Author adjacent

Avery (she/her), 25, Black author & sorta poet. Read my book “What’s the Deal With D8ing?”

[averyauthorship]

It’s official. I published a book. If you’re interested, go buy it! :)))) Available in paperback and kindle!

Amazon.com

How do you know this book is for you? Do you like romance? And/or D&D? And/or asexual representation? If you answered yes to any of these questions… please read my book lol

[iamafkrn]

hey out of curiosity how do you pick a character's ethnicity? Bc lowkey sometimes my choices are pretty arbitrary. Like if I find a name I really like first, I look for the origins of the name, pick a last name like suits the region/country/language the first name is from and just go off of that. Or this one character's vibe really fit this one Korean singer's album, so I made him Korean as like a tribute to that artist. If I have an appearance in mind for them, I could go off of that too. I of course do as much research as possible to make sure that the general values of the character's cultures match up with their values as a character, but that oftentimes really difficult to reverse-engineer. So I'm curious how other people do it!

[averyauthorship]

So far, most of the main protagonists I’ve invented have been biracial. Specifically, something mixed with black. I only bring this specific tendency of mine up because I’ve found that I’m drawn to writing main characters who share some of my most important worldly experiences. Which involves being biracial and black. I never set out to do that. It just kind of happens. I develop these character details, and one day, I realize that they’re biracial and black and I go, “Okay, neat.”

For the characters who exist outside of that rule, it’s not really a choice.. I don’t know how to describe it, but I feel like my characters always end up telling me who they are. For my character Link Martinez, for example. At first, all I had about him was the name/nickname Link, he was a bigger guy, he was a big brother, and he ran his own small business that he’d started with his father. Him being Latino was just a product of how he developed overtime over the course of me getting to know him.

So I guess a more concrete answer is that I don’t think you should ever start developing a character solely based on their ethnicity. Obviously if the setting requires a specific ethnicity/race, there you go. But even then, develop the character fully because it’s really easy to accidentally reduce people to stereotypes/perceived cultural attributes based in personal bias. And other than that, I truly believe that characters tell you who they are when you’re creating them! (So I guess I’m saying that it’s okay to be a bit arbitrary. Maybe even better in some cases, so that you don’t end up accidentally creating a character to be an ethnicity, as opposed to a character who happens to be part of an ethnic group.)

(Also, if you want diverse characters but don’t feel comfortable describing their races and ethnicities, it’s always better to do research and try. Because it’s so annoying to read about characters who are aracial but obviously supposed to be a specific race, and everyone in the fandom just imagines them as white…)

[shellyscribbles]

So, now that I cut out the extra POVs and plot lines that were clogging up the story, I see that I made a massive error in the pacing.

There was one point where I thought I was getting too bogged down in the day to day, so I did a time jump, but there is a massively emotional scene not long after the time jump (which, if I am being honest, was where I was trying to get when I did the time jump) and it just comes so far out of left field because of all the story I didn't write.

So, I am a little bummed that this revision is going to require a lot of added material that will take time to plot and write. I was hoping it would be faster, but I get to write sweet little scenes with Zuriel and Aila together and I love writing those.

I don't know what I was thinking. There is obviously a bunch of stuff missing that was necessary to the story. Like, I skipped the shift in their relationship. I skipped the bad guy's scheming. They're just suddenly in love and under attack and I don't know why I thought that would work.

I put into like five paragraphs story that should have probably been twenty pages minimum.

Now I have to go back and write out those pages.

[averyauthorship]

It happens to the best of us! I kept doing this sort of thing so I just started writing out of order so I wouldn’t feel stuck and then inclined to skip important story beats. Writing a cohesive, long story is sooooo hard! Be kind to your process and good luck with the story/rewrites <3

[averyauthorship]

If you can touch type, I highly recommend just looking away from your keyboard and screen while you're writing and just... staring into the void. While typing. Just disengage from your body. The amount of times I've been stuck on a scene until I stare upwards into the white nothing of my own blank mind, and I am hit with absolute clarity of mind and unbroken creativity... It's magic. Try it if you can. 10/10

[writingdose]

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

the only thing AI checker does is harm genuine artists and people in general too.

[sourdough-seal]

i know so so so so so many words. until it’s time to think of a title for the story. then I know 2 and a half

[ladyignatius4]

there is no humbling experience quite like reading your own dialogue out loud to see if it flows properly and realising you have apparently never once heard a human being have a conversation

[writersisland]

i need all the ai “beta reader” bots in my replies to have their data center exploded

[averyauthorship]

I don't think anyone will ever understand the deep, violent anger that I have over the fact that AI coopted em dashes. Those funky little guys have been my thing since I was a journalism student and my editor had to limit me to two em dash uses per story because I used them everywhere (when it made grammatical sense, of course).

Who do I have to fight? Let me at em'

[lux-scriptum]

No, you see, I wish to be an author. Not in marketing. Or an influencer. I wish to tell my stories, be told I did a fantastic job, and then go back to my hovel to scribble some more. I am delicate of constitution and awkward in crowds.

[averyauthorship]

"I think I need a second book WIP to get me through my current book WIP" -Every delusional author ever

[animentality]

[averyauthorship]

Does anyone else make playlists for their writing projects? For the book I published, and the one I'm working on, I made some Spotify playlists to get me in the headspace of my characters and develop the vibes. If you're curious, here they are!

If you do this too, I'd love to listen to your playlists :)

[averyauthorship]

The Top 5 Things That I Like to Write About

No one tagged me in this, but I saw it circulating and I wanted to contribute. I honestly think about this a lot, and I wanted to synthetize it for myself, more than anything.

Siblings. I have a very close relationship with my sister. We have endured serious hardship together, and I always find myself drawn to writing about siblings and sibling relationships. My book, What's the Deal With D8ing? has a very prevalent sibling relationship in it, as does the book I'm currently working on (title pending). It's just something I'm drawn to, informed by my real life.

Asexuality. From fanfiction, to my original writing, I'm always interested in writing about this. It's probably because I, myself, am asexual. I tend to put my main characters on the asexuality spectrum, and I often headcanon characters that way too. (We need more good representation, after all.)

Anxiety. In a disordered way, I mean. I'm getting real in this list, but I have an anxiety disorder, and I like writing those experiences into my stuff.

Multiculturalism. As a child of an interracial marriage, my multicultural identity is very important to me. All of my stories end up having some sort of focus on multiculturism/biracial identity. In both of my books, the main characters are biracial. I don't think I will ever write a main character who isn't multicultural. It's just so important to me to have characters like that in my works.

If someone has to do it, I guess it will be me. There's something I love about a reluctant protagonist. Someone who would never think of themselves as a main character. Someone who doesn't think that they are supposed to be at the center of the narrative. Born to be an NPC, forced to be a hero sort of thing. But they realize that no one else is going to step up, so they have to do it. I love it.

If any writer sees this and wants to join in, go ahead. I'm curious to know what else people like to write for themselves and why. Every author has a fascinating internal ecosystem!

[kjscottwrites]

[X] <- psst click this

[averyauthorship]

I love Tumblr and all, but I think it's time to make myself a real website for my whole author thing. I'll still post here, of course, but why not use my big girl adult money to pay for a domain and a website to promote my writing?

[sentientsky]

repeating this to myself forever and ever