Cicilie | Norwegian with a twist

Welcome to my little home on Tumblr. I'm Norwegian, and somewhat of a geek. I love to write (original fantasy mostly), and of course read. This is my home away from home. I reblog fandom stuff, writing stuff, and shipping stuff. I geek out, muse and post randoms from all over.

[cicilie]

Filter words and phrases it's best to avoid in writing fiction

A list of 80+ filter words it is best to avoid in writing fiction. Filter words separate the reader from the characters' feelings.

Something to remember.

[cicilie]

[cicilie]

Beautiful Lyse Kloster. Ruins of the monastary from 1146. #norway🇳🇴 #lysekloster #ruins

[samcaarter]

Warriors of great skill and cunning

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A chair with a view 😀 #norway🇳🇴 #norwegiannature #chair #nofilter #søfteland

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Beautiful day at the beach. Too cold for a swim though 😉 #norway🇳🇴 #nipedalen #norwegiannature #nofilter

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Beautiful day for a long hike. Happy Easter 😀 #norway🇳🇴 #beautifullandscape ##nofilter

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It’s April, and I’m continuing writing on ‘Remnants’ for Camp Nanowrimo.

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Posing on her walk. Yes, treats were involved 😉 #moyathechihuahua #chihuahua #walksies #dogsofimstagram

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Finished!!! Oh my god THIS BOOK!! If you haven't read Mistborn yet, do it. #thisbook #mistborn #bestbooks #brandonsanderson #bookblog #bokblogger #tjuetre06.com

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Yummy!!!

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The definition of a lapdog. #chihuahua #lapdog

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Meet Moya. My little ball of fluff. #awwww #adorable #chihuahua #nofilter

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Nom. Homemade juice!! Worth cutting my finger for 😉 #homemade #juice #sogood #worththepain

[prismaticavocado]

This is some stuff I’ve gathered over the years from various masterposts and poking around on the internet that help me with my creative writing. I hope you find something to help you, these have really gotten me far! (Note: Everything is free!)

Organization

Plotist

I can not stress how amazing this website is. You can keep track of your characters, events, plot lines, and settings. It’s great if your story has a lot of different characters and places you need to keep track of. You can create timelines in which you place in your characters and have a visual representation of where they are and the events happening while they’re there. There’s a lot of information about it on the site if you want specificities.

Pacemaker

This lets you set a goal for how many words/chapters/lines/etc. you want to write in whatever frame of time you choose. There are many options for how you can divide your time, and what your quota is for each day. It also gives you visual representations of your goals and progress. This is super helpful is you’re a procrastinator like me.

Names

Magic Baby Names

This site is awesome. You enter in a name, and it gives you a list of names similar to it. This is great for when you want a specific type of name (ex. specific to a time period, specific to a race) or when you have a certain feel for a name you want, but don’t have an actual name in mind.

List of Girls Names

Has a bunch of names for girls, both common and unique.

List of Boys Names

Has a bunch of names for boys, both common and unique.

Most Popular Surnames in the US

Having a practically unheard of surname can sounds awkward, unless it has some sort of relevance to your story. Keep it mainstream and believable by picking from this list. If you scroll to the bottom there are also options for popular surnames in America by race, which can be quite helpful.

Last Name Generator

If you’re not one to sit and scroll through lists, then try out a surname generator. You can also enter a first name and see how the name and the generated surname look next to each other. This can also generate a lot of other types of names, like for locations or boats or teams or first names or whatever.

Angel Name Generator

This generates believable sounding angel names.

Fantasy Name Generator

This site has a lot of different options for mythological creatures, and you can also choose what length you’d like.

Inspiration

Pinterest

Having some visuals can be quite helpful if you need inspiration. Just play around with search terms and you’ll find some cool, inspiring stuff. You can also create an account and pin pictures that inspire you to look at later. If you want, you can have different collections of pictures if you want to organize your pinned pictures with different labels. As an example, here’s mine (which you could also use for inspiration).

Tumblr Blogs ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 )

(Warning: Some of the links are nsfw and/or potentially triggering) These are a couple of blogs that have some cool pictures that are good for inspiration. Also, I recommend creating a blog that you use to reblog things that inspire you for whatever your writing. I have one for a novel I’m writing and looking at it always gets me inspired.

Music

Noisli

I love this site. You can turn on sounds like river, fire, storm, railroad and others. You can combine them to create different environment sounds, and choose the individual volume of each one. Another thing this site does, is it has a space for writing. It’s very simple, just an empty space, but the background slowly changes color as you write. It’s not distracting like it sounds, it’s actually very relaxing, and the change is nice so you’re not staring at the same-looking screen for hours.

myNoise

This site is good if you want to hear the background noise to your story. It has themed generators for specific sounds like a battlefield or a spaceship, but also other types of sounds. It’s great for getting into the mood or the scene.

Night City Sounds

This is great if your story is set in the city, or even a town. It sounds extremely real and is very relaxing.

Star Trek Bridge Ambience

You don’t have to be a Star Trek fan to find this useful. It’s really good for any type of future-y setting, especially a spaceship or work setting.

8tracks ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 )

8tracks is my go-to site for writing music. You can search by mood, genre, fandom/character (good for fanfics), or anything else that comes to mind. There are also tags like “writing inspiration” and “character inspiration” that have great stuff. You search multiple tags at once, to get the exact feel you want. You can also make collections of playlists, which is helpful to organize by things like “fight scenes” or “insane characters.” I’ve linked playlists that are great for writing inspiration above, each with a different theme. Also, here’s a helpful masterpost that has a collection of 8tracks playlists for writing that are categorized by scene type.

Video Game Music

Video game music is designed to get you hyped and concentrated, which is great for writing! It’s also quite fun to listen to, so if you’re looking to write an exciting but light-hearted scene, this is good to get you in the mood.

Future/sci-fi music

This is actually just a link to one of Daft Punk’s ablums. It was the soundtrack to Tron: Legacy, so it’s super intense and future-y sounding. You can listen to the album anywhere, really. They also have songs that aren’t on that album that are good for future writing.

Information

Other Masterposts ( 1 2 3 4 )

These are some masterposts I use a bunch that have lots of great writing resources. They’re mostly resources for writing characters, but the first one touches on a couple different topics.

List of Character Flaws

If you feel like you’re character is a little too perfect, here’s a bunch of flaws you can give them. However, know that this list was originally created for RPG characters, and anything that would give the character a disadvantage would be considered a “flaw,” so that’s why a few of the suggestions are a little odd. It’s a great list otherwise, and extremely helpful.

Color Symbolism

This is a site that explains what all the colors stand for and mean, and what they’re associated with. Throwing color symbolism in your story can be really cool and an easy thing to do to make your story a little deeper.

Survive Nature

Realistically depict your character being stranded or going on an adventure in a challenging terrain. There are guides for being stuck on a island, in the jungle, in the forest, in the ocean/open water, in the desert, and in the snow/extreme cold.

[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. 

[cicilie]

Pavlova på morsdag. #morsdag #gladimammaenmin