My Writing Resource

A place for reference and inspiration

[writingquestionsanswered]

I am blocked. I know the entire story line for each pov and medium and big events and how I will mix them. But I have problem in what order to put the small events that fill a chapter. I am good at plotting the big stuff, but not the small one, like those little scenes that creat an entire chapter. Can you give some advise on this? Like I have this random scene in my mind, and than I am like, 'so, what next, where does it fits even? And what event should follow after?'

Guide: Filling in the Story Between Known Events

It’s actually good that you know the entire story, including the medium and big events. That’s going to make figuring everything else out a little bit easier.

What usually helps me in a situation like this is to get a bird’s eye view of my story. You can do that a few different ways, but ultimately you’re looking to create a visual representation of your story timeline on a piece of paper, or a digital version if you prefer. You may want to do a mind map or other schematic, for example, or you can just do a basic visual timeline, which is what I generally do. 

For a basic visual timeline, just draw out a horizontal line in the middle of your page to represent your story’s timeline from beginning to end. Now, plot all of the known events in order, from beginning to end. You don’t have to make this an actual timeline, as in putting in the dates and all of that. This is just a visual aid to help you see what your story looks like. Use a short label for each scene so that you’ll read it and immediately know what happens in that scene.

 At this point, you need to figure out what else has to happen in your story. What I like to do here is to draw a peaked line between every two known events, then consider what needs to happen to get from the one event to the next event. So, let’s say the event on the left is your protagonist practicing the big finale song with their choir, and the event on the right (later in the story) is the scene where they arrive at the dance competition in Washington D.C. What needs to happen between those two events? Do they need to do a fundraiser to get money for the trip? Do they need to win a regional competition before they make it to the national finals? Does there need to be a dramatic moment where it looks like their star soloist might not be able to go? Should there be a scene that takes place during flight or road trip to actually get to D.C.? These are all potential scenes that could go between those two events. Now, do the same thing for the next two events, which would be the arrival at the dance competition and making it through the quarter-finals. 

By the time you get to the end of your last known scene/event, you should have a pretty good list of potential scenes to fill in the space between the bigger known scenes. :)

Good luck!

[ad-wills]

[emcscared-whumps]

WRITING RESOURCES

This post will be updated with new entries Last updated: 01 May, 2023

WRITING TIPS & RESOURCES

Editing Service (by @concerningwolves)

Emotional Intelligence in Conflict

Lay or Lie

MS Word Shortcuts Guide

Passive Voice Advice

Publishing

On Punctuating Speech

Sentence Ending Pointers

The Writer's Workbook

WHUMP

Whump Events (A linked Google doc by @whumpsday )

Whump Resources (A resource post by @a-crumb-of-whump , how to start a whump blog, oc advice, advice on motivation and dealing with discouragement, and games)

WOUNDS, INJURIES, & TRAUMA

GSW Recovery - [A] [B] [C]

Malnutrition

Migraines

Passing out from pain

PTSD Dreams

Scar Tissue Info

Sleep Deprivation

Writing Traumatic Injuries Resources (Another resource post)

More Resources for Writing Injuries (Another resource post)

WEAPONS

Gun information

The Safety and Mechanism of a Bolt Action Rifle

Bolt Action Rifle Mechanism (Animated diagram)

Semiautomatic Rifle Mechanism (Animated diagram)

Pump Action Rifle Mechanism (Animated diagram)

CLOTHING

African Women's Fashion (Outfit examples video)

Lady's Clothes Guide

Men's Suits Guide

Period Clothing References

Vintage Fashion Clips (Saved for scarf pin :))

MISC

Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Place Description Aid...?

Whump Community Directory (Tumblr blogs)

If there's any broken links, please let me know!

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hello! Do you have any advice/resources on how to write sounds? Speaking and singing in particular but also maybe sounds at different volumes and sounds that could be considered "noise."

Describing Sounds Using Sound Words

Description of sound is all about knowing sound-related vocabulary. Here's a mini-list to get you started, but you can do some research to learn more. Also, be sure to look up these words before using them to make sure they're right for the context.

High Volume - blaring, blasting, booming, bray, din, deafening, ear-piercing, ear-popping, earsplitting, full volume, loud, pealing, roaring, sonorous, thundering, thunderous

Low Volume - buzz, faint, gentle, hushed, low, muffled, murmur, muted, peaceful, quiet, soft, subdued, whisper

Noise - cacophony, clamor, clatter, commotion, discord, disquiet, fracas, hullabaloo, racket, ruckus, uproar Pitch and Tone - atonal, discordant, dulcet, harmonic, harsh, high-frequency, low-frequency, mellow, resonant, sonic, soprano, tenor, timbre

Rhythm - beat, cadence, flow, lilt, lyrical, measured, melodic, metered, monotone, pulsing, staccato, stutter, tempo

Sounds - babble, bang, bark, beep, belch, boom, burble, burp, chirr, chirp, clack, clatter, clang, clank, click, clink, clip-clop, clomp, crackle, crash, creak, ding, echo, groan, gurgle, hiss, hoot, hum, jangle, jingle, kerplunk, howl, melodic, mewl, moan, murmur, patter, pitter-patter, peal, plop, pop, purr, rattle, roar, rumble, rustle, screech, shriek, sizzle, splash, splat, swoosh, squawk, squeak, strum, thud, thrum, thump, wail, whimper, whinny, whine, whir, whistle, whiz, yelp, yowl, zing How to Research Sounds - If you're struggling to describe the sound of a particular thing, like "thunder," go to Google and type in, "how to describe the sound of thunder" and look for inspiration. You can also search for things like "horse sounds" or "what sounds do cars make?"

Also, two previous posts specific to describing the sound of singing and music:

Describing Music How to Describe a Singing Voice

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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Go to ko-fi.com/wqa to buy me coffee or see my commissions

[nanowrimo]

Journaling Practices to Help With Writing Funks

Feeling stuck in your writing? Journaling might be your answer to getting unstuck! NaNo Participant Ashley has some tips on using journaling as a guide to get you writing again. We all know writing is no easy feat, and it can be especially difficult when we find ourselves in a funk. Sometimes it’s best to take a break, reset, and turn our energy elsewhere and inward to help us get re-focused on the goal ahead. So, whether you’re struggling to start a new work or find yourself stumped on writing that next chapter, try these tips to help you get over the hump.

Keep reading

[familyabolisher]

btw most universities to my knowledge keep their reading lists behind access barriers (ie. only students enrolled at the institution on the course in question can see them) so i thought i’d just let you all know that durham university has all of its reading lists available online for free without needing student access. do with this information what you will.

[familyabolisher]

the lists are downloadable btw - i haven’t gone through and checked every single one but the ones i’ve looked at seem to be at least

[metamatar-deactivated20250401]

MIT’s courseware is available using OpenCourse Ware, completely downloadable without registration and can be remixed under very permissive licenses. some courses have full videos of lectures, notes, slides and problem sets, others may have only have syllabi, reading lists and exams. before edx and coursera were the big names in for profit online education we had khan academy and ocw.

[emblematik]

these are unfortunately a little hit and miss when it comes to degree of organization and level of detail, so they all require a little patience and willingness to poke around:

Tau Beta Pi UC Berkeley syllabus archive

UC San Diego syllabus archive

San Jose State University department of english and comparative literature syllabus archive

San Diego State University syllabus archive

University of Colorado Boulder syllabus archive

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill history department syllabus archive

University of North Carolina Greensboro history department syllabus archive

Florida Gulf Coast University course/syllabus archive

University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology department syllabus archive

Pratt Institute school of information syllabus archive

West Virginia University english department syllabus archive

tho tbh it terms of finding pure reading lists i’ve had much better luck just searching “[topic] + phd reading list” have founds lots and lots of juicy juicy reading lists that way. too many to post 😈

[nudityandnerdery]

[christinaroseandrews]

This guy knows what he’s talking about. He’s one of the lead writers for Leverage and if you ever watch the series on DVD, do yourself a favor and listen to him talk about how the scripts got written. Some of the advice he has is stuff I use all the time: 1. Don’t introduce an important plot person or thing after the first half of the story. 2. Always tie up loose ends. 3. Introduce important things in the middle of unimportant things. 4. If you have to infodump, find an emotion to tie it to and it will seem less like infodump and more like a motive rant. Seriously this guy knows how to write.

[writingquestionsanswered]

hey, i wanted to write a story with a nostalgic feeling, early 00s vibes. do you have any tips on how to achieve that?

Portraying a Particular Time Period

To portray any time period, whether it's the early 2000s, the 1920s, the Victorian Era, Medieval Times, or the Stone Age, the only way you can do that is by doing research to learn about the time period.

1 - General Overview - It's helpful to start with a general overview of the time period by doing a general search. You can go to Google and just type in the time period or you can add phrases like "life during," "overview," or "history of the." Although you should never use Wikipedia as your primary source, it can serve as a good overview of any topic, which you can then research more specifically at other sources.

2 - Getting the General Feeling Right - One of the tricks to portraying any time period is to get a feel for the general feeling of that time period. The vibe... the ambience... the atmosphere... whatever you want to call it. To do that, I would suggest four areas of research:

-- Watch some documentaries - YouTube is FILLED with free and informative documentaries that cover every possible time period. You can also find great documentaries on any streaming channels you might be subscribed to. Not only can documentaries give you a nice overview of the time period you want to portray, it can also help you understand what it was like to actually be in that time.

-- Watch movies/TV shows - If you're able to find some movies or TV shows set in that time period, try watching a few. While movies and TV shows aren't always perfectly historically accurate, most make an effort to get it mostly right. So it can still be a great way to get a feel for what that time was like. You can do a Google search for movies and TV shows set in that time period. If you aren't able to stream any of them, try looking on YouTube for trailers, clips, and fan-videos.

-- Read books, magazines, and web articles - You can almost always find fiction books set in any time period, plus magazine and web articles about every time period. You can find books at the library, but you can often find books that can be downloaded legally for free on Amazon or sites like Project Gutenberg, Bartleby, and Open Library. Magazine and web articles, plus blog posts, can be found via Google.

-- Museum exhibits can be another way to learn about life in a particular time period, especially specific aspects of life like transportation, clothing, and industry. Many museums now have online interactive exhibits, or sometimes you can find exhibit tours on YouTube. So, try doing a Google search for your time period and "museum exhibit" or your time period, a particular aspect you're interested in, and "museum exhibit" to see if anything comes up.

-- BONUS - If you're setting your story in a time period after the 1920s or so, you can look for movies that were made during that time period and are also set in that time period. Once you get into the 1950s, you can find TV shows, too. For example, if you were writing about life in the 1950s, TV shows like I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver would be good choices, as both shows were made in the 1950s and depict life in the 1950s. You can also find compilations of TV commercials for most of the 20th and 21st century decades on YouTube. So, if you had a story set in the early 2000s, watching commercials from that time will help get you in the right frame of mind.

3 - Doing Specific Research - You'll also want to do specific research on a variety of topics, not just general life during that time. You'll want to know about things like clothing, slang, food and beverage, music, architecture, transportation, etiquette and traditions, politics and law, current events, etc. Or at least to the extent that they affect or are portrayed within your story. If your story portrays a logger in the 1880s, you would obviously want to do specific research on logging in the 1880s... and, even more specifically, find that information as it pertains to the location where your story is set.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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Find answers fast on my Master List of Top Posts

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[perpetual-stories]

How to Write a Believable World: A Guide to Worldbuilding

Let’s just get to it!

What Is Worldbuilding?

Worldbuilding is the part of the writing process that sets up where your story takes place

When you build a world, you include the landscape that your characters will inhabit, the tone of your story, its major preoccupations and themes, as well as the nature of its morality

Worldbuilding lays the groundwork for your characters to develop, providing the stage for where your creations will perform.

It’s okay if you can’t answer every question there is about your world, but setting down the basics will help you start writing and building.

What Is the Purpose of Worldbuilding?

The purpose of worldbuilding for writers is to give their story structure and somewhere real to live.

starting point should be to establish the rules and boundaries of your imaginary world and how everything exists within it

8 Tips to Guide Your Worldbuilding Process

Decide where to start. Whether it’s the language spoken by the inhabitants or the apocalyptic landscape, pick the aspect of the world you’re most excited about exploring and start there.

List the rules and laws. The inhabitants who live in this world you’ve created will have their own independent existence. What is their governing system? Who is in charge? Do they use magic in this world? If so, who can use it, and how powerful is it? Setting up boundaries helps create a more realistic world that functions like a real one.

Establish the type of world you want. Pick a genre. Is this a dystopian or fantasy novel (or both)? Does it take place in our Earth or is it an alternate earth? Knowing this will help figure out the tone and mood of your world.

Describe the environment. What’s the weather like? How does it affect the world or planet? Are there natural disasters? Are there extreme temperatures? What natural resources exist in this location? How do people use the land? Establishing the environment and how it impacts the life within it can be a useful detail in the creation of your world.

Define the culture. What do the inhabitants of this universe believe in? Is there religion? Is there a God? Do they have any sacred customs? What do they celebrate? Breathe life into the characters who populate this location by giving them a meaningful existence.

Define the language. How do the inhabitants communicate? Is there a common tongue? Are there any ‘bad words’ that are off-limits? Knowing what can and can not be said in your world can be an apt source for conflict.

Identify the history. What is the history of this place you’ve created? Have there been any world wars? Do the countries within your world have enemies? Are there rival races? Is there a sole antagonist? Providing the backstory for your world can give it an added dimension and make it feel more tangible.8. Use existing works to inspire. Revisit the works of successful authors to get inspiration. Never steal ideas, but review the work of other fiction writers to see how they answer the same worldbuilding questions within their own novel writing.

Use existing works to inspire. Revisit the works of successful authors to get inspiration. Never steal ideas, but review the work of other fiction writers to see how they answer the same worldbuilding questions within their own novel writing.

Somethings to Consider:

Diversity exists everywhere or maybe not

Magic and powers have limit, what are they?

Figure out the technology and it’s availability to the characters and environment

What’s the government system like? Or if there isn’t one — why?

How strict are the rules?

Are people treated equally?

Where do people get their food / water from?

Are there basic commodities: schools, hospitals, etc

Are there jobs? Can anyone work?

What’s transportation like? How isolated is your world?

These are just somethings to consider of course there are many but it’s up to you to decide how detailed you want it!

Please like, follow and reblog if you find these useful!

[antique-symbolism]

Here's a little secret about NaNoWriMo: it isn't 50k or bust.

Take it from someone who's done it for 14 years. We love our 50k, yeah! Nice big, round number, has a good ring to it. It's traditional.

But listen, if 50k is too much for you? If you're finding yourself already wanting to drop out on Day 5 because you realized writing 1,667 words a day is kind of a lot actually? Stop trying to write that much!!

But don't stop writing.

(unless you need/want to do that too, in which case halt! go no further! take your rest!)

Otherwise, just simplify the goal. Or, don't even give yourself a goal if that sounds better. Just write how much you want to write, whenever you want to write it, and enjoy being surrounded by other writers doing the same.

No Wrimo with half an ounce of decency is gonna try to kick you out of the community because you decided not to go for the big 5-0. We're just happy to see you here. Check out the NaNo forums, the writeblr tags, your local in-person events, the discord servers, or just connect with a couple of creative friends and do NaNoWriMo the only way it's meant to be done: with joy for the craft, support for your fellow writers, and most importantly celebration for your work.

Forget 50k. You're just here to write, and the rest of us are here to cheer you on.

[nanowrimo]

5 Videos to “Watch” While Writing

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Wondrium, a 2022 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a video streaming service where you can unleash your curiosity. Today, the folks at Wondrium are here to share some tips on how to keep your mind busy and focused:

Greetings from Wondrium—your friendly, neighborhood educational streaming site. 

We’ve partnered with NaNoWriMo before to help aspiring writers like you find exactly the right writing resources. This time, I’m here to share the best in background noise. 

Some writers require silence. I am not one of them. So, here are five videos available on Wondrium that you can keep on while you write. These videos both offer excellent background noise, don’t require 100% of your full attention, and (BONUS!) may teach you something or inspire you. 

Keep reading

[em-dash-press-deactivated202410]

Game-Changing Sites for Writers

A recent search for a specific type of site to help me build new characters led me down a rabbit hole. Normally, that would make me much less productive, but I have found a treasure trove of websites for writers.

Bring Characters/Places to Life

There are a few different places you can use to create a picture of something entirely new. I love this site for making character pictures as references, instead of stock photos or whatever pops up on Google Images.

thispersondoesnotexist: every time you reload the page, this site generates a headshot of someone who doesn't exist. This is great if you're thinking about a character's personality or age and don't have specifics for their facial features yet.

Night Cafe: this is an AI art generator that takes your text prompt and generates an image for it. I tried it for various scenery, like "forest" or "cottage." It takes a minute for your requested photo to load, but no more than maybe five for the program to finish the picture.

Art Breeder: this website has endless images of people, places, and general things. Users can blend photos to create something new and curious visitors can browse/download those images without creating an account. (But if you do want to make an account to create your own, it's free!)

Find Random Places on Earth

You might prefer to set a story in a real-life environment so you can reference that place's weather, seasons, small-town vibe, or whatever you like. If that's the case, try:

MapCrunch: the homepage generates a new location each day and gives the location/GPS info in the top left of the screen. To see more images from previous days, hit "Gallery" in the top left.

Atlas Obscura: hover over or tap the "Places" tab, then hit "Random Place." A new page will load with a randomly generated location on the planet, provide a Google Maps link, and tell you a little bit about the place.

Random World Cities: this site makes randomly selected lists of global cities. Six appear for each search, although you'll have to look them up to find more information about each place. You can also use the site to have it select countries, US cities or US states too.

Vary Your Wording

Thesauruses are great, but these websites have some pretty cool perspectives on finding just the right words for stories.

Describing Words: tell this website which word you want to stop repeating and it will give you tons of alternative words that mean the same thing. It typically has way more options than other sites I use.

Reverse Dictionary: type what you need a word for in Reverse Dictionary's search box and it will give you tons of words that closely match what you want. It also lists the words in order of relevancy, starting with a word that most accurately describes what you typed. (There's also an option to get definitions for search results!)

Tip of My Tongue: this website is phenomenal. It lets you search for that word you can't quite place by a letter in it, the definition, what it sounds like, or even its scrambled letters. A long list of potential options will appear on the right side of the screen for every search.

---

Hope this helps when you need a hand during next writing session 💛

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

[beaft]

it sounds ridiculously obvious now, but one of the best pieces of writing advice i've ever received is that most of the time, a character's flaws are also their strengths. a smart person might have trouble admitting they're wrong, or break down when they don't know how to solve something; a practical, capable person might lack emotional intelligence. a determined person might be so focused on their goals that they neglect their friends and ignore anything "superfluous" (i.e. they don't notice minor details that turn out to be important later on). kindness can become naivety; open-mindedness can become centrism; confidence can become arrogance. sometimes it's tempting to just reach into a grab bag of positive and negative traits and sprinkle them in at random, but it's much better to instead isolate the things you like about your character and take those traits to the logical extreme.

[nanowrimo]

“In fiction, setting can be an under-utilized tool. It should be as important as the characters and you can use it to engage your reader, reveal characterization, and much more. How does your character interact with the world around them? How does the setting interact with the characters? What are the emotions evoked in your character by the space? Make sure to think about these questions to bring both your characters and their surroundings to life.“

—Lisa Stringfellow writes middle grade fiction and has a not-so-secret fondness for fantasy with a dark twist. Her debut fantasy A Comb of Wishes was published on February 8, 2022 by HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books and was named an ABA Indie Introduce and an Indie Next Kids’ title. The book has received starred reviews and is included on 2022 summer reading lists by The Horn Book and the TODAY show’s Read With Jenna Jr. Lisa’s work often reflects her West Indian and Black southern heritage. She is a middle school teacher and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her children and two bossy cats.

What kind of sensory details do you usually add to your story settings? Let Lisa know, or thank her for her Camp Care Package!

[bambicest]

What’s writing, you know? What does writing actually mean?

[fixyourwritinghabits]

I recently finished a short story I want to edit, but this is what always gets me: it feels too big. There's things I want to add, but they're so vague and nebulous. There's things I want the story to do, but I don't know how. There's things I want it to be, and I have no idea where to start. There's just too much. I've been writing for more than 20 years and it's always like this with editing.

I wish I could say editing gets easier every time you do it, but... uh, that is not my experience. My best advice for editing is to use the Chunk It method:

First, focus on the Big Picture items. Does the plot make sense? Can you specifically identify which parts you want to add more to? Can you nail down why? Is the point of your story clear? Maybe there's an emotion or a relationship you need to clarify, but it's hard to see unless you specifically look for it.

Next, Step It Out. Identify the Beginning, Middle, and End of your story. What are the important plot points in between? Where's the first and second turn? For a short story, you may not have many steps, but being able to identify them may help you stop getting lost in the woods.

Third, get down to the nitty gritty but only if you've figured out why needs fixing first. What can you do to fix these problems? Go back to the plotting board, switch some ideas out to see if they work better. Explain your plot to a third party - even a rubber ducky would help.

Word choice and sentence structure should always be last - you don't want to waste an hour on a paragraph you will delete down the road. Believe me, a glaring typo or bad wording may haunt you until you have to change it, but don't get bogged down in grammar fixes until you're satisfied with everything else.