cheap-tips

main at cheap-pins this is a bunch of stuff

[bookishdiplodocus]

How I turned an idea into an outline

[yumingyes]

With NaNoWriMo around the corner, I thought I might show you how I plotted my novel.

This is the story structure I used:

0% inciting incident

0%-20% introduction in the world, ends with a point of no return

20% first plot point: the hero receives his marching orders

20%-50% response to the first plot point

35% first pinch point: reminder of the nature of the antagonistic force

50% midpoint: big fat plot twist that changes the hero’s AND reader’s experience

50%-80% attack: the stakes are higher now

65% second pinch point: again reminding the reader of the antagonistic forces at hand

80% second plot point: the final injection of new information into the story to give the hero everything she needs to become the primary catalyst in the story’s conclusion (no new information past this point)

80%-100% resolution + final conflict + return home

I didn’t make this up. I think it’s by Larry Brooks, if The Internet informs me correctly. Fun Fact: once you pay attention to it, you’ll see this structure everywhere. Just take a look at any Harry Potter book, for example.

These points are the “bones” of my story. Next, I decided what “flesh” to put on them.

I simply made a list of things I like to read about:

Books about books and libraries

Magic

Quirky characters

Intelligent, fast-paced and sometimes silly

So, I combined this list and the structure points into a story that makes sense. Because I don’t want to spoil my plot / I am still to shy about my wip, I will make up a new plot for this post, so I can show you.

0%: The hero does something magical without knowing how she did it. She discards it, because everybody knows it can’t have been real.

0%-20%: We see the daily life of the hero: she is unhappy because all she wants to do is read, but she is not allowed to. She reads in the dead of night and is punished for it by her evil stepcousin. She finds a book on magic.

20% It all clicks together: she can do magic!

20%-50% The daily life for the hero changes. Instead of reading all night, she practices magic. She now loves books even more. She has little victories over her evil stepcousin, but hasn’t won yet.

35% The evil stepcousin finds out that she can do magic and takes away the magic book.

50% She discovers she can do magic without the book.

50%-80% The hero is not the only one who is bullied by the evil stepcousin. Her younger cousin is a victim as well, and he doesn’t have magic to defend himself. The stakes are raised, this is bigger than herself now. The younger cousin also wants to read, so they have several bonding moments over reading.

65% The evil stepcousin hurts the younger cousin, he’s in a coma now.

80% The hero discovers the evil stepcousin could do all these evil things because he knows magic too.

80%-100% The hero confronts the evil stepcousin, fights him off, nearly loses but wins in the end. He gives up and releases his power over the younger cousin who wakes up from the coma.

It’s not the most genius plot ever, but I literally made this up in minutes. So can you! And imagine the genius plot you can come up with if you spend more than a few minutes on it.

Then I calculated how many scenes I need in which part of the story. My wip is a YA or 12+ book, so I want it to contain about 75,000 words in total. I want my scenes to be around 1,000 words long to keep it snappy, so I need 75 scenes.

Scene number 1 (0%) is the inciting incident, scene number 15 (20%) is the first plot point, scene number 26 (35%) is the first pinch point, scene number 37 (50%) is the midpoint, scene number 49 (65%) is the second pinch point, scene number 60 (80%) is the second plot point and scene 75 (100%) is the last scene.

Some sidenotes on the 1,000-word scenes:

That’s more of a vague rule of thumb than a strict rule. If your scene needs to be longer or shorter, make it longer or shorter of course. My wip has some 2,300-word scenes as well.

Having 1,000-word scenes does not mean I have 1,000-word chapters, that would be really short. I will divide my novel into chapters after I’m finished writing my first draft.

For NaNoWriMo, maybe you could write scenes of 1,667 words, so you do one scene per day. A 50,000-word novel has 30 scenes of 1,667 words. Inciting incident is at scene 1, first plot point at scene 6, first pinch point at scene 11, midpoint at scene 15, second pinch point at scene 20, second plot point at scene 24 and scene 30 is your last scene. That’s just an idea, you got to see what works for you.

Then I made up in one sentence what will happen in every scene. For example: “They meet the dragon and he sends them on a sidequest.” Now my outline consists of 75 one-sentence scenes. This way, I prevent the problem of the sagging middle and other pacing problems and I still get to surprise myself when writing.

From those one-sentence scenes, I flesh out every scene into a first draft, using the process I described in my post How I never have to face an empty page when I write.

And that’s my first draft! I hope everything is clear. Feel free to ask me questions if it isn’t.

I’m gonna tag a few people I admire, who I hope are interested. If you aren’t, feel free to ignore me, or message me to take you off my tag list. If you would like to be added to my writing advice tag list, let me know.

Keep reading

[writing-questions-answered]

Describing Fictional Accents

rjgames asked:

Hello, I see you already have a post on writing accents, my question though: Is there any other way to write accents without saying from where it comes from (i.e. french)? My story takes place in a fictional setting where Earth does not exist and I’m having a difficult time with this. Also, I would not like to rely on misspelling a lot, or is that the only way? Thank you!

When you can’t say where an accent comes from, your best bet is to give the reader a basic idea of how it sounds. Obviously, there is no way to write a description that everyone will interpret the same way, and that’s true even if you’re describing the sound of a real world accent. A really great formula for describing fictional accents is this: sound or flow descriptor + dialect descriptor + origin location + regional reference + pronunciation description Example: He spoke with the lyrical brogue of the Tonterosi highlands–trilled Rs, clipped consonants, and a lilt at the end of every sentence. - He spoke with the lyrical (sound or flow descriptor) brogue (dialect descriptor) of the Tonerosi (origin location) highlands (regional reference)–trilled Rs, clipped consonants, and a lilt at the end of every sentence (pronunciation description.) You don’t have to do it in that order, and you can do a little mixing and matching. Whatever sounds best. And, even though no two readers will interpret that the same way, you’re still giving them something to imagine when they imagine this character’s accent. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they imagine your character with an accent that sounds English, or French, or Spanish, or none of the above. What matters is that they imagine an accent. Here are some words you can use in your descriptions: Sound Descriptors

Soulful Dulcet Golden Sweet Honeyed Flowery Silvery Syrupy Mellow Broad Flat Deep Sharp Thick Heavy Crisp Round Hard Jagged Throaty Nasal Guttural Husky Breathy Smoky Raspy Chirpy Rich Discordant Sonorous Flow Descriptors

Lyrical Melodic Songlike Musical Mellifluous Rhythmic Staccato Rolling Flowing Rhythmic Dialect Descriptors Burr Lilt Drawl Brogue Slur Twang Lisp Regional References Highlands Midlands Lowlands Country High Country Low Country Back Country North Country South Country East Country West Country Backwoods Coastal Northern Southern Eastern Western Midwestern Badlands Riverlands Grasslands Hinterlands Marshlands Wetlands Boglands Woodlands Moorlands Bushlands Shrublands Mountains Jungle Desert Plains Valley Basin Swamp Prairie Foothills Forest Savanna Tundra Plateau Steppe Inland Pronunciation Description

Clipped Stilted Cut Hissed Trilled Tapped Shortened Drawn out Drawled Elongated Dropped Tense Lax Rounded Raised Shifted Glottal stop Loose Tight

Other Sound Words

Cadence Rhythm Tempo Lilt Timbre Harmony Meter Beat Intonation Inflection ——————————————————————— Have a writing question? I’d love to hear from you! Please be sure to read my ask rules and master list first or your question may go unanswered. :)  

[syua]

literally most things that people write off as just ‘textures’ to use in graphics are stolen & unsourced material created by artists or photographers NOT meant to be used as elements in projects without royalty payments. you can say ‘it’s just random tumblr posts they don’t care’ but you wouldn’t want someone to take your work and edit into their work so they can be praised for their beautiful style and creativity even if they just post it on social media w/o profit, would you?? so maybe if you browse pinterest or google images for pictures without finding the original source, you’re using images that you’re not allowed to use without realizing it.

you see it on here a lot especially in (i won’t link anything but i’m sure you know what i mean) those album track ‘aesthetics’ posts, au ‘aesthetic’ posts (you see these less in kpop, but where people use non-royalty free images to kinda craft a visual au), and even just rather typical graphics that have a lot of ‘texture’ elements. and texture packs too!! that’s often where the problem starts; people just collect images (often literal art), compile them in a folder w/o sources, then insist no one can repost those images w/o crediting the person who compiled them. what???

SO may i suggest some of my fave places you can get FREE, ROYALTY-FREE elements that are totally legal to use

creativemarket has 6 free high-quality resources (textures, brushes, fonts, etc), different every week! wow awesome i check it every week

search ‘freebie’ on behance. awesome stuff!!! lots of v nice templates textures and fonts

mockup zone freebies

unsplash: tons of very nice free photographs, not shitty stock photos

pexels: same idea. + they have an adobe plugin so you can get photos without closing your editor damn nice

pixelsquid is a super cool free program (again w a ps plugin that i love) with lottts of super cool hq 3d elements!

as to not make this too long: spoongraphics, lostandtaken (textures galore), pixeden, freebiesbug.

[holyshitartrefs]

I’m gonna add a few more:

Morguefile is my favorite free stock photo site

Texturemate is full of excellent free textures, brushes, and patterns. 

Transparent Textures actually lets you combine colors and patterns to build your own texture right there in the browser.

[wordsnstuff]

Resources For Fantasy & Mythology Writers

Designing A World

City and Town Name Generator

How To Create a Believable World

Fantasy Religion Design Guide

Fantasy Map-maker

The Language Construction Kit

Fantasy Name Generator

The Pagan Name Generator

Writing Fantasy: Tools & Techniques

Fractal World Generator

Creating a Magic System

The Middle Ages

A Large List Of Articles On The Middle Ages

Middle Ages Weapons

Medieval Clothing

Medieval Clothing Pages

Medieval Name Archive

The Domesday Book

European Nobility Titles

Mythology

General Folklore

Various Folktales

Heroes

Weather Folklore

Trees in Mythology

Animals in Mythology

Birds in Mythology

Flowers in Mythology

Fruit in Mythology

Plants in Mythology

Folktales from Around the World

Egyptian Mythology

African Mythology

More African Mythology

Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

The Gods of Africa

Even More African Mythology

West African Mythology

All About African Mythology

African Mythical Creatures

Gods and Goddesses

Aztec Mythology

Haitian Mythology

Inca Mythology

Maya Mythology

Native American Mythology

More Inca Mythology

More Native American Mythology

South American Mythical Creatures

North American Mythical Creatures

Aztec Gods and Goddesses

Chinese Mythology

Hindu Mythology

Japanese Mythology

Korean Mythology

More Japanese Mythology

Chinese and Japanese Mythical Creatures

Indian Mythical Creatures

Chinese Gods and Goddesses

Hindu Gods and Goddesses

Korean Gods and Goddesses

Basque Mythology

Celtic Mythology

Etruscan Mythology

Greek Mythology

Latvian Mythology

Norse Mythology

Roman Mythology

Arthurian Legends

Bestiary

Celtic Gods and Goddesses

Gods and Goddesses of the Celtic Lands

Finnish Mythology

Celtic Mythical Creatures

Gods and Goddesses

Islamic Mythology

Judaic Mythology

Mesopotamian Mythology

Persian Mythology

Middle Eastern Mythical Creatures

Aboriginal Mythology

Polynesian Mythology

More Polynesian Mythology

Mythology of the Polynesian Islands

Melanesian Mythology

Massive Polynesian Mythology Post

Maori Mythical Creatures

Hawaiian Gods and Goddesses

Hawaiian Goddesses

Gods and Goddesses

List of Gods

Encyclopedia Mythica

Mythical Creatures & Beasts

Questions To Ask When Worldbuilding

The World

Physical and Historical Features

Magic and Magicians

Peoples and Customs

Social Organization

Commerce, Trade, and Public Life

Daily Life

Basics

Alternate Earth

Not Earth at All

Climate and Geography

Natural Resources

World History

Specific Country(s) History

Rules of Magic

Wizards

Magic and Technology

Miscellaneous Magic Questions

Customs

Eating

Greeting and Meeting

Gestures

Visits

Language

Ethics and Values

Religion and the Gods

Population

Government

Politics

Crime and the Legal System

Foreign Relations

Waging War

Weapons

Business and Industry

Transportation and Communication

Science and Technology

Medicine

Arts and Entertainment

Architecture

Urban Factors

Rural Factors

Fashion and Dress

Manners

Diet

Education

Calendar

Magic

The Hypertext List of Spells

Gemstone Properties

Gemstone Meanings

Crystal Healing

Fairy & Other Spirits

Elven Phrases

[stevviefox]

neat stuff.

[world-building-for-rpgs]

Useful thanks!

[badassunicorn2016]

Writing Tip June 4th

A list of body language phrases.

I’ve included a very comprehensive list, organized by the type of body movement, hand and arm movements, facial expressions etc. In some cases, a phrase fits more than one heading, so it may appear twice. Possible emotions are given after each BL phrase unless the emotion is indicated within the phrase. (They are underlined for emphasis, not due to a hyperlink.)

Note: I’ve included a few body postures and body conditions as they are non-verbal testimony to the character’s physical condition.

Have fun and generate your own ideas.:-)

Eyes, Brows and Forehead

arched a sly brow:  sly, haughty

blinked owlishly:  just waking, focusing, needs glasses

brows bumped together in a scowl:  worried, disapproving, irritated

brows knitted in a frown: worried, disapproval, thoughtful

bug-eyed:  surprised, fear, horror

cocky wink and confident smile:  over confidence, arrogant, good humor, sexy humor

eyes burned with hatred: besides hatred this might suggest maniacal feelings

eyes flashed: fury, defiance, lust, promise, seduction

eyes rolled skyward: disbelief, distrust, humor

forehead puckered:  thoughtful, worried, irritation

frustration crinkled her eyes

gaze dipped to her décolletage: sexual interest, attraction, lust

gimlet-eyed/narrowed eyes: irritation, thoughtful, mean, angry

gleam of deviltry:  humor, conniving, cunning

kept eye contact but her gaze became glazed: pretending interest where there is none/bordom

narrowed to crinkled slits:  angry, distrust

nystagmic eyes missed nothing (constantly shifting eyes):  Shifty

pupils dilated:  interested, attraction to opposite sex, fear

raked her with freezing contempt

slammed his eyes shut:  stunned, furious, pain

squinted in a furtive manner:  fearful, sneaky

stared with cow eyes:  surprised, disbelief, hopeful, lovestruck

subtle wink:  sexy, humor/sharing a joke, sarcasm

unrelenting stare: distrust, demanding, high interest, unyielding

Place To Place, Stationary Or Posture

ambled away:  relaxed, lazy

barged ahead:  rude, hurried

battled his way through the melee:  desperate, anger, alarm

cruised into the diner:  easy-going, feeling dapper, confident

dawdled alongside the road:  lazy, deliberate delay for motives, unhurried, relaxed

dragged his blanket in the dirt:   sadness/depressed, weary

edged closer to him:  sneaky, seeking comfort, seeking protection, seeking an audience

he stood straighter and straightened his tie:  sudden interest, sexual attraction

held his crotch and danced a frantic jig: demonstrates physical condition – he has to pee

hips rolled and undulated:  sexy walk, exaggerating for sex appeal

hovered over them with malice/like a threatening storm: here it’s malice, but one may hover for many reasons.

hunched over to look shorter:  appear inconspicuous, ashamed of actions, ashamed of height

leaped into action feet hammering the marbled floor:  eager, fear, joyous

long-legged strides:  hurried, impatient

lumbered across:  heavy steps of a big man in a hurry

minced her way up to him: timid, sneaky, insecure, dainty or pretense at dainty

paced/prowled the halls:  worried, worried impatience, impatient, diligently seeking pivoted on his heel and took off:  mistaken and changes direction, following orders, hurried, abrupt change of mind, angry retreat

plodded down the road:  unhurried, burdened, reluctant

practiced sensual stroll:  sexy, showing off

rammed her bare foot into her jeans: angry, rushed

rocked back and forth on his heels: thoughtful, impatiently waiting

sagged against the wall:  exhausted, disappointment

sallied forth:  confident, determined

sashayed her cute little fanny:  confident, determined, angered and determined

shrank into the angry crowd:  fear, insecure, seeking to elude

sketched a brief bow and assumed a regal pose: confident, mocking, snooty, arrogant skidded to an abrupt halt: change of heart, fear, surprise, shock

skulked on the edges of the crowd: sneaky, ashamed, timid

slithered through the door:  sneaky, evil, bad intentions

stormed toward her, pulling up short when: anger with a sudden surprise

swaggered into the class room:  over confident, proud, arrogant, conceited

tall erect posture:  confidence, military bearing

toe tapped a staccato rhythm:  impatience, irritation

tottered/staggered unsteadily then keeled over:  drunk, drugged, aged, ill

waltzed across the floor:  happy, blissful, exuberant, conceited, arrogant

Head Movement

cocked his head:  curiosity, smart-alecky, wondering, thoughtful

cocked his head left and rolled his eyes to right corner of the ceiling:  introspection

droop of his head: depressed, downcast, hiding true feelings

nodded vigorously: eager

tilted her head to one side while listening:  extreme interest, possibly sexual interest

Mouth And Jaw

a lackluster smile:  feigning cheerfulness

cigarette hung immobile in mouth: shock, lazy, uncaring, relaxed casualness

clinched his jaw at the sight:  angered, worried, surprised

curled her lips with icy contempt

expelled her breath in a whose:  relief, disappointment

gagged at the smell: disgust, distaste

gapped mouth stare:  surprised, shock, disbelief

gritted his teeth:  anger, irritation, holding back opinion

inhaled a sharp breath:  surprise, shock, fear, horror

licked her lips:  nervous, sexual attraction

lips primed: affronted, upset, insulted

lips pursed for a juicy kiss

lips pursed like she’d been chewing a lemon rind: dislike, angry, irritated, sarcasm

lips screwed into: irritation, anger, grimace, scorn

lips set in a grim line: sorrow, worried, fear of the worst

pursed her lips:  perturbed, waiting for a kiss

scarfed down the last biscuit:  physical hunger, greed

slack-mouthed:  total shock, disbelief

slow and sexy smile:  attraction, seductive, coy

smacked his lips: anticipation

smile congealed then melted into horror

smile dangled on the corner of his lips: cocky, sexy

smirked and tossed her hair over her shoulder:  conceit, sarcasm, over confident

sneered and flicked lint off his suit: sarcasm, conceit

spewed water and spit: shock

stuck out her tongue: humor, sarcasm, teasing, childish

toothy smile:  eagerness, hopeful

wary smile surfaced on her lips

Nose

nose wrinkled in distaste/at the aroma

nostrils flared:  anger, sexual attraction

nose in the air:  snooty, haughty

Face in General

crimson with fury

handed it over shame-faced

jutted his chin: confident, anger, forceful

managed a deadpan expression:  expressionless

muscles in her face tightened:  unsmiling, concealing emotions, anger, worried

rested his chin in his palm and looked thoughtful

rubbed a hand over his dark stubble:  thoughtful, ashamed of his appearance

screwed up her face:  anger, smiling, ready to cry, could almost be any emotion

sneered and flicked lint off his suit: conceit, derision, scorn

Arm and Hand

a vicious yank

arm curled around her waist, tugging her next to him:  possessive, pride, protective

bit her lip and glanced away:  shy, ashamed, insecure

brandished his fist:  anger, threatening, ready to fight, confident, show of pride

clamped his fingers into tender flesh:  anger, protective, wants to inflict pain

clenched his dirty little fists: stubborn, angry

clapped her hands on her hips, arms crooked like sugar bowel handles:  anger, demanding, disbelief

constantly twirled her hair and tucked it behind her ear:  attracted to the opposite sex, shy crossed his arms over his chest: waiting, impatient, putting a barrier

crushed the paper in his fist:  anger, surrender, discard

dived into the food: hunger, eager, greedy

doffed his hat:  polite gesture, mocking, teasing

doodled on the phone pad and tapped the air with her foot:  bored, inattention, introspection

drummed her fingers on the desk:  impatient, frustrated, bored

fanned her heated face with her hands: physically hot, embarrassed, indicating attraction

fiddled with his keys: nervous, bored

firm, palm to palm hand shake:  confident, honest

flipped him the bird: sarcastic discard

forked his fingers through his hair for the third time:  disquiet/consternation, worry, thoughtful

handed it over shame-faced:  guilt, shame

held his crotch and danced a frantic jig:  physical need to relieve himself

limp hand shake:  lack of confidence, lack of enthusiasm

propped his elbow on his knee: relaxed, thoughtful

punched her pillow:  restless, can’t sleep, angry

rested his chin in his palm:  thoughful, worried

scratched his hairy belly and yawned:  indolent, bored, lazy, relaxed, just waking

shoulders lifted in a shrug:  doubtful, careless discard

slapped his face in front of God and country:  enraged, affronted/insulted

snapped a sharp salute:  respect, sarcastic gesture meaning the opposite of respect

snapped his fingers, expecting service:  arrogant, lack of respect, self-centered

sneered and flicked lint off his suit

spread her arms wide: welcoming,  joy, love

stabbed at the food: anger, hunger, determined

stood straighter and smoothed his tie:  sudden interest, possible sexual interest

stuffed his hands in his pockets: self-conscious, throwing up a barrier

sweaty handshake:  nervous, fearful

touched his arm several times while explaining:  sign of attraction, flattery, possessive

wide sweep of his arms:  welcoming, all inclusive gesture, horror

Sitting or Rising

collapsed in a stupor:  exhausted, drunk, drugged, disbelief

enthroned himself at the desk:  conceit, pronouncing or taking ownership

exploded out of the chair:  shock, eager, anger, supreme joy

roosted on the porch rail like a cock on a hen house roof:  claiming ownership, conceit, content

sat, squaring an ankle over one knee:  relaxed and open

slouched/wilted in a chair and paid languid attention to:  drowsy, lazy, depressed, disinterest, sad, totally relaxed, disrespectful

squirmed in his chair: ill at ease, nervous, needs the bathroom

Recline

flung himself into the bed: sad, depressed, exhausted, happy

prostrated himself: surrender, desperate, miserable, powerless, obsequious, fawning, flattering

punched her pillow:  can’t sleep, anger, frustrated

threw himself on the floor kicking and screaming: tantrum

Entire body and General

body stiffened at the remark:  offended, anger, alerted

body swayed to music:  dreamy, fond memories, enjoys the music

bounced in the car seat, pointing:  excitement, fear, eager

cowered behind his brother:  fear, shyness, coward, desperate

curled into a ball:  sorrow, fear, sleepy, defensive

heart galloping:  anxiety, joy, eager

held his crotch and danced a frantic jig

humped over his cane, each step shaking and careful: pain, aged

inhaled a deep breath and blew out slowly: buying time to find words/thoughtful, reconciled

quick and jerky like rusty cogs on a wheel:  unsure of actions, self-conscious, tense, edgy

rocked back and forth on his heels:  impatient, cocky, gleeful

manhandled the woman into a corner:  bully, anger

slumped shoulders: defeat, depressed, sad, surrender

stiff-backed:  priggish, haughty, affronted

stood straighter and straightened his tie:  sexual interest, wants to make an impression

stooped and bent: aged, arthritic, in pain

stretched extravagantly and yawned:  tired, bored, unconcerned

sweating uncontrollably: nervous, fear, guilt

tall erect posture:  confidence, military bearing

was panting now at:  afraid, exhausted, out of breath, sexual excitement

-Sharla Rae

[candy-m-s-deactivated20180720]

Reblogging for future everyday use

[just-my-thoughts-here117]

Holy blankets, Batman–

[redhead-who-writes-stuff]

Holy crap, I need this so much, this is AMAZING.

[catsdelightful-deactivated20240]

Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.

Anyway, go check it out. I just wanted to save it and share it because I didn’t know how much I didn’t know!

[misslunarose]

This is an amazing resource, not only for artists, but for writers too! I love this!

[leave-her-a-tome]

(source)

Unsplash -  photography, illustration, and art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

Pexels - stock photos and videos

Stockvault.net - stock photos

freepngimg - icons, pictures and clipart

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Kissclipart and kissPNG - more vectors and clipart (often transparent!)

Getdrawings - simplistic images and drawing tutorials

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without infringing copyright! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own. 

Please add on if you know any more sites for free images <3

[kainablue]

Yup. Almost everything I use is from Unsplash and Pixabay. I mean check out DeeDee51 from Pixabay. This is some of the art they put there

And now look at this

I mean, seriously. How amazing is this! They are literally saying “do as you please, don’t even link it back to me, you are all wonderful and I love you all like my own children” and there is over 800 poses that you could use for reference and aesthetics and shit.

So let’s at least try to be good. It’s not that hard.

[mimzy-writing-online]

Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character

A Multi-Step Guide Written by a Visually Impaired Writer and Blogger

I’m hoping this blog will over time develop its own following, and when it does people will inevitably see my bio and notice what I included: I’m visually impaired.

Yes, a visually impaired writer, and I’ve written with two blind characters before so I have some practice in the field.

So, inevitably, someone is going to ask how to write a blind character.

Or, at least, I hope you’ll ask someone who’s actually blind or visually impaired about writing a blind character before you get too involved with your new WIP.

I started writing this guide two hours ago and it’s gotten away from me. It make it a more manageable read, I’m going to separate it into X many parts, and each part will be linked.

Part One: Crafting the Blind Character

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185123396964/writing-a-blind-or-visually-impaired-character

Part Two: Writing the Blind Character, including narrative choice, visual description, verbal description, social interaction

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185125198184/writing-blind-or-visually-impaired-characters

Part Three: Tropes and Cliches to Avoid

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185124340794/writing-blind-and-visually-impaired-characters

Part Four: What Your Blind Character Needs to Survive and Not Die

Part Five: Small Aspects of being Blind You Never Thought Of

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185134862519/writing-a-blind-of-visually-impaired-character

Part Six: Should You Cure Your Character’s Blindness? (Short Answer: No)

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185125880559/writing-a-blind-or-visually-impaired-character

All parts will be tagged #blindcharacter in my blog, and I will add links to every post as I finish each part. Follow my blog for more writing advice.

[hyba]

I have a WIP about a woman who loses her eyesight after an accident and I’ve only written the scene where she wakes up in a hospital and finds out she can’t see anymore. I’ve put it on hold because I don’t know how to continue it and effectively write a blind character and am currently working on various other projects, but this advice is awesome! 😄 I’m so glad you’ve shared so much information!!

[thewritershandbook]

© (c ) copyright 1990-2011 Rebecca Sinclair

See the original HERE

[mechanicalriddle]

HEY DUDES I MADE THIS FILLABLE go check it out!! i also tweaked the pronouns to make it more inclusive! enjoy~

@thewritershandbook

[thewritershandbook]

Thank you @mechanicalriddle ! Looks Great! :)

[wingsy-keeper-of-songs]

@mechanicalriddle you are the true MVP. Thank you so very much!

[gffa]

Star Wars - Alien Archive: A Guide to the Species of the Galaxy

Deep in the stacks of the Graf Archive, an old traveller’s journal has been discovered and restored for public viewing. A long time ago this unknown traveller documented his stories about the many creatures found in each destination he explored, and includes famous movie locations such as the Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine, Maz’s Castle and the holy city of Jedha. The archivist restored this journal and added facts and stats about the cultures, legends and famous members of over 200 species, including famous characters such as Chewbacca, Ahsoka, Wicket and many more. “Unable to authenticate the author, and therefore the accuracy of the stories within the journal, we have paired some of the content that has not been destroyed by age with data entries from our scientific records.  With details of over two hundred aliens from across galatic history, we are happy to restore this enigmatic journal for public viewing.  –Xoddam Lothipp, Deputy Director, Graf Archive” (aka, it’s an in-universe reference book, so it’s reasonably accurate, but some things may be added for artistic license or not wholly accurate, but from the POV of the “author” of the journal!  Which makes for a fascinating in-universe reference book!)

[zxastrs]

Signs as beautiful greek names (feminine)

Aries: Alexis - defender

Taurus: Phoebe - shining one

Gemini: Helen - bright, shining, torch

Cancer: Mellita - honey

Leo: Erika - work, power, strength

Virgo: Callisto - most beautiful

Libra: Irene - peace

Scorpio: Malaina - black flower

Sagittarius: Elissa - wanderer

Capricorn: Teodora - gift of God

Aquarius: Sofia - wisdom

Pisces: Barbara - foreign, strange

[writingwithcolor]

Hello! I want to write a jewish character and give her a name related, plus give hints of her religion as she is a secondary character. How can I do that without being inaccurate or unintentionally prejudiced?

Jewish character names and showing culture

Names

First of all, while Jewish people can have any names at all (although “Christian” and “Mary” are perhaps less likely and therefore not a great choice when writing fiction! LOL) there are certain names that tend to pop up a lot. I’m only speaking for my American experience but I’ve seen a lot of: Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, and to a lesser extent Naomi; for the boys, David, Noah, Jacob, Josh. One thing you could do is look at the top baby names for whatever year your character was born and pick the most “our half of the bible”-sounding name you see (Old Testament is not our term and I didn’t know if you’d know the word Torah.) So for example if Rebecca was in the top twenty for the year she was born, naming her Becca would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It would also definitely be possible to give her a less assimilated name (incidentally, Rivka is the original Hebrew version of that name) like Yael or Galit or Ronit or Dvora if you want.

Showing Jewish Heritage (everyday ways)

This post: Writing Secular American Jewish Characters lists some secular ways to indicate a character is Jewish, including the non-English words some of us incorporate into our vocabularies, the foods we eat, the decorations in our homes, the fictional representation we notice, etc.

As far as religious practice itself, then you have to decide her level of observance. There are fifty shades of blue, as it were – or fifty thousand, because there are entirely secular Jews, people who are super traditional and religious and pretty much only interact with their own communities, and allll levels in between. You can have someone like me who goes to temple every Friday night that I don’t have a gig (I’m a violinist) and prays before eating most of the time but doesn’t actually keep kosher. You can have someone who’s more comfortable keeping kosher or kosher-lite (skipping pork and shellfish, not mixing meat and dairy, but not actually worrying about if the chicken was rabbinically approved) but never actually gets around to going to temple unless there’s a b'nei mitzvah. It’s all over the map.

So you can throw things in there like her asking for her burger without cheese if there’s a scene with cheeseburgers, or mentioning that she was at someone’s bar mitzvah (quick note: bar for boys, bat for girls, b'nei is gender neutral so I think that’s what nonbinary people are using), or calling her grandparents Bubby and Zayde (which is specifically Ashkenazi so if she’s Sephardic or something else there are probably other words and other Jewish readers of this post are welcome to add other traditions).

I left this at “hints” of religion, as you said, because obviously there are other levels that are probably beyond what you need to get into for a secondary character. For one thing, many of us have noticed that gentiles sometimes assume all religions approach religion the same way Christianity does. That isn’t how we work. To question and argue is a big part of how we “bible-study.” Reading some of the fiction we write about ourselves would be very helpful to understand that more, and would definitely help make your character very fleshed out indeed. But I’d understand if you didn’t want to put that much energy into a small character, so hopefully this post helps. (If you want some recommendations for Jewish books, I have a tag for that on my personal blog: shiraglassman.tumblr.com/tagged/jewish-books. 

Holidays

Oh, and another thing – our big holidays are in the fall and spring. There’s a huge pile of New Year’s related stuff around late September/early October–literally four or five holidays in a row within few weeks – and then Passover in Aprilish – both of those are a way bigger deal than Chanukah, which is fun and important but is basically a minor holiday that gets attention because of its proximity to Christmas.

Stereotypes and Tropes 

And, as always, here are some Stereotypes and Tropes to Avoid. Don’t feel bad if you accidentally do this and then have to remove them; they’re part of the oxygen so it’s easy to make those mistakes. Just keep your eyes open.

–Shira

[fineillsignup]

tips for choosing a Chinese name for your OC when you don’t know Chinese

This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!

Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax. Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!

However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).

So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.

If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.)  A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.

So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.

If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just… just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.

(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)

One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v. 

Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?

Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.

Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:

Chinese people, generally, love their kids. (Obviously, like in every culture, there are some awful exceptions, and I’ll give one specific example of this later on.)

As part of loving their kids, they want to give them a Good name.

So what makes a name a Good name??? Well, in Chinese culture, the cultural values (which have changed over time) have tended to prioritize things like: education; clan and family; health and beauty; religious devotions of various religions (Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Christianity, other); philosophical beliefs (Buddhism, Confucianism, etc) (see also education); refinement and culture (see also education); moral rectitude; and of course many other things as the individual personally finds important. You’ll notice that education is a big one. If you can’t decide on where to start, something related to education, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, etc, is a bet that can’t go wrong.

Unlike in English speaking cultures (and I’m going to limit myself to English because we’re writing English and good God look at how long this post is already), there is no canon of “names” in Chinese like there has traditionally been in English. No John, Mary, Susan, Jacob, Maxine, William, and other words that are names and only names and which, historically at least, almost everyone was named. Instead, in Chinese culture, you can basically choose any character you want. You can choose one character, or two characters. (More than two characters? No one can live at that speed. Seriously, do not give your character a given name with more than two characters. If you need this tutorial, you don’t know enough to try it.) Congratulations, it is now a name!!

But what this means is that Chinese names aggressively Mean Something in a way that most English names don’t. You know nature names like Rose and Pearl, and Puritan names like Wrestling, Makepeace, Prudence, Silence, Zeal, and Unity? I mean, yeah, you can technically look up that the name Mary comes from a etymological root meaning bitter, but Mary doesn’t mean bitter in the way that Silence means, well, silence. Chinese names are much much more like the latter, because even though there are some characters that are more common as names than as words, the meaning of the name is still far more upfront than English names.

So the meaning of the name is generally a much more direct expression of those Good Values mentioned before. But it gets more complicated!

Being too direct has, across many eras of Chinese history, been considered crude; the very opposite of the education you’re valuing in the first place. Therefore, rather than the Puritan slap you in the face approach where you just name your kid VIRTUE!, Chinese have typically favoured instead more indirect, related words about these virtues and values, or poetic allusions to same. What might seem like a very blunt, concrete name, such as Guan Yu’s “yu” (which means feather), is actually a poetic, referential name to all the things that feathers evoke: flight, freedom, intellectual broadmindness, protection…

So when you’re choosing a name, you start from the value you want to express, then see where looking up related words in a dictionary gets you until you find something that sounds “like a name”; you can also try researching Chinese art symbolism to get more concrete names. Then, here’s my favourite trick, try combining your fake name with several of the most common surnames: 王，李，陈. And Google that shit. If you find Actual Human Beings with that name: congratulations, at least if you did f/uck up, somebody else out there f/ucked up first and stuck a Human Being with it, so you’re still doing better than they are. High five!

You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.

First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!

Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work… and its prequels… and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)

Keep reading

[systlin]

Okay. Gardening 101; or “Auntie Sys I have a yard that’s currently a yard and don’t know SHIT or FUCK about how to make it not be a boring-ass yard.”

Step 1; go to your local landfill and get all of the newspaper you can. Cardboard will also work. If your neighborhood puts them out for recycling, go around and grab them all like a little newspaper goblin.

Step 2; acquire mulch. If you WANT, you can go pay for it at a garden store, but we’re all cheap lazy bitches here so screw that. Most landfills will collect yard waste and branches and chip them into woodchips, which you can get for PENNIES or FREE. Go load up on that good shit.

I like straw too, which I can get for barter because I am related to half the people around here and a solid 65% of my extended family are farmers. I give Uncle Daryl three quarts of elderberry jelly or a couple pounds of morels in spring and he loads me up with straw bales.

Step 3; figure what parts of grass you want to be not-grass, and cover that shit in newspaper, good and thick. 5-10 layers. It helps to wet the newspaper to keep it from blowing away as you work.

Now, cover that newspaper with a good thick layer of mulch.

Congrats, you’re removing the grass. It’ll starve to death under the mulch and newspaper and rot into compost. You now have garden beds and have not dug one single bit of sod.

If you can’t wait for six months to plant, pull the mulch aside, cut a hole in the newspaper, and dig out a plug of sod the size of the planting hole. Throw some compost in there and plant. Tuck mulch back around plant. Water well.

There ya go. Garden beds. In a year, when you pull back the mulch the newspaper will be almost rotted away, and the soil underneath soft and loamy.

[systlin]

I like to edge garden beds like this with rocks, which I can ALSO get for free because I live in the part of Iowa dotted with limestone quarries. Just, pick that shit up along the road and

I’m collecting flat ones for a FREE crazy paving path too.

[aquatixwitch]

I love you for this.

[systlin]

No prob.

Protip; the best way to do a large area without killing your knees or back is to load up a bucket of water with newspaper, sit down on the grass, and sorta scoot your ass along as you drag the bucket with you, newspapering as you go.

Then dump buckets of mulch on that and spread it out with your feet. Just sorta kick it where you want it to be.

Source; my 61 year old mom with bad knees.

[gallusrostromegalus]

AAAAAAAYY my mom did the much-to-get-rid-of-lawn thing over the course of a winter- she’d read the paper in the morning then go spread it out on the lawn and toss muclh on it.  By spring it was ready to cut holes ans dump irism day lillies and peonies into.

and all this BEFORE she got her hip replaced.

10/10, recycling, enviornmental stewardship, loos baller AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO MOW.

[sleepyowlet]

Or you could just…dig over the soil so the grass is upside down. Tadaa. All you need is a spade.

[systlin]

Which is fine, if you want to, but the entire and whole point of this is to not have to do that. 

[sleepyowlet]

…and you gotta do it anyway because you turn over soil before planting.

You do it to preserve the water by breaking capillaries in the soil.

You do it so the water preserving capacity of the soil rises (which sponge will hold more water, one that is fluffed up, or one you’re already squeezing?).

You do it so oxygen enters the soil so your plants can breathe (yeah, they take in oxygen through their roots).

You do it so anaerobic bacteria don’t turn your soil sour.

You do it every autumn and every spring in areas you replant annually or bi-annually.

You do it once before planting permanent cultures.

I’m a professional horticulturist. This is my job.

[systlin]

Yeah. I know all that. And I’ve never turned over soil before planting, and my plants are just fine. I’ve been doing the mulch method for five years, and my soil has gone from rock-hard and could bend a shovel to soft and crumbly. 

If you’re willing to wait a little longer rather than do the digging, it’ll be fine. The worms did the soil aerating for me, I just needed to wait a bit longer. 

I understand that you do it professionally and have, presumably, clients that expect results fast. But I have, in twenty years, never fussed about turning soil over for large garden beds, and my plants are just fine…better than fine, my roses are eight feet tall…and I haven’t stripped a bit of sod or turned over a bit of soil save off my veggie patch, which I wanted to plant the first year. 

My mother’s been gardening the same way as me, for forty years. Her plants are fine too. Thriving, even. 

There are tons of alternatives to turning over your soil. Turning over the soil also sometimes cannot be done by people with mobility issues. 

[systlin]

Oh, btw, sources for no dig gardening being perfectly viable;

Esther Dean, No Dig Gardening, 1977

Masanobu Fukuoka, Do nothing gardening, 1970

F. C. King, Is Digging Necessary? , 1946

Ruth Stout, Gardening Without Work, 1961

Charles Dowding, Organic Gardening the Natural No-Dig Way, 2013

[writersrandomramblings]

Elements of culture.

[theliteraryarchitect]

How to Spot an “Info-dump”

I got a great question in my Ask recently from someone wanting to know how to identify an info-dump in their writing. Here’s my response!

For those who don’t know, an info-dump refers to areas of a story where a writer gives a long expository description, either in narrative or in dialogue, where they are basically “dumping” a bunch of information on the reader all at once, as opposed to revealing it naturally throughout the story.

Signs of an info-dump:

Read your passage out loud. Do you get bored? You might be info-dumping.

Has all conflict in your story come to a screeching halt while you spend more than 1-2 paragraphs explaining something to the reader? You might be info-dumping.

Are two characters telling each other things they already know for, like, a long time? You might be info-dumping.

If invited to read your work publicly, would you definitely NOT read that passage, because “nothing really happens” and you worry the audience would get bored listening to it? It could be an info-dump.

Signs that you are probably not info-dumping:

Have you woven in necessary backstory and information in 1-3 sentence bursts throughout your story? Not an info dump.

Does a character spend a short paragraph or two explaining something to another character that they didn’t already know, for a good story reason? Not an info dump.

Do you keep the story going and keep conflict and tension alive while you gradually show your reader what’s going on? Not an info dump.

Do you have just a few sections where you spend 200-300 words or less explaining something to the reader? As long as your story is on the longer side, you’re probably not doing too much info-dumping.

Again, these are just general guidelines. After you finish your story, though, you might want to give it to a friend or fellow writer to give you feedback and let you know if they spot any areas that are too thick with exposition.

Also keep in mind that whether or not a writer is info-dumping can be subjective as well as genre-sensitive: Not everyone will agree about what makes a passage an info-dump or not, and if you’re writing a complicated fantasy with a lot of world-building and history, giving your reader a ton of info can be necessary at some stages. Also, readers of fantasy tend to be more tolerant of it because it comes with the territory sometimes. But these general guidelines should help.

[breannacarroll-blog]

Publishing for Fun and Profit

So there was a list going around tumblr for a while that made it to my dash of literary journals that accept open submissions (and will pay!), but upon inspection about half of them were closed indefinitely, and I found quite a few other places that looked interesting through further research, so I wanted to post my own list. 

I tried to focus on things that paid professional grade (at least 6 cents per word), were friendly to speculative fiction, and specifically encouraged diversity and writing about marginalized groups.

(Please note that as of right now I have never submitted or been published with any of these, so if anyone has experience with them, good or bad, please feel free to message or reblog this with your experiences.)

Speculative Fiction

Strange Horizons — Speculative fiction (broadly defined) with an emphasis on diversity, unusual styles, and stories that address politics in nuanced ways. 8c per word. Up to 10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. Responds within 40 days. LGBT+ positive.

Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. 7-12c per word. Up to 25,000 words. No response times listed.

Asimov’s Science Fiction — Primarily sci-fi but accepts fantasy and surreal fiction, but no high fantasy/sword and sorcery. Prefers writing that is character driven. 8-10c per word. 1,000-20,000 words. Responds in about five weeks.

Evil Girlfriend Media — Horror and urban fantasy centered on female empowerment and defying gender stereotypes. $100 flat payment. 4,000-7,000 words. No response times given. LGBT+ friendly.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Fantasy with a focus on secondary worlds and characters. 6c per word. Up to 10,000 words. Average response time 2-4 weeks.

Fantastic Stories — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity and literary style. 15c per word. Up to 3,000 words. Responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.

Fiction Vortex — Serialized fantasy and speculative fiction. $300 for featured stories, $50 otherwise. 3,500 words or less. No response times given.

Shimmer — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity, strong plots, vivid characters, and beautiful writing. 5c per word. 7,500 words or less (will consider longer words with query letter). Usually responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.

Clarkesworld Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. 10c per word up to 5,000 words, 8c per word after. 1,000-16,000 words. Responds within days usually, gives a tracking number.

Apex Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 6c per word, +1c per word for podcast stories. Up to 7,500 words, all submissions over will be auto-rejected. Responds within 30 days.

Heliotrope Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 10c per word. Up to 5,000 words. Responds within 30 days.

Lightspeed Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds, with creativity and originality in terms of style and format encouraged. 8c per word. 1,500-10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. LGBT+ positive. Submissions temporarily closed for their main magazine but is accepting for their People of Color Destroy Science Fiction special.

General Fiction

The Sun Magazine — General fiction, likes personal writing or writing of a cultural/political significance. $300-$1500 flat payment  and a one year subscription to the magazine for fiction (also accepts essays and poetry). No minimum or maximum lengths but over 7,000 words discouraged. Responds in 3-6 months. Physical submissions only.

One Story — Any and all varieties of fiction, “unique and interesting” stories encouraged. $500 payment plus 25 contributor copies. 3,000-8,000 words. Usually responds in 2-3 months.

Camera Obscura — General fiction. $1000 for featured story, $50 for “Bridge the Gap” award, no payment for other contributors. 250-8,000 words. Response time vary, running just over two months as of now.

Flash Fiction 

Daily Science Fiction — Speculative flash fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream, etc.). 8c per word. Up to 1,500 words, but shorter stories given priority. Response times not listed.

Vestral Review — General flash fiction. 3-10c per word depending on length to a max of $25. Up to 500 words. Response within four months.

Flash Fiction Online — General flash fiction. $60 flat payment. 500-1,000 words. Response times not listed.

Novels/Novella

Riptide Publishing — Any LGBTQ manuscripts between 15,000 and 150,000 words. Currently especially interested in lesbian romances, trans stories, asexual/aromantic stories, romances with a happy ending, and genre fiction such as urban fantasy. Also has a YA branch.  LGBT+ positive.

Crimson Romance — Romance stories of all kinds, currently seeking LGBT+ stories with a focus on emotional connections and relationships, especially m/m romance. Novel (55,000-90,000 words) or novella (20,000-50,000 words) length.  LGBT+ positive.

Kindle Direct Publishing 

Kindle Direct Publishing — Allows you to set your own prices, create your own cover art, and make royalties off of each sell. Any and all genres are welcome and if you’re prolific and smart about how you’re publishing you can make pretty good money.

General Guide to Kindle Publishing — Gives a good rundown of the publishing process on Kindle.

101 Guide to Kindle Erotica — Great guide with lots of resources about how to make money publishing erotica on Kindle.   

Publishing Comics/Graphic Novels

Here is a list of potential comic companies and what kind of open submissions they accept.  

Here is a list of literary agents who accept graphic novels.