Creative Writing Club

A not-so-average group of young adults who love to write, read, and goof around | Posts/Reblogs include: books, prompts, quotes, fanart, etc.

[lucidmagic]

Repeat after me:

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

Remember, the second and third can't happen if you don't have something to work with. Your first draft will always be shit compared to your third, but at least it exists. The worst first draft is an unfinished one. The best first draft is a just completed one.

You read books/stories not in their first draft form-- only in their finished form (third, fourth, sometimes fifteenth draft). So stop comparing your first draft with a final one.

So, just write--you can make it better later. Perfectionism is the greatest weight a creator can carry.

[redwinterroses]

All I'm saying is, if a fic refers to characters by their physical attributes instead of their names or pronouns ("he smiled at the older" "the blonde laughed") when we know who the character is, and ESPECIALLY if the descriptions include "ravenette" or "cyanette" or other ridiculous words--

I'm clicking out of that fic so fast my AO3 history won't even register I've been there.

[redwinterroses]

I am glad you asked. :D

First, if a writer is using the characters' names every sentence -- they're already off to a bad start. Not every sentence needs to clarify which character it applies to, unless you're writing a "See Jane Run" book, lol.

Overall a good rule of thumb is a) don't repeat unnecessary information, and b) only write things that carry the scene.

So for starters, your readers should know who's in the scene, and you can trust them to have at least a little bit of intuition: not every bit of dialog needs to have a tag ("he said/she whispered" etc.) Now, that established: you do use names when doing otherwise would leave it unclear who's doing or saying things. Example:

George grabbed the lid off the pot. "Dang, that's hot!"

Laughing, Sean passed him a bowl. "Just pour the soup, moron."

"You're a moron."

"Says the guy who just grabbed the lid off a boiling pot."

Sticking his tongue out, George filled the first bowl.

It's clear who says what, and if we had just used "he" it wouldn't have been, but we also didn't have to dialog-tag every line. (ALSO. "Said" is not a bad word. Ignore all advice that tells you never to use "said." "Said" is an invisible word and unless you're putting a dialog tag on every line [which you Do Not Need To Do] people won't even notice it. Unlike "shrieked," "whispered," "hissed," "ranted," "whined," etc. Use those words when they'll have punch and impact. Not every dang line.)

But this isn't always how it needs to go.

For example. Let's say I'm writing about a strawberry-blonde elf named Diana and a human bard with black hair named Jerome. I could say:

Diana leaped to her feet, looking excitedly at the ravenette. "Jerome!" Diane said. "This is our chance!"

Jerome smiled at the strawberry-blonde. "Indeed," he replied.

Okay there are.... several issues here. First off, we don't need to clarify that Diana said the thing after we had her doing an action. Trust your readers! They'll know that a "she" here logically refers to Diane, as they know that "he replied" refers to Jerome.

Next, please strike "referring to characters by eye or hair color" from any lists. This is not good. It's not relevant 99% of the time (we'll get to exceptions in a moment) and also, pet peeve: "ravenette" does not mean black-haired. If you've gotta say it, just say black-haired. Ravenette means "a raven, diminuative" or maaaaaaybe "like a raven." Unless you're imitating an 1800s gothic poet, don't do this.

Physical descriptions used as character indicators/pseudo pronouns are clunky and take up space without telling us anything new. They distance the reader from the character by taking us out of the story and back into exposition land, and they generally repeat information we already know. We can tell our readers in chapter one that Diana has strawberry-blonde hair, and then we don't need to refer to her as "the strawberry-blonde" a hundred more times because our readers already know this. Just call her Diana. Or "she." (Unless it's relevant to the moment -- if she's not our POV character and we need to contrast her to, say, a black-haired beauty at the ball through someone else's eyes, that's one thing. But still, don't continually refer to her by something as shallow as her hair color.)

Exception: visual descriptions are valid to use as character-indicators when we or the characters do not know who that person is. For example, if Diana had been kidnapped by bandits.

She glared at the taller of the two men, who appeared to be some kind of leader. "What do you want?" she spat.

He leered at her, and nudged the filthy blond man at his side. "Ain't she cute," he said. "I like elves. All feisty, they are."

The blond looked uncomfortable. "Whatever you say, Gorm."

Ooooh look! Now we know the boss-man's name. From here on out, we probably should refer to him as either "Gorm" or "the bandit leader" -- not "the tall man" (and never just "the taller." Or "the older," "the younger," etc. That's a side note, but a lot of fics do that too. If you're going to use a comparative adjective, you at least still have to tell us what noun it refers to.)

Also -- did you notice how we never said Diana's name there either? She's the viewpoint character, so unless another person comes along that we need to clarify with, we can usually get away with just saying "she." The reader knows who they're reading about.

When you DO have two or more characters with the same pronouns in a scene, you gotta get creative. Again, readers are intuitive -- they can follow pretty well who's doing what as long as you make it clear. Generally speaking, if you establish which character is doing the thing, you can then use just the pronoun until you switch to a new character. For example:

Diana took the proffered knife. "Thanks," she said. "I was starting to get tired of the stink."

The mysterious rescuer smiled. "No problem," she said. "I'm Peony, by the way." She offered Diana her hand. "Let's grab some horses before the bandits wake up, and we'll get back to Jerome before morning."

"Jerome sent you?" Diana stood, dusting herself off. She wrinkled her nose at the mud stains on her pants, and resolved to buy new ones next time they found a decent tailor.

"Oh, Jerome and I go way back." Peony winked. Sweeping her hair out of her eyes, she motioned toward the horses. "After you."

There's never a confusion that Peony offers Diana her own hand -- not somehow Diana's hand. We don't question that Diana is the one wrinkling her nose, or that they're her pants and not Peony's. Or that Peony sweeps her own hair out of her own eyes. Sometimes you'll have lines where it's a little more confusing, but if it feels awkward in the sentence, always consider if you can re-structure it another way. Like,

Diana kicked her horse into a gallop, heart beating in her chest. "Hold on!" she shouted. Peony cast her a panicked glance, tightening her hold on the rampaging oliphant's saddle. Diana reached for her, grabbing the back of her tunic and yanking her down onto her horse.

Okay, that last line there? That one gets confusing, with all those "her"s. We COULD change it to "Diana reached for her, grabbing the back of Peony's tunic and yanking her down onto the horse." That takes care of a lot of them. Or, we could improve things even further by breaking apart the action, elaborating on things, and just generally stretching out the words so that it's clearer which "she/her" is being referenced at any given time. It's your story! Take advantage of all the room you've got -- there will never be a time when you simply cannot rearrange things to make it clearer for your readers.

It does takes effort. And sometimes a bit of verbal slight of hand. You may have to restructure sentences to avoid repetitive phrases and give yourself a good pace. (That's a large part of rewriting and editing.)

However, like the word "said," pronouns are invisible words. Names are not -- they jump out and say HI THIS IS ME. Use them sparingly -- they have power.

One final exception! Fantasy race and job titles. Again, you don't do this with your POV characters unless you're trying to remind the readers of something, but it IS acceptable to sometimes refer to, say, "the elf," or "the detective," or "the werewolf," or "the duke." Use them sparingly, but this is one exception -- mainly because it tells/reminds us of an important fact about the character. (You might also use, say, "her older sister," or "his father," etc, because that also communicates information about the characters and who they are to each other. But. Again. Use sparingly.)

...okay, I've rambled enough, but hopefully this is somewhat useful/helpful to someone out there.

Again! Read good books! Watch how professional writers do it! Imitate, imitate, imitate! The best writing teachers in the world are good writers.

Happy writing!

[redwinterroses]

wait okay no hold up this says it so much faster and clearer than any of my rambling above: identifying characters by their visual attributes tells us WHAT they are, but not WHO they are.

There. Boom. Short answer. Much clearer, much better. Thank you, tumblr user djtangerine.

[djtangerine]

yea this is why your exceptions work too! if the narrator only knows a character as “that blond guy” then calling them “the blond guy” isn’t jarring to the reader.

[wafflewarrior111]

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

[missroserose]

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

[heck-in-a-handbasket]

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

[ineedthesons]

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

[mareebird]

THIS

[kendrixtermina]

hm. im REALLY against any variation of “this rule is true in any context” because it defeats the point of creativity, but this is good advice for a) beefing up your descriptions and b) communicating emotional tension (eg, the MC has not admitted or processes this feeling but you want to show them having it)

That said, sometimes you would want to just state the character’s opinion. (& maybe contrast it with their actions, the situation) or use a shorthand when it’s like an introductory side detail. 

[porcupine-girl]

What I like about it though is that it’s NOT stated as a “don’t ever do this in any context” rule - it’s not a rule, it’s a challenge. Don’t ever do this for the next six months and see how it changes your writing. Not never do it again, just try it and then you can go back to using them but you’ll probably do it way more sparingly because you’ve built up other tools to use instead of those words.

Warning to writers

While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.

When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here - there are too many.

Being published badly is worse than being never published.

It can destroy your career and your dreams.

The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.

But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.

Absolute Write: Bewares and Background Checks

Preditors and editors

Writer Beware

and the WRITER BEWARE blog

Keep yourself and your work safe.

This is really important, so if you are a writer or have writer friends, or you are a writing blog, please reblog it.

[rosey-buddy]

Just to let you know, PublishAmerica changed their name to America Star Books.

[lunamax1214]

HEAD’S UP, WRITER TYPES: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PSA!

[oldmanyellsatcloud]

Also applies to many so-called freelance sites that are just content mills, and may not pay unless your work is used, even if the contract seems designed otherwise.

[konekat]

Listen, reading these is like legit reading horror stories.  When it comes to publishing your writing, always, always, ALWAYS do your research.  Not only will it help you avoid scams, but it will also be likely to help you land a much better fit for an agent/publisher/whatever.  Knowing more is never going to hurt.

[glorious74-deactivated20181211]

Omg!!! Thanks for the warning! Writers— reblog!

[thegirlwiththebook]

I’ve heard stories like this that are scarier than horror stories. This is an all time worst nightmare for a writer. Everyone reblog and make sure you keep your work safe! 

[the960writers]

Always, ALWAYS check Writer Beware. Let me also recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog about contracts and contract scams for authors in her section Business Musings.

[more-legit-gr8er-writing-tips]

Reblogging again for the links. Also check pred-ed.com and the Absolute Write forum. Then google Publisher’s name + scam and see what comes up. Do NOT use the BBB ratings, they are wholly unsuitable for rating publishers and regularly give A ratings to well-known publishing scams. You can also read my own post on publishing scams, have a link on the left of my blog ( can’t link here, I’m on mobile, sorry).

[bodaciousbanshee-deactivated202]

@korrigu

[breelandwalker]

SUPER IMPORTANT PSA!

Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.

(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)

Be vigilant, fellow writers!

[jenniferrpovey]

If you choose to self publish then HAVE A PLAN and think things through.

And hire an editor. Please, for the love of all that is holy, hire an editor. It’s expensive, but you will get a better book out, a better reputation…

[athelind]

If you’re going to publish electronically, make sure you also get someone who can LAY AN EBOOK OUT PROPERLY.

I have spent money on Kindle books, many of them reprints of older works, whose formatting is so messed up as to render them unreadable.

[jenniferrpovey]

I actually recommend using the Smashwords Style Guide even if you don’t use Smashwords.

It lays out how to neatly format an e-book in a wonderful step by step format, and you can get it free from Smashwords. Just leave off the couple of things that are (very obviously) Smashwords specific.

If you can’t stand dealing with the meticulous detail, then by all means hire somebody, but most people can learn to format an ebook correctly and once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes about an hour tops.

[freshest-tittymilk]

@ghdos spread the knowledge

[vorpalgirl]

Because the redirects aren’t working for me, I’m going to assume others might have trouble with these links, so for those who need it the URL for the website to Writer Beware is: www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/ As stated on here: “Writer Beware is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers Association, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.” These are not publishers’ guilds, notice; you sometimes see scammers trying to defend themselves against Writer Beware exposes by claiming that they’re “small press” or “indie” and Big Publishing is somehow out to get them - but all of those guilds are run by and for writers, to help support them and represent them in the field. It is the closest writers have to having unions, and there’s no direct competition between them (you could literally be an in any of those guilds are the same time as each other, in addition to others, and I believe a number of authors are).

Writer Beware is a wonderful resource, and I highly recommend it. It’s both a good general guide to the scams people run/red flags to watch out for (such as giving up your copyright entirely as opposed to specific rights, or being charged to publish something or have it edited, when they’re trying to act like they’re a “normal” publisher), and a frequently-updated list of the latest specific known scammers, both in “fake agents” and fake/scammy publishers categories. (The company formerly known as Publish America is one of the most famous and egregious cases, but by far not the only one)

Additionally, for SF and fantasy writers, the SFWA’s own list of qualifying markets that one can be published in as a prerequisite to be able to get into their guild (remember, it IS a profession-based guild), is a great guide to normal markets for those genres that have standard contracts that aren’t abusive or scammy, and their guidelines include some of the industry-standard minimums for “per word” etc rates, so even if some new magazine market isn’t on their list, you can tell if it’s suspiciously far outside the usual per-word or whatnot standards. (It’s likely the guidelines for Mystery Writers of America etc also would be useful in that vein) Even if you’re unpublished or don’t want to join their guild, they’re a wonderful group and resource, and I highly recommend their site and Writer Beware in particular! The other sites mentioned above, such as “Preditors and Editors” should be still valid if you Google them, and are often rec’d by Writer Beware, but Writer Beware is the one I’m most familiar with. :)

[hookslovelyswan]

Also, you should never have to pay an agent or anyone a  “reading fee”! DO NOT PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK!!! Run away from so-called agents that charge a reading fee! They are considered unethical in their own industry!

Also related to agents: Should you go this route and seek one, DO NOT PAY ONE DIME TO THEM upfront! A real agent only gets paid when he sells your book to a publisher! The average cut is about 10-15% of the first sale profits, if I remember right, with cuts of film and other rights maybe being more, when sold. At most, writers should only be responsible for the costs of phone calls and postage.

For more information see: How Literary Agents Get Paid. Standard Commission Practices and Payments for Literary Agents

Edited to Add: Some other great, highly respected resources for writing and getting published are:

Writer’s Digest

The Writer

Writer’s Market

[ghostflowerdreams]

Awesome Sites and Links for Writers

Just about every writer out there has several go-to websites that they use when it comes to their writing. Be it for creativity, writer’s block, to put you in the mood or general writing help. These are mine and I listed them in hopes that you’ll find something that you’ll like or find something useful. I’ve also included some websites that sounded interesting, but I haven’t tried out yet.

Spelling & Grammar

Grammar Girl – Grammar Girl’s famous Quick and Dirty Tips (delivered via blog or podcast) will help you keep your creative writing error free.

The Owl – is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), an academic source from Purdue University (which is in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.). It’s contains plenty of grammar guides, style tips and other information that can help with your writing, it’s especially great for academics.

Tip of My Tongue — have you ever had trouble of thinking of a specific word that you can’t remember what it is? Well, this site will help you narrow down your thoughts and find that word you’ve been looking for. It can be extremely frustrating when you have to stop writing because you get a stuck on a word, so this should help cut that down. 

Free Rice – is a great way to test your vocabulary knowledge. What’s even better about this site is that with every correct answer, they donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. So, please disable your adblock since they use the ads on the site to generate the money to buy the rice.

HyperGrammar – is from the University of Ottawa (a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) that offers up a one-stop guide for proper spelling, structure, and punctuation. Being that this comes from a Canadian university, that means that they use standard Oxford English Dictionary spelling. Basically that means you’ll get British English, which differs slightly from formal American English.

AutoCrit – the AutoCrit Editing Wizard analyzes your manuscript to identify areas for improvement, including pacing and momentum, dialogue, strong writing, word choice and repetition. It also provides a number of other writing resources as well. It’s not free, but they do offer 200 characters for analysis at no charge. It’s $29.97 per month or $359.64 for an annual membership. 

ProWritingAid – is another automatic editing tool that analyzes your writing and produces reports on areas such as overused words, writing style, sentence length, grammar and repeated words and phrases. They offer a free sample, but you have to make an account to try it out. It’s $3.33 per month ($40 annually, or less if you purchase a longer license).

Writer’s Digest – learn how to improve your writing, find an agent, and even get published with the help of the varied blogs on this site.

Paper Rater – uses Artificial Intelligence to improve your writing. It includes grammar, plagiarism, and spelling check, along with word choice analysis. The basic version is completely free, but they do offer premium subscription for people seeking more advanced features. If you’re interested it’s $14.95 per month or $95.40 per year if you decide to get it.

Syntaxis – it allows you to test your knowledge of grammar with a ten-question quiz. The questions change every time you take the quiz so users are sure to be challenged each time around. It definitely helps writers know if there’s something that they need to brush up on.

Word Frequency Counter – this counter allows you to count the frequency usage of each word in your text.

EditMinion – is a free robotic copy editor that helps you to refine your writing by finding common mistakes.

Proofreading for Common Errors – this is a simple tutorial on proofreading your writing by Indiana University.

BBC – has a section for helping you with your skills, especially in writing, from grammar to spelling, to reading, to listening and to speaking.

Tools

Copyscape – is a free service that you can use to learn if anyone has plagiarized your work. It’s pretty useful for those that want to check for fanfiction plagiarism.

Plagium – is another a copy detection system, that provides a very similar service to Copyscape and uses Yahoo! rather than Google to perform its searches. Just keep in mind that searches for simple text up to 25,000 characters remains free of charge, but any larger requires credits to be purchase.

Write or Die – is an web application for Windows, Mac and Linux which aims to eliminate writer’s block by providing consequences for procrastination. It lets you try it for free, but the desktop version is available for $10. The Write or Die iPad app is $9.99 in the App Store. If you’re really old school, the original web app can still be launched with its modest settings.

Written? Kitten! – is similar to Write or Die, but it’s a kinder version and it’s completely free. They use positive reinforcement, so every time you reach a goal they reward you with an adorable picture of a kitten.

Fast Fingers – offers you an easy way to improve your typing skills. It’s puts you through a quick typing game that tests your typing speed and improves it at the same time. It’s also a great way for writers to warm up.

Information & Data

RefDesk – it has an enormous collection of reference materials, searchable databases and other great resources that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s great to use when you need to find something and/or check your facts.

Bib Me – it makes it easy to create citations, build bibliographies and acknowledge other people’s work. This is definitely something that academics will love. It’s basically a bibliography generator that automatically fills in a works cited page in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turbian formats.

Internet Public Library – is a non-profit, largely student-run website managed by a consortium, headed by Drexel University. Currently this online library is inactive, but it’s still full of resources that are free for anyone to use, from newspaper and magazine articles to special collections. Just keep in mind that it’s not up to date, since they stopped maintaining it on June 30, 2015.

The Library of Congress – if you’re looking for primary documents and information, the Library of Congress is a great place to start. It has millions of items in its archives, many of which are accessible right from the website.

Social Security Administration: Popular Baby Names – is the most accurate list of popular names from 1879 to the present. If your character is from America and you need a name for them, this gives you a accurate list of names, just pick the state or decade that your character is from.

WebMD – is a handy medical database loaded with information. It’s not a substitute for a doctor, but can give you a lot of good information on diseases, symptoms, treatments, etc.

MedlinePlus – is the National Institutes of Health’s web site that contains information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. It also offers reliable, up-to-date health information, anytime, anywhere, for free. You can use the site to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition.

Mayo Clinic – is a nonprofit medical practice and medical research group.

World Health Organization (WHO) – is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases; sexual and reproductive health, development, and ageing; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

Google Scholar – is an online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint depositories and so on. While Google Scholar does search for print and online scholarly information, it is important to understand that the resource is not a database.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac – this classic almanac offers yearly information on astronomical events, weather conditions and forecasts, recipes, and gardening tips.

State Health Facts – Kaiser Family Foundation provides this database, full of health facts on a state-by-state basis that address everything from medicare to women’s health.

U.S. Census Bureau – you can learn more about the trends and demographics of America with information drawn from the Census Bureau’s online site.

Wikipedia – this shouldn’t be used as your sole source, but it can be a great way to get basic information and find out where to look for additional references.

Finding Data on the Internet – a great website that list links that can tell you where you can find the inflation rate, crime statistics, and other data.

Word References

RhymeZone – whether you’re writing poetry, songs, or something else entirely, you can get help rhyming words with this site.

Acronym Finder – with more than 565,000 human-edited entries, Acronym Finder is the world’s largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initials.

Symbols.com – is a unique online encyclopedia that contains everything about symbols, signs, flags and glyphs arranged by categories such as culture, country, religion, and more. 

OneLook Reverse Dictionary – is a dictionary that lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. 

The Alternative Dictionaries – is a PDF, that contains a list of slang words in all types of languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian and many, many others. There use to be a website, but it’s not there anymore and this is the next best thing I could find.

Online Etymology Dictionary – it gives you the history and derivation of any word. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

MediLexicon – is a comprehensive dictionary of medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical, and health care abbreviations and acronyms.

Merriam Webster Online – the online version of the classic dictionary also provides a thesaurus and a medical dictionary.

Multilingual Dictionary – it translate whatever you need from 30 different languages with this easy-to-use site.

Writing Software

Open Office – why pay for Microsoft products when you can create free documents with Open Office? This open source software provides similar tools to the Microsoft Office Suite, including spreadsheets, a word processor, the ability to create multimedia presentations, and more.

LibreOffice – is a free and open source office suite. It was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, which was an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs to do word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, maintain databases, and compose math formula.

Scrivener – is not a free program, but it’s certainly a very popular one. It's great for organizing research, planning drafts, and writing novels, articles, short stories, and even screenplays.

OmmWriter – is for Mac OS X, a free simple text processor that gives you a distraction free environment. So you can focus only on your writing without being tempted or distracted by other programs on your computer. They are currently working on a Windows version of their software as well, so keep an eye out for that if you’re interested.

FocusWriter – is a completely free full-screen writing application designed to immerse you in your writing. It keeps your writing space simple and clean without sacrificing functionality. It includes a daily goal tracker, work count and time spent writing. There’s also spell checking, real-time feedback on variables like word and page count, and tabbed document browsing. It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Q10 – is a free portable distraction-free writing tool for Windows. The interface includes nothing but a tiny bar at the bottom that displays the character, word, and page count—you can toggle the bar off for a totally distraction free workspace. 

Evernote – is a free app for your smartphone and computer that stores everything you could possibly imagine losing track of, like a boarding pass, receipt, article you want to read, to do list, or even a simple typed note. The app works brilliantly, keeping everything in sync between your computer, smartphone, or tablet. It’s definitely a useful app for writers when you have ideas on the go.

ScriptBuddy – is a full-fledged screenplay software program. It handles the proper screenplay format automatically, so you can concentrate on your story. It is easy to use and the basic version is free.

TheSage – is a free application, which is a comprehensive English dictionary and thesaurus that provides a number of useful and in some cases unusual search tools.

Sigil – is ideal for e-book authors because it's a free EPUB editor with a stack of essential features.

WriterDuet – is a collaborative screenwriting app for working with writing partners in real-time. It also lets you copy text written in Fountain, or other screenwriting programs (Final Draft, Celtx, etc.) and paste it directly into WriterDuet with the correct formatting most of the time. They offer the basic version for free, WriterDuet Pro ($9.00 monthly, $79 yearly and $199 lifetime) and WriterDuet Premium ($299 yearly). WriterDuet works on Mac, Windows, Linux, Chromebooks, iOS, and Android. It gives identical page counts on all devices, and PDFs.

ZenWriter – is a program that gives you an open, peaceful place for composing your thoughts without any distractions. It’s a fullscreen text editor that offers customizable backgrounds, music, and a nifty word count at the bottom of the window. It’s not free, but it does offer a free trial for 15 days. It is available for Windows, and after the 15-day trial period you can choose to purchase it for $17.50 if you want.

WriteMonkey – is a Windows writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. It’s also an portable app, so you can stick it on a USB drive and use in on whatever computer you happen to find yourself at.

YWriter5 – is a free word processor and is designed for Windows XP, Vista and beyond. It's a small but very comprehensive tool which helps you to plan your story. It breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you to keep track of your work while leaving your mind free to create. You can set up deadlines, for instance, and the program’s Work Schedule report will let you know how much you’ll have to do, each day, to finish on time. You can even enter your characters, locations and items and freely organize them into scenes. This definitely sounds like it’ll be useful for NaNoWriMo writers.

Kingsoft Office (WPS Office) – is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, Linux, iOS and Android OS. The basic version is free to use, but a fully featured professional-grade version is also available. This software allows users to view, create and share office documents that are fully compatible with dozens of document formats, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel. In other words, the format is similar to a Microsoft Word document (.DOC or .DOCX file) and supports formatted text, images, and advanced page formatting. Kingsoft Writer documents can be converted to Microsoft Word *.doc files in the software.

Creativity, Fun & Miscellaneous

National Novel Writing Month – is one of the most well-known writing challenges in the writing community. National Novel Writing Month pushes you to write 50,000 words in 30 days (for the whole month of November).

WritingFix – a fun site that creates writing prompts on the spot. The site currently has several options—prompts for right-brained people, for left-brained people, for kids—and is working to add prompts on classic literature, music and more.

Creative Writing Prompts – the site is exactly what it says. They have 100+ and more, of prompts that you can choose from.

My Fonts – is the world’s largest collection of fonts. You can even upload an image containing a font that you like, and this tells you what it is. Just keep in mind that not all of the fonts are free.

DaFont – has lot of fonts as well, most of them are completely free to download. However, some are demo versions or are only free if you used it for personal use and not commercial use.

Story Starters – this website offers over one trillion randomly generated story starters for creative writers.

The Gutenberg Project – this site is perfect for those who like to read and/or have an e-reader. There’s over 33,000 ebooks you can download for free. 

The Imagination Prompt Generator – click through the prompts to generate different ideas in response to questions like “Is there a God?” and “If your tears could speak to you, what would they say?”

The Phrase Finder – this handy site helps you hunt down famous phrases, along with their origins. It also offers a phrase thesaurus that can help you create headlines, lyrics, and much more.

Storybird – this site allows you to write a picture book. They provided the gorgeous artwork and you create the story for it, or just read the stories that others have created.

Language Is a Virus – the automatic prompt generator on this site can provide writers with an endless number of creative writing prompts. Other resources include writing exercises and information on dozens of different authors.

Background Noise/Music

SimplyNoise – a free white noise sounds that you can use to drown out everything around you and help you focus on your writing.

Rainy Mood – from the same founders of Simply Noise, this website offers the pleasant sound of rain and thunderstorms. There's a slide volume control, which you can increase the intensity of the noise (gentle shower to heavy storm), thunder mode (often, few, rare), oscillation button, and a sleep timer. 

Coffitivity – a site that provides three background noises: Morning Murmur (a gentle hum), Lunchtime Lounge (bustling chatter), and University Undertones (campus cafe). A pause button is provided whenever you need a bladder break, and a sliding volume control to give you the freedom to find the perfect level for your needs and moods. It’s also available as an android app, iOS app, and for Mac desktop. If you go  Premium it’s $9 and you’ll get 1 year of unlimited listening to their audio tracks and access to three more sounds: Paris Paradise, Brazil Bistro and Texas Teahouse.

Rainy Cafe – it provides background chatter in coffee shops (similar to Coffitivity) AND the sound of rain (similar to Simply Rain). There’s also individual volume and on/off control for each sound category.

Forest Mood – is background noise of the forest.

MyNoise – is a website with multi-purpose noise generator that is completely free. It helps you to focus while working in a noisy environment or to help settle your anxiety and it’s also useful in cases of insomnia or tinnitus. It has so many sounds to choose from: Fish Tank, Clockwork, Gregorian Chants, Traffic Noise, and so on.

MyNoise: Online Fire Noise Generator – is also from NyNoise, but it’s a short-cut link for those that only want to hear the sound of fire crackling in a fireplace.

Snowy Mood – is a noise generator that plays sounds of boots walking through snow on an endless loop. It’s simple and straightforward, and perfect for those days when you feel like being snowed in.

Noisli – is a background noise generator that helps you to drown out annoying noises in order to create your perfect environment for working and relaxing. You can mix different sounds together, such as rain and a train or fire and the night sound of crickets or with the waves at a beach. 

Purrli – is a white noise generator that recreates the sound and the presence of a cat purring next to you.  

Ambient Mixer – is a free online audio mixing tool in which you can create and edit your own ambient music or background sounds. You can even listen to other people’s mixes such as Gryffindor Common Room, Riding with the Winchesters, Mr. Tumnus’ House, A Day in Camp Half-Blood, and so on.

8tracks – is an internet radio website and everyone can listen for free, well it use to be completely free. Unlike other music oriented social network such as Pandora or Spotify, 8tracks doesn’t have commercial interruption (that’s if you get 8tracks Plus). Users can create free accounts and can either browse the site and listen to other user-created mixes for as long as they like, and/or they can create their own mixes. It’s a perfect place to listen to other writer’s playlist, share yours or find music for specific characters or moods. Note: Joining is still free, however you’re now limited to 1 hour of free listening for each week (or more depending on how much people like your mixes, but I’ve been told the limitation is for those in the US only). If you want unlimited access it’s $30 per year or $5.00 a month.

Playmoss – with 8tracks no longer having free unlimited listening and no commercial interruptions many people looked for an alternative and Playmoss is what 8tracks use to be. Playmoss is free to join and it has all the same basic features that 8tracks has, only with extra goodies like unlimited skips, able to see the entire tracklist before playing, start at any point in the playlist, see how many playlists contain a certain song and even collaborate playlists with other people.

[fictionwritingtips]

What Scenes to Cut

If you’re finished with your first draft, you might be wondering how to cut down an overloaded novel. Chances are your novel isn’t exactly where you want it to be and you might need to trim the fat, so take the time to learn what should and should not be included in your story.

Here are a few ways to determine what should be cut from your novel:

First, let’s talk about filler. Filler is unnecessary information added to your novel that does nothing to tell us about your characters or advance the plot. In other words, your book shouldn’t have any filler. Your book’s momentum will be ruined if you add filler.

Does the scene explain your character in some way?

If a scene is necessary to character development, there’s usually no reason to cut it. However, if a scene doesn’t help build a character or doesn’t explain anything additional about your character, you should consider cutting it. There’s no need to repeat the same information over and over again. Consider combining scenes that spread the same message.

Does the scene move the plot forward?

Obviously your story needs to keep pushing forward. We need to see the plot advance and it needs to make logical sense. If the scene doesn’t move the plot forward, nor does it help reveal something about character, it should most likely be cut. Each scene should build on the one before it and should add something significant to your story.

Is your scene necessary for transition to the next scene?

Since you can’t just cut abruptly from one scene to another, you’ll need transitions in your novel. Even though they might not contribute to character development directly, it gets your characters from one place to another. If a scene bridges the gap between one important moment to another, you shouldn’t cut it.

Do all my characters play a part?

Sometimes certain minor characters can either be cut or combined with other minor characters. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have characters that play a small part, but they should at least play some part in your story. It can be hard to cut characters, but sometimes it’s necessary to make your story stronger. Anything that you feel will strengthen your novel and cut down the excess is something you should pay attention to.

Don’t be afraid to cut sub plots that aren’t working.

If there’s a part of your story that just doesn’t feel like it’s working out or doesn’t jive with your story, don’t be afraid to cut it. You can always replace it with something stronger, so don’t feel like anything you cut is a loss. You’ll be able to make your story more powerful.

-Kris Noel

[surroundedbypearls]

On Writing: Mentor Characters

Mentor characters are common. We all know this. They’re more common in sci fi and fantasy but not limited to those genres. Everyone could use good advice sometimes! Soo here we’re going to talk about a few tips on writing mentor characters well.

(I mean….this post mostly talks about Avatar. Nobody should be surprised at this point.)

Your mentor should be flawed.

Every character is more interesting and engaging when they’re flawed - the mentor is no exception. The wise old sage who’s perfectly wise and zen and knows everything about everything is boring. You might as well just give your main character a manual and send them on their way. Or just send the mentor to do the protagonist’s job for them.

Gandalf is old, tough and wise, but he has a temper (rip Pippin) and he’s incapable of taking the Ring to Mordor. He’s already tempted by the draw of the Ring’s power; this is a flaw he recognises and it’s why he tells Frodo he can’t take the Ring himself. To some, Gandalf might be an example of the generic old wizard who knows everything (and fair enough) but he’s not perfect, and there’s a reason he can’t complete the quest. 

Haymitch from The Hunger Games is an alcoholic; he’s rude and cynical and seems to be fairly unsympathetic towards Katniss and Peeta’s fate. This is because he’s learned not to grow attached to his pupils. They inevitably die in the arena. Haymitch has become the way he is as a result of his trauma; despite his current self, he won his own Games through resourcefulness and determination. He and Katniss have more in common than he would first let on. Underneath his hard exterior are the lessons he teaches Katniss and Peeta.

What does the mentor pass on to the protagonist?

Any generic mentor in a big cloak can teach the protagonist the Lessons of the Magic Thing or something else they need to learn. What’s more interesting is adding a personal element to what the mentor teaches the protagonist; how did they learn these lessons themselves? 

In Avatar: TLA, though Iroh does teach Zuko lightning-bending, most of the lessons he teaches him are life lessons. Iroh teaches Zuko that he alone can control his destiny, and that his honour can only come from his own actions and not what his abusive father thinks of him. 

Iroh has learned this through his own experiences; he once had his own notions of what honour and power were and his priorities were to help the Fire Nation prosper in the 100 year war, specifically to conquer Ba Sing Se. These things stop being important to him when his son is killed in battle. He returns home a failure, loses out on the throne to his younger brother and is viewed by a lot of people as a silly, lazy old man (sometimes even by Zuko himself). But he’s learned from his experience, and when he returns to conquer Ba Sing Se it’s for the Avatar, not the Fire Nation. Iroh once believed the Lie spread by the Fire Nation, and now he’s trying to teach Zuko the Truth behind the Lie.

Another example is Tony and Peter in the MCU, aka Iron Man and Spider-Man. In Iron Man 3, Tony spends time conflicted over what exactly makes him Iron Man. Who is he without his suit? Eventually he realises that the suit may be important, but Iron Man wouldn’t exist without Tony. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, he teaches this lesson to Peter, albeit harshly, by taking his suit away from him. He learns to live without it and see what truly makes Spider-Man isn’t the suit, but the person inside it.

“If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”

The mentor’s lessons should represent something.

When writing a wise old mentor who knows all the Important Things, they should know (and represent) a thematic Truth of the story. If the protagonist believes a Lie about themselves and/or the world they live in, the mentor has to show them the Truth of the world (and the narrative).

We’re talking about Iroh and Zuko again! The episode “The Avatar and the Fire Lord” explores this idea twice; with Zuko and Iroh and with Aang and Roku. Iroh tells Zuko that he must understand the story of his great-grandfather’s demise to understand his own destiny. Similarly, Roku tells Aang that he must understand how the war started to understand how to end it. 

The two lessons are connected to the story of Roku and his closest friend, Fire Lord Sozin, and the themes of morality and balance. Balance is a massive theme in Avatar. Bringing balance to the world is the Avatar’s duty; imbalance means chaos and destruction, while balance means peace and prosperity. Mastering the four elements (and what they represent spiritually) is the key to bringing balance to the nations.

Zuko doesn’t understand the significance of his great-grandfather Sozin’s story, until Iroh tells him that Roku was his great-grandfather as well, and that the conflict of these two men, and the war that followed, are an integral part of him.

“Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko. It is your nature, your legacy. […] Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world.”

This represents a big question asked by Avatar; is anyone truly evil or truly good, and what does it mean to balance these elements inside you? Aang asks himself the same question. His friends see Sozin betraying Roku as a sign of Sozin’s evil nature. Aang sees it as a lesson that anyone is capable of great good or great evil. Roku was born in the Fire Nation, just like Sozin, and like Zuko. And it doesn’t define who they are as people.

Give your mentor an arc.

While obviously your main character’s arc should be the most detailed and most relevant to the story, that doesn’t mean other characters shouldn’t develop and have an arc as well. Your mentor is no exception. When it comes to characters that can more easily fall into stereotypes (a love interest is another example; they definitely need an arc as well) an arc is a perfect way to make them feel more original.

A common arc is the cynical, withdrawn mentor picking their sword (or whatever it is) back up and joining in the fight they’d closed themselves off from, or learning to be happy again thanks to their relationship with the protagonist. It’s basic, but it’s an arc nonetheless.

A specific example of a mentor’s character arc is Tenzin’s in The Legend of Korra. Tenzin is Korra’s airbending master and primary mentor; he’s also the son of the previous Avatar. To top it off, he has the responsibility of mentoring his children as a father and a teacher to the last airbenders of the world. These roles combined put massive pressure on Tenzin and his struggles when it comes to connecting with spirits and the spirit world. His inability to connect to the spirits makes him feel like a failure trapped in Aang’s shadow. Tenzin only overcomes this obstacle when he realises that he is not his father, that he can only be himself, and this brings him the spiritual enlightenment he’d been missing all along. He’s more than a manual for Korra; he’s a character with his own struggles to overcome.

The disappearing act.

Why do mentors always die?

The reasons are pretty simple; we need the protagonist to make their own choices without a teacher. We need to see how they stand up to whatever their obstacle is without help. We need to see how they implement the lessons they’ve learned from the mentor.

Even with all these valid reasons, the death of the mentor can feel stale and overdone because it’s so common. Adding further plot relevance to the death of the mentor can make it more meaningful. It shouldn’t just be so the protagonist has to make their own way. The mentor doesn’t have to die either. They can simply go off somewhere for a while; Gandalf just fucks off whenever he pleases because Tolkien needed the other characters to manage without him. His death does add higher stakes to the story, though.

Iroh doesn’t die, but his disappearing act is a result of Zuko betraying him. Zuko returns to his sister’s side and Iroh is locked away in prison. This is powerful because Zuko has to deal with the guilt of betraying his uncle, while also learning to make up his own mind about his destiny without Iroh’s help.

Another effective tool in making a mentor’s disappearing act more meaningful is the post-disappearance narrative. After Dumbledore’s death, Harry learns a lot more about him than he knew when he was alive, a lot of which is a little uncomfortable to hear. It’s difficult to process such truths about a man he was sure he knew well, and adds more impact to his absence.

SPOILERS FOR FFH Similarly in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter doesn’t realise how flawed Tony was until after his death. He realises he can’t live up to the image of Iron Man, but not even Tony himself could live up to the heroic image. Happy Hogan tells him as much; that Tony was a mess and couldn’t live up to his own legacy anymore than Peter can. SPOILERS FOR FFH

So, there you have it! Now go flesh out your manuals~

[donotusetheinternet-deactivated]

if youve never physically been in the presence of like, a real live wolf, and you probably wont get the chance to, heres some stuff about them you should know

a wolf’s fur is so unbelievably thick that you can get like, your whole hand into it while petting. and then you can keep going

wolves are a lot bigger than you think they are. think about how big you think a wolf is then just like double that

they dont really smell like dog but they DO smell and youre not going to be able to figure out if its a good smell or not

a wolf really wants to lick the inside of your mouth. he will not stop trying to lick the inside of your mouth at any cost, and generally speaking you need to press your lips together kind of tightly when he approaches your face so that he doesnt worm his damn tongue in there to give you what he thinks is an appropriate greeting

a wolf doesnt really want to look at you while you pet him but he wants you to pet him. hes embarrassed

if a grown ass wolf decides to lay down on you, you just have to deal with it and thats your life now

young wolves, much like young dogs, are overwhelmingly goofy and stupid. a teenage wolf will see your very fragile, very human shoulder and go “i can probably step on that with my full weight” and then he will do it

letting a wolf eat out of your hand is actually not remotely frightening, and youll want to do it all day

[sad-gay-potato]

I wanna know who did this research.

[donotusetheinternet-deactivated]

well, i did!

[lettersiarrange]

New writing rule: Checkov’s friend

If you introduce a named character with a relationship to a protagonist, their character arc must be resolved in a way that feels reasonable and satisfying

Which is to say: they can’t just dissappear when they’re no longer a convenient plot device

[cluegrrl]

Thor’s Mum rule – If you’re going to kill a character who’s carried any part of the plot, take a bit to reimagine the plot as if she were the main character, and the story ends when she dies.  If it’s unsatisfying, rewrite either her plot points, or her death, to make both more meaningful.

Which is to say – don’t treat side characters as ammo with which to hurt your main guy.  ESPECIALLY if they’re women.

[dr-dendritic-trees]

I’m reblogging because this second part is the best explanation of how I distinguish between fridged characters and other characters who just die.

And yes, it is intrinsically a bit subjective and that’s okay.

[ghostzzy]

reminder to myself about the process of drafting & revising:

first drafts are for making it exist

second drafts are for making it functional

third drafts are for making it effective

[pippastrelle]

This is the most important thing I’ve learnt in writing my novel. Have fun the first time but know your first pass isn’t going to be perfect

[elumish]

Your main concern with grammar in fiction should be, does it make sense to the reader upon first pass-through. You can have sentence fragments. Half-formed thoughts. Periods where normally there would be question marks. You can throw out many of the rules you learned in school. But that only works if the writing can still be understood without question and without unintended ambiguity.

[heywriters]

THIS

[itstheenglishkid]

write to tell yourself the story

edit to tell others the story

[roboco-san]

helpful grammar tip! farther is for physical distance, further is for metaphorical distance, and father is for emotional distance!

[etirabys]

me, to my housemates, one of whom is a thermal engineer: if someone had hypothermia, is the best way to warm them up ‘spoon them’, or ‘cuddle chest to chest’? I feel like it could be either – spooning is the classic warming position, and you warm up the colder part, but spoon the front and you insulate the skin with the largest temperature delta

housemates: [fervent, serious debate]

me, after a couple of minutes: to be clear, this is for a final fantasy 7 fanfiction scene where my character got really cold, the stakes aren’t high in getting this completely right.

housemate: does the hypothermia exist sheerly as an excuse for the cuddling?

me: that is the only reason hypothermia exists in fanfiction.

[bioluminescent-fungus]

so i asked my mom’s boyfriend, who is a paramedic, and he recommended that for hypothermia, you cuddle chest-to-chest, BUT if you are digging in to survive a blizzard, spooning is preferable

[thefirststarr]

[zlukaka]

Everything movies taught me about archery is wrong. This is a complete mind-blower. 8D

If you are even remotely interested in archery or medieval combat, check this out, it’s just great!

[luffik]

OMFG EVERYONE PLEASE DROP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WATCH IT RIGHT NOW O_O

[secondlina]

HOLY HELL

[medievalpoc]

Not only is this fascinating, there are a lot of images from art history here. It just goes to show that what you can learn from the past isn’t limited to facts you can know, but things you can do.

My favorite part?

He learned this doing research for LARPs (Live Action Role Playing):

Lars Andersen originally started using bow and arrow to fight in pretend battles during Larps (live action role play) events, where he played a soldier in a medieval-inspired army. While Larps can be about anything – the Danish/Polish Harry Potter inspired larp College of Wizardry (cowlarp.com) recently got world-wide media attention and there wasn’t a rubber sword in sight there – many Larps take place in fantasy worlds inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And it was at one of these Larps, that Lars started to learn to shoot fast while moving.

In 2012, Lars Andersen released his video, “Reinventing the fastest forgotten archery”, where he showed how he had learned to shoot from old archery manuscripts. Using these old, forgotten techniques, Lars demonstrated how he was now the fastest archer on the planet, and after its release, the video got 3 million hits on YouTube in two days.

Since the 2012 video was released, Lars has studied and practiced, and he is now able to fire three arrows in 0.6 seconds – a truly stunning feat making him much faster than the legendary fictional archer Legolas (played by Orlando Bloom in the Lord of the Rings movies).

The time benchmark he was trying to achieve, according to the video, was the expectation of the speed at which “Saracen” archers were expected to shoot. In fact, most of the source material as far as I can see isn’t European.

A lot of the techniques described are also used in Mongolian Archery, which requires being able to shoot from horseback, and is traditionally practiced by men and women. You can see a video here.

[unfocused-overwriter]

Holy shit I want that in my book but who wouldn’t call it unrealistic???

[the-silent-screamer]

ARCHERY!!!!

[the-huntsmans-homebrews]

https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk?t=180

Debunks Monks’ Ensnare Missiles and the whole disadvantage on ranged attacks within five feet of enemies.

Remind me to rework my Sharpshooter archetype with these things in mind.

[gallagherwitt]

Plot Bunnies, Plot Chickens, Etc.

As a lot of people aren’t familiar with plot creatures, I thought I’d shed some light on the members of the mental menagerie…

The Plot Bunny - Story ideas that come bounding in and start multiplying.

The Plot Chicken - They squawk, flap around, and shit everywhere, but when you actually need to do something with them, they scatter.

The Plot Sloth - Takes its sweet goddamned time turning into something useful.

The Plot Mule - When you mash two plots together and get something cool, but you can’t get a sequel out of it to save your life.

The Plot Cat - Lazy little bastards who take up your headspace, scare away all the other plot bunnies, but won’t actually do anything except lay there.

The Plottweiler - Barks loudly and viciously so you can’t ignore it, distracts you from everything else you want to write, but leaves you too paralyzed with fear to actually put words down.

The Plot Squirrel - Cute, distracting, full of nuts, and just TRY to keep up with that train of thought.

The Plot Bedbug - Shows up during the night, chews on you so you can’t sleep, and disappears in the daylight.

The Plot Tick - Burrows in, bleeds you dry, and leaves you with the creepy-crawlies. Mostly preys on horror writers.

The Plotroach - Totally unappealing, but so tenacious they’ll survive anything until you finally give up and write them.

What Plot Creatures have you encountered?