-like they may have to be. ”…This one is debatable — you may be a deft enough author that you can create a hundred characters, all of whom are fully fleshed out, well-rounded human beings with full inner lives.“ ”…some writing styles simply can’t support or abide cartoony minor characters. But for your third ensign, who appears for a grand total of two pages, on page 147 and page 398, you may have to go for cartoony if you want him to live in the reader’s mind as anything other than a piece of scenery.“

Decide which supporting characters you’ll allow to be forgettable after all. ”…And this is probably inevitable. You only have so much energy, and your readers only have so much mental space. Plus, if 100 supporting characters are all vivid and colorful and people your readers want to go bowling with, then your story runs the risk of seeming overwritten and garish.Sometimes you need to resign yourself to the notion that some characters are going to be extras, or that they’re literally going to fulfill a plot function without having any personality to speak of. It’s a major sacrifice they’re making, subsuming their personality for the sake of the major players’ glory.“

Keep reading

[rewritign-blog]

Writing an essay without any structure is like trying to find your way around an unfamiliar place without a map; frustrating, ineffective, and a bit of a garbled mess. Structure gives your essay a clear voice and coherency and makes marking a lot easier for your teacher or tutor! Here are a few general tips I often use when writing essays to maximise the effect of my argument and achieve the best results I can both in high school and university.

Text structure While the content of essays varies, the skeleton structure never changes. In order to clearly articulate an idea, an essay needs a beginning, middle, and an end. 

Introduction

Start with a macro sentence - use an interesting quote, fact, or idea which gives the reader a broad sense of what your essay will cover. This is the reader’s first impression of your essay and can determine their whole attitude while reading it, so make it effective!

Briefly outline the main ideas and thesis - in absence of an abstract, your introduction will need to show the main ideas you will be covering so as to support your thesis, or answer the essay question. You will need to clearly express your position and how you intend to argue the point.

Set the limits - sometimes, the scope of an essay question can be very broad, or perhaps there’s a focus to your thesis not all ready indicated. Define the limits of your essay, whether they be a set of years for a history topic, or looking at specific artists who contributed to an art style.

Define key terms - if a term is important to the understanding of your essay, or perhaps you’ve taken your own approach to its meaning, be sure to define it in your introduction!

Body

Separate each idea into a paragraph - ideas can generally be separated chronologically or conceptually. The section below explores this in more detail! 

Start every paragraph with a topic sentence - introduce what the paragraph will discuss and how it relates to your thesis. Signpost it with critical words to make it easier to understand exactly what you are addressing. Ensure it is clear and to the point!

Make a claim and the support it - like in reality, when you make a claim you need to provide evidence to support it so it can be taken seriously. Make your claim early on in the paragraph, generally in the topic sentence, give relevant detail and explanation, analyse it, and then justify it with authoritative quotes, sources, examples, etc.

End every paragraph with a linking sentence - refer back to your thesis or question and make sure what you set out to cover in the paragraph actually addresses it! This is an opportunity to draw a link between this paragraph and the next.

Conclusion

Do more than just restate your points - your conclusion is more than just a rehash of your introduction. Link ideas together and demonstrate how they are interconnected on a less superficial level. An English teacher once told me, your essay is like a mountain. You put in all your hard work to climb it in your introduction and body paragraphs, your conclusion is a chance to look back, make connections where there were none before, and solidify your argument. 

Establish the overarching theme and idea - what idea underlies all the points you have made? How does it relate to your thesis?

Draw a profound and insightful conclusion - what are the implications of this? Is there relevance today? This can transform a standard essay into a more profound and overall, more interesting essay.

Don’t introduce any new information - your essay is complete! All your information should have been expressed in the body paragraphs, so nothing new should be introduced here.

Reaffirm your thesis - restate it with some finality! Your body has provided all this evidence to support it, remind them of this.

Chronological or Conceptual? For the most part, an essay can take one of two approaches; a chronological approach, where each body paragraph follows the text, history, etc., sequentially, or a conceptual approach, where the main idea is broken down into its constituent elements, each addressed in their own paragraph(s).

 In my experience, conceptual essays usually score higher, showing a greater sense of understanding of the topic and its inner workings. You can demonstrate a funnel effect more easily, where each element funnels down from its body paragraph to the conclusion, contributing to the overall idea of the essay. A chronological approach, however, can be easier to follow and is occasionally implicit within the essay question. Choosing which approach to use depends on which you are comfortable writing with, the demands of the essay or your teacher, and can vary from essay to essay. 

Continuity and Cohesion Something I think is highly underrated, yet critical to holding an essay together, is transition words and phrases. They create continuity and cohesion between ideas and paragraphs, and serve as a bridge of sorts within your overall structure. Here are a few posts which have comprehensive lists of transition words and phrases:

Transition Words for Essays - @staedtlers-and-stabilos Essay Transition Phrases - @study-like-you-mean-it Transition Words For Your Essays - @soniastudyblr

I hope this can help with structuring your essays and getting the best marks you can! Please message me if you have any questions :)

Other essay writing posts: How to reduce your word count Understanding the Question How to Write a Killer Unprepared Text Essay

[poems-and-words]

[poems-and-words]

Book of the day: The People Look Like Flowers At Last by Charles Bukowski

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[poems-and-words]

[poems-and-words]

Book of the day:The Weekenders by Mary Kay Andrews

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I am Haunting the World

I am Haunting a World. A short, weird poem by me. Lighting video for film class

A video for a poem i wrote. Directed, filmed, stared in, written and edited by me

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Shattering

I was stuck. Stuck in this world that I could not escape. It was like I was in a room, the door locked and closed. Sometimes, I wondered why we were stuck here; in this never ending oblivion of heartache. They always told us that someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Yet, we never thought that we would become the maidens that needed saving. I refused to be a maiden, or even saved. I was as pigheaded as I was scared.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said to me one day. Sitting on the splintering floor, looking up at the light that filtered through the cracks in the ceiling.

I glance to the side, where the window resided. That was the only way out I would realize, through that glass and out into the air. “Fine. Who wants to live forever?”

She sniffles, a fat tear fell down her small face. My heart is so tired of fighting for the both of us. Fighting to live in this world that obviously could go on without us even if we didn’t want it to.

Sometimes, when she is asleep I stand up and scream. I pound on the door but never hard enough to break it. Never hard enough to break through and see what is really on the other side. That’s the problem with closed doors: even if nothing’s behind them, it’s easy to imagine the worst.

I imagine a dragon standing there. Guarding us, keeping us away from the prince – the prince I don’t want to come, mind you.

One day, I was sitting there, contemplating how to get out when she turned to me. Her pale skin grey with the grime that had accumulated on us. Her head in greasy strands around her face, no more perfect than my own. “How will we escape?” she asks me.

I don’t have an answer for her, I never do. How am I supposed to create a plan to escape the physical when I can’t even escape the imaginary?

I am trapped in a jail of my own mind. Unable to create concreate evidence of why I am even here. Who is to say that I am the one to even get us out? She is as capable as I.

“Why don’t you tell me for once?” I snap. My heart is breaking. My mind is cracking. I am shattering.

“You’re scared.” She gasps. It is as though something magical has just appeared in front of her.

I glare, “Am not.” I turn away, not wishing her to see the hurt tears that well in my eyes.

“It’s okay to be scared.” She whispers and places a hand on my shoulder. It is supposed to comfort, but all I feel is betrayal of my own feelings.

“No it is not! I’m not in control, I can’t handle this. I hate not being in control.” The words spout out of my fountain mouth before I can stop them. They are leaking out through the cracks, unable to be controlled.

“That’s the thing about being scared, though.” She whispers, “You can’t control it.”

Silence follows us. Swallowing us hole then spitting us up again in a jumble of tears, snot, and hopelessness.

That night, when she was once again asleep I stood up. Instead of screaming though I walked to the door and simply stood in front of it. Looking up. Everyone’s the hero of their own story, maybe it was my turn.

My hand reaches out to the knob.

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Excuses, Excuses

I was late because I slept in.

I was writing a test.

So your dog ate your homework?

She won’t believe you fell down.

“Why do you always make excuses”?

I twisted my ankle,

Of course I simply forgot it.

I was... in a... car accident?

Why am I not in the hospital? Umm… Because... the car accident was in a video game?

“These excuses are getting pretty lame.”

My fish ate my homework

My camera broke

I had to finish the show.

Okay, so maybe I forgot.

“Excuses, excuses.”

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Learning and Trying Something New

We don’t want to be told how to do something. It is human nature not to want to listen to others telling us how to do something, yet sometimes we need that. Not everything is the way we think it should be. If someone tells you that something you wrote isn’t good enough, it is obvious that you would be offended. Don’t be though, everything is a learning opportunity. Whenever we read, we learn more. We learn things that we never knew about, styles that we never knew about.

It’s okay not to like this, but you have to understand that sometimes maybe if you try something  new you will find something you like better. Trying is learning, and if we like trying perhaps we also like learning?

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I Remember

I remember when we first met. The sounds of children yelling was in the background, and the smell of grass in the air.

We were six, naïve young children running within the confinements of the metal fence that they caged us in. It seemed as though we were animals trapped in a zoo that would never end.

I remember that you hadn’t meant to bump into me, pushing me down with the force of the impact. We were both small, probably the same size yet the momentum made you stronger. 

You stared at me for a second before running off, yet I remember the look in your eyes. The sorry you felt was masked behind bright blue orbs full of mischief that could not be stopped.

I remember a year later when I brought my doll to school and the older children made fun of me for it. Called it a babyish. Yet, I remember the fierce intensity of anger you had when you stood up to the children. It lasted for a second before they pushed you down.

I think you forgot about it the next day, yet I have remember it every day since.

I remember when we were ten and dressed up for Halloween, I was dressed as Hermione and coincidentally you dressed as Harry. You made me walk around with you for the rest of the day. You said we were best mates.

After that, we did almost everything together. I remember when you first got me to ride a bike, and when I first got you to try coffee.

I remember the words you sang when I couldn’t sleep under the stars while camping, and when you got food poisoning.

I remember when we stopped talking.

It was in October of eighth grade. I don’t know what happened. One day we were walking around together, going to class together. The next day, you had new friends. You wouldn’t look at me in class, didn’t wait to walk home.

In the hallways, when I smiled you would glare. Your face told me to leave you alone, your eyes told me that they were sorry. So sorry.

Yet, sorry doesn’t fix it. I felt like that little girl again. The one who had been pushed to the ground by the boy her same size. The one who didn’t hear the words sorry or even understand the full extent of their non-existent meaning. In that moment the faint scent of grass filled my nostrils and children screaming floated into my ears.

I remember when we graduated, you surrounded by your large amount of friends and me sitting by myself. Well, I wasn’t actually by myself. Yet, without you I felt so alone. I felt alone in a crowd of people when I wasn’t really alone because nobody really wanted me there. I was the unwanted edition to their lives.

I remember when I bumped into you three years later. You were sitting alone in a pub. Stubble on your face, alone at the bar drinking your drink. I accidentally bumped into you, your centre of balance off for a mere moment.

It was the smaller one who made you fall for once. I was with my boyfriend; With my friends. I could see the regret in your eyes as your realized that I had true friends while the ones you called your “friends” were really paper people who left and never spoke to you again.

Yet, I remembered all the hurt you left me with and wasn't willing to feel that again. So, I said goodbye and left you sitting there alone while I left to forget.

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Ideas

I think idea’s for writing can’t be a forced thing. They are something that appear naturally. Sometimes it is by planning through a few nights, or it could just be nonsense being typed out. Of course sometimes force has to be added, when you have the word that can’t be spelled or can’t even be heard in your mind; it is there hidden behind all the fluff. You can’t let these things stop you on your track to writing, because that could supress a masterpiece. Not everything you will create will be your favourite, thats okay. I have many scrapped idea’s that I once thought were great. Not everything will be, but as you learn one day you will create your favourite stories. 

[daisies-guard-you]

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Moon & Stars

Stars

Falling

Lighting quietly

The world below

A constant fixture in life

Glowing above until they explode like a firework

Stars will help you find your home when you're lost in our world

Moon

Hanging

Shimming high

Sometimes not there

But will always be back

The moon is reassuring us

That not everything that leaves us is gone

The moon will always be a constant fixture in the bleak sky, forever

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It’s going to be okay

When I was seven,

My best friend

Told me her plan

To fake her suicide.

 When we were seven,

We didn’t know what suicide was.

We just knew

That death was permanent,

And she did not want hers to be.

 If I had known,

If I had known that this

Was a bad thing for her to say,

I would have told someone

 That she was planning suicide,

Even a fake one.

 At the age of seven,

We didn’t know

The implications of this.

She was just a little girl,

 Who was being bullied

And wanted to get out.

To get a one-way train ticket

And leave this town.

 When I was ten,

I learnt about the holocaust

For the first time.

I learnt about weapons of mass destruction,

 Mass graves,

And that even the innocent

Are targeted.

Yet,

 The full impact of this

Still did not hit me,

 Because I was just

A silly little girl

That played with dolls

And thought the world

Was a perfect place.

 When I was twelve,

I learnt about suicide

For the first time.

 I learnt about

The people who killed

Themselves because they

Found no other alternative.

 They couldn’t find help.

 At the time,

I thought I had understood.

For the first time,

And not the last, I wondered

What would happen if I follow down their path?

 As you grow,

You become more curious

About the things around you.

People want to know what is in

 The unknown.

That is what I wanted to know.

 Death is not

Something to joke around about.

It is around us everyday,

Looming in the shadows.

 Dead is something

That happens in ever second,

Of every minute,

Of everyday.

 Dead is something,

That scared people

Because of the same thing

That intrigues them.

 The unknown.

 It’s okay to be scared,

Of the unknown,

It’s okay to be scared,

Just like it’s okay to be

Sad, or angry, or happy.

 Because it’s going

To be okay.

 I wish,

I could have told

My seven-year-old friend that.

It’s going to be okay.

[apagecrease]

206 Bones

The Human body is comprised

Of 206 bones.

Out of those bones,

It only takes 27

To write love letters to the dead

 The Human body has

In general, 78 organs

But it only takes one

To make sure that you’re happy in the future

 When we were very young,

we thought happy was Forever

But we lost our dream

As the world was drained of peace.

 The stars collapsed

And they set a city on fire,

But now,

You must silence the critics.

 You will not be a

Girl, Interrupted.

There are Thirteen chairs

And one is yours.

 The human body has

206 bones, 78 organs,

But the most important

Is the heart.

[apagecrease]

Haunting the World

I am haunting the world.

Hiding from the hurtful truth

That happiness is a lie

We all know

When we smile at each other

That nothing will ever be the same

I hide my feelings away

So nobody will know

I am haunting the world.