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It’s important to remember in writing that you don’t always need Tolkien levels of detail and lore in order to create your settings and worlds. I’m a big fan of something I call ‘this but that’.

E.g.

- Vikings but with dragons (How to Train Your Dragon)

- Hamlet but with lions (Lion King)

Bringing a story down to simple levels can sometimes really help in nailing what your world is, and can focus your thoughts a lot more while still leaving it open enough for you to change things.

If you’re struggling to find elements that fit like the ones above, doing ‘this but that’ also leaves a lot of room to do things like:

- Avatar the Last Airbender but in space

- Gravity Falls but underwater

And doing this means you can say, ‘ok, so I have manipulating the four elements in my story and it’s kinda like ATLA but it’s in space’ and then from this you can pick and chose what details from ATLA you want and adapt what you need to make this fit in you space setting and, eventually, your own thing.

scribblesandfeathers

You know how in comics readers are able to fill in a lot of the movement in their heads, things like head tilting, the arm lifting from being by the character’s side to pointing, that kinda thing?

This applies to writing too. Readers, especially with emotive dialogue, are able to imagine what the character is doing with their body. Yes, you need to establish things like throwing arms up in the air, or marching across the room, but don’t get bogged down in describing every little thing a character does. This will only slow down the dialogue/scene and grow tiresome to read.

battlestar-royco

here have 10 pieces of writing advice that have stuck with me over the years

every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person

even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday

exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them

if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love

make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you

if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders

don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts

i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less

sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer

a story written in chronological order takes a lot more discipline and is usually easier to understand than a story written with flashbacks

thatwritergirlsblog

Killing off characters: the shoulds and shouldn’ts

1. Why you should

The death is a major plot point

It reveals some shocking plot twist

It supports your themes/what you’re trying to say with your book

Your novel explores the afterlife

You are George R.R Martin and the selling point of your work is that everybody dies

It suits the genre/mood of your novel

2. Why you shouldn’t

The character isn’t serving any purpose (this isn’t the Sims)

You want your readers to be shocked for the sake of being shocked

You want to be edgy

You think your MG story needs more gore

You want to romanticise grieving/loss

3. How you should

This really depends on your genre and target audience

If you’re writing something that isn’t intended to be graphic/traumatic, you can stick to the impact the death has on the other characters. If your novel explores illness, focus on that rather than on the disturbing death scene itself. Perhaps you’re writing a drama/tragic romance - you might want to ease up on the gore here. For these genres, I would suggest focusing on the emotional aspect of the death - the sobbing, the last words, the bright white lights (whatever floats your boat). Think of Mufasa in The Lion King - the actions are suspenseful, but we don’t see him being trampled with his guts spilling everywhere. But it’s still one of the most impactful deaths in fictional history.

If you’re writing in a more mature and gritty genre (like thriller, dark fantasy or crime), you can go all out. If there’s blood and guts, you readers probably want to see it in vivid detail to get their violence fix for the day.

Whichever genre your novel falls into, you should also go with what feels comfortable to you. Even if you’re writing adult dark fantasy, you don’t have to write graphic violence to make a character death impactful.

4. How you shouldn’t

Please don’t let your character have a three-pages-long monologue after they’ve been stabbed in the throat. It’s not realistic and it’s often very boring. Yes, a few well-written last words can have a great impact. Just make sure that your character would realistically be able to speak at that point and that it doesn’t become a cheese fest.

Unless you’re aiming for very dark/nihilistic humour, afford your characters some dignity in the way they kick the bucket. (e.g. don’t use the phrase “kick the bucket”). Having someone slip on a banana peel and then choke on a pretzel is a little ridiculous and will make the entire story seem silly. Once again, this really depends on what you’re going for. If your genre is serious and your character is important and beloved, try for emotion rather than whimsy.

Don’t let your characters die only to be resurrected again and again and again. Look, I love Supernatural (long may they reign), but even I have to admit that the Winchester brothers’ luck with death has become a bit ridiculous. Doing this takes away from the impact of the death - it removes the fear and suspense, and will leave your readers emotionally stunted.

5. Who you shouldn’t

Your only female character in a bid to make the male hero feel something and become a better person

Your only LGBTQIA+ character, who is just too pure to live in this terrible world

Your only character of colour, who dies to save the white hero

Your only disabled character, who can now finally find release from life with disability

The one character who has never experienced a sliver of joy and bears the brunt of the tragedy, right when happiness is finally within their reach

The main character in the middle of the story - unless you have a REALLY good plan for what happens next

Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment with your own thoughts on killing off characters. Follow me for similar content.

scribblesandfeathers

Adding small moments of existence to your writing

What I’m talking about is proof of life outside your characters in your world. Not in the sense of ‘talking to the cashier at the checkout’, but things like:

Graffiti etched into a desk your character sits in during an exam

Realising that someone has come along and arranged the cans on the shelf so the labels say something stupid

Dirty vans that have ‘wash me’ written in the dried mud

A coin that has been stuck into a piece of gum on a handrail

Little things that show the world still goes on despite whatever is happening to the characters.

This helps make the world a world, not just a setting. There are other people with other lives doing stupid, funny, dangerous, things that in no way impact the protagonist. You don’t have to dwell on them, they can only be mentioned briefly in passing during the set up of a scene, but it will help create life within the background of the story and give the characters a chance to briefly think about something other than themselves/their situation.

mlwangbooks

The best writing teacher I ever had wasn’t the one who taught me grammar and spelling. He wasn’t the one who taught me outlining and paragraph structure, nor was he the one who taught me about themes, motifs, and symbolism.

He said, “Wiggle your pencil.

Put the tip of your pencil to the paper and keep the eraser end wiggling.

If you have nothing to write, write that: I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, and eventually, by force of boredom, something else will come out.”

We would take 30 - 45 minutes every day to ‘wiggle our pencils’ in our wide-ruled notebooks, during which time, he was silent except to remind anyone who stopped to keep that pencil moving.

I finished not one but two novel-length stories that year. It was fifth grade.

Wiggle your pencil.

brynwrites

Making your angst hurt: the power of lighthearted scenes.

I’m incredibly disappointed with the trend in stories (especially ‘edgy’ YA novels) to bombard the reader with traumatic situations, angry characters, and relationship drama without ever first giving them a reason to root for a better future. As a reader…

I might care that the main siblings are fighting if they had first been shown to have at least one happy, healthy conversation.

I might cry and rage with the protagonist if I knew they actually had the capacity to laugh and smile and be happy.

I might be hit by heavy and dark situations if there was some notion that it was possible for this world to have light and hope and joy to begin with.

Writers seem to forget that their reader’s eyes adjust to the dark. If you want to give your reader a truly bleak situation in a continually dim setting, you have to put them in pitch blackness. But if you just shine a light first, the sudden change makes the contrast appear substantial.

Show your readers what light means to your character before taking it away. Let the reader bond with the characters in their happy moments before (and in between) tearing them apart. Give readers a future to root for by putting sparks of that future into the past and the present. Make your character’s tears and anger mean something.

Not only will this give your dark and emotional scenes more impact, but it says something that we as humans desperately, desperately need to hear.

Books with light amidst the darkness tell us that while things are hard and hurt, that we’re still allowed to breathe and hope and live and even laugh within the darkness.

We as humans need to hear this more often, because acting it out is the only way we stop from suffocating long enough to make a difference.

So write angst, and darkness, and gritty, painful stories, full of treacherous morally grey characters if you want to. But don’t forget to turn the light on occasionally.

Support Bryn’s ability to provide writing advice by reading their debut novel, an upbeat fantasy about a bloodthirsty siren fighting to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain!

writtenwolves

tagaston-blog

For any of you who are writing ‘across the pond’-here is a little guide I put together of some common differences between British and American English!

wheeloffortune-design

How to write a novel

I was talking to a girl at ComicCon, the kind of person who has a million creative projects at the same time. As many people do, she has a story she wants to write, with amazing characters she wants to share with the world, but writing is hard and a first novel can be daunting. Here’s what I told her.

Now, this applies to the people who REALLY want to see their story done. These are the main pillars of the cathedral that is your story. Let’s begin.

1- YOUR GOAL IS TO WRITE A COMPLETE FIRST DRAFT. It will be shit. But it will be complete. You can build on it and rewrite, but the most important thing is to WRITE TILL THE END OF THE STORY.

2- SIT DOWN AND WORK. That’s the difference between writers and the million people who say they have a story that they’ll write someday.

Alright, let’s get technical, and start by the end.

3- Art is about causing your public to have emotions. Decide right now what emotion you want to leave your readers with when they close your book. Is it happy, sad, bittersweet, hopeful? Pick one. (This can be changed later if you rewrite and find some other ending, but we are working on the first draft.)

— Maybe you have a nice gimmick, a cool idea for a story, like idk, ‘What if you cloned yourself and that clone took over your life’. This is interesting, but it’s not a story in itself. A story needs emotions. If you don’t pick the emotions you want your reader to feel, your idea is just a gimmick.

4- Now that you have the final emotion, decide your ending in accordance to said emotion. Are characters dying? Is the bad guy defeated? Is everyone splitting up or leaving together as a found family?

Then we go back to the beginning.

5- You probably have a million characters you all want to write. Pick one to be your protagonist. Yes, just one. Multi-characters stories are harder to write and demand experience and time. We want this novel to exist, and not be stuck in limbo forever. Anyway, people tend to always prefer side characters. Who has heard of someone having a protagonist as a fave?? Your side characters will be loved, no worry.

How to find your protagonist: It’s the person who makes decisions and makes the plot advance. Simple as that. Not to be mistaken for the leader of a group.

6- Now that you have your protagonist, you decide what is normal for them. That is your beginning.

7- And then, you break that normality in some horrible way that will prevent your protagonist to come back to it. That is your inciting incident.

Then we write the middle

8- You google Three-Act-Structure and get one of these babies.

(But Talhí, I hear you say, why should I follow this? It’s been overdone, and my story doesn’t follow this, and I have more to write than this… Well, that’s your choice. I’m not the boss of you. I’m just saying that this is a solid model for western storytelling and it’s been proven to work time and time again. You can create outside of this, but again, the main goal here is to get your novel on paper. This is a solid template.)

9- You probably have a general idea of events you want to happen in the story. Place these scenes where you feel they should go on the structure. Like, a confrontation with the main bad guy goes in climax of act three, and the confrontation with the main henchman goes to climax of act two, etc. Be mindful of the rising action and tension: a cute misadventure in the woods would probably go earlier in the story than a fight to the death.

10- Now, a secret: What separates bad writing from good writing? Bad writing is adding a bunch of events in the middle and have the characters go through them like a checklist of scenes. You can often see this in movies. But good writing links the events. Each and every event that happens has to be a result of your character making a decision. Then, an obstacle happens, and your character makes another decision, that leads to your next event/obstacle.

11- Another secret: A character will gain power, money, weapons and allies through the story. In videogames, this is useful to defeat the bad guy. But storytelling is not videogames. Having a superpowerful hero at the end is boring. What we want is keeping the reader in suspense. So you’ll have to take everything from them. Leave them powerless and alone. And then, break their leg. I mean, not literally, although you can do that too, but have them super disadvantaged. And then they can use the personal growth they got in the adventure to prevail. (What is more interesting: a character fleeing from a facility but with weapons and kickass moves, or a character fleeing the same facility without weapons or shoes and with a broken arm? Who do you root for?)

Other tricks

The rest of the crew: I go with what Pixar does for characters: Main character gets three or more characteristics. That’s your Woody. Second tier character gets two characteristics. That’s your Buzz. Third tier characters get one characteristic, like Rex and Mister Potato Head. Keep control of your character tiers and never give too much time to the lower tiers ones, it doesn’t help your story.

Herd your cats: Characters will want to wander in every direction, and you’ll want to follow them. Keep them in groups, and even though you can follow a side character for a scene or two, focus 80 to 90% of your story on your protagonist.

DND is not a novel: I’m pretty sure your campaign is super fun, but you can’t just put it on paper and call it a novel. It needs a narrative arc and serious editing. You can use a campaign as a base, but it needs to be worked as a novel, because you’re changing mediums, and a novel has different requirements.

That’s pretty much what I can remember for now. This should help you with the bones of your novel, and you can add the meat on that. I hope it helps. But honestly, the best advice I can give you is

SIT DOWN AND DO THE THING.

michaelbjorkwrites

5 frustrating workshop rules that made me a better writer

Throughout the 15 workshops I joined in college and grad school, I encountered two types of writing rules.

First, there were the best-practice guidelines we’ve all heard, like “show don’t tell.” And then there were workshop rules, which the professor put in place not because they’re universal, but because they help you grow within the context of the workshop.

My college’s intro writing course had 5 such rules:

No fantasy, supernatural, or sci-fi elements.

No guns.

No characters crying.

No conflict resolution through deus ex machina.

No deaths.

When I first saw the rules, I was baffled. They felt weirdly specific, and a bit unfair. But when our professor, Vinny, explained their purpose (and assured us he only wanted us to follow the rules during this intro workshop, not the others to come), I realized what I could learn from them.

1. No fantasy, supernatural, or sci-fi elements.

Writers need to be able to craft round characters, with clear arcs. While you can hone those skills writing any type of story, it can be more difficult when juggling fantastical elements, because it’s easy to get caught up in the world, or the magic, or the technology, and to make that the focus instead of the characters. So Vinny encouraged us to exclude such elements for the time being, to keep us fully focused on developing strong, dynamic characters.

2. No guns.

Weapons have a place in many stories, but when writers include a gun, they often use it to escalate the plot outside of the realm of personal experience and into what Vinny called “Hollywood experience.” He wanted us to learn how to draw from our own observations and perceptions of life, rather than the unrealistic action, violence, and drama we’d seen in movies, so he made this rule to keep us better grounded in our own experiences.

3. No characters crying.

When trying to depict sadness, writers often default to making characters cry. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, tears are just one way to show grief, and they aren’t always the most subtle or emotionally compelling. That’s why Vinny challenged us to find other ways to convey sadness — through little gestures, strained words, fragile interactions, and more. It was difficult, but opened us up to depicting whole new gradients of grief and pain.

4. No conflict resolution through deus ex machina.

This is the only one of the rules I’d say is generally universal. Meaning “God from the machine,” deus ex machina is a plot device where a character’s seemingly insurmountable problem is abruptly resolved by an outside force, rather than their own efforts. These endings are bad for various reasons, but Vinny discouraged them because he wanted us to understand how important it was for our characters to confront their struggle and its consequences.

5. No deaths.

Death is inherently dramatic and can be used to good effect, but many writers use death as a crutch to create drama and impact. Writers should be able to craft engaging, meaningful stories, even without killing off their characters, so this rule challenged us to find other methods of giving weight to our stories (such as through internal conflict).

How these rules helped me grow as a writer

First things first, I’ll say it again: apart from #4 (deus ex machina), these rules were never meant to be universally applied. Instead, their purpose was to create temporary barriers and challenges to help us develop key skills and write in new, unfamiliar ways.

For me, the experience was invaluable. I liked the way the rules challenged and stretched my abilities, driving me to write stories I’d have never otherwise attempted. They made me more flexible as a writer, and while I don’t follow the rules anymore (I LOVE me some fantasy), I’ll always be thankful for how they shaped my writing.

My recommendation to you?

Give some of these rules a shot! Follow them temporarily while writing 2-4 short stories — but remember to always keep their purpose in mind, because the rules themselves will only help if you understand what they’re trying to achieve.

Write with purpose, and you’ll always be growing.

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For more tips on how to craft meaning, build character-driven plots, and grow as a writer, follow my blog.