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@cupid-aro
Hello!
I am Cupid, as you may or may not know. I post stuff. Mostly writing, my thoughts, and what I’m interested in atm probably 😗
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Do u guys ever think about dying?
tips on how to write a good flashback between dialogue?
Two Tips for Writing a Flashback During Dialogue
1) Use the dialogue as a bump into and out of the flashback. In other words, something someone said triggers the flashback, and something someone says brings the person out of the flashback.
"I haven't been this tired since prom night senior year..."
My brain helpfully supplied the imagery: the six of us, walking down Old Highway 9 in our bare feet, carrying our shoes and heels, four miles into what turned out to be a seven-and-a-half mile hike from hell. Hemmed in by total darkness beyond the trees that lined the highway, and the occasional barking of distant coyotes to remind us we were in the middle of nowhere all alone.
"I still haven't worn heels again, and that was almost two years ago. Worst night ever."
"It really was," I agree.
2) Keep it super short. The last thing you want to do is interrupt your dialogue with a long block of anything that isn't further dialogue. Not only does it disrupt the flow of the conversation, you're also forcing the reader to go back to where the dialogue left off so they can remember the last thing that was said. Keep it to no more than a paragraph or two very short ones.
Have fun with your story!
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I’m not sure if it’s a valid question or not, but I can’t find any opinions on this topic at all
What do you think of purposefully writing a person with a dry personality?
Is it even a good idea? Can it be too boring?
They’re one of the MCs but not the main one. The main one isn’t dry at all.
I just thought it could be interesting to do, and it would fit with the vague idea I currently have on them.
Writing Character with a "Dry Personality"
(Please see edit at bottom!)
"Dry personality" means "boring," and the last thing we want to do as writers is create a boring character. However, there are boring people in real life, so why wouldn't we want to portray that in fiction? Well, because fiction isn't real life, and real life doesn't always translate well to the page. Boring people are boring in real life, we certainly don't want them to be boring in our stories.
But the thing about boring people in real life is that they're rarely as boring as they appear to be. Boring people can have interesting private lives--they just don't choose to share them with everyone.
So, that's the key to having a character with a dry personality--let that be who they are on the surface, but let the reader see the interesting person they are beneath the surface. Let them see their rich internal world and vibrant private life.
Have fun with your story!
Edited to add:
Anonymous asked: I’m the one who talked about a dry character I’m not sure if I specified, but by dry I meant the way they speak! Not their whole personality! That wouldn’t be very interesting haha
This was the next ask and I didn't see it before I posted. Please, everyone, take a moment to really think about your asks before you send them in. Because I may not always see explanations or addendums that come in after the original ask.
As for the question, I'm not really sure why a person's dialogue would be dry if their personality wasn't. I think you'd really have to ask why you want to do this and what you think it would add to the story. If it doesn't add anything, I wouldn't bother with it. :)
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THIS ISNT A WRITING BLOG ANYMORE
This is just gonna be a variety blog where I post what I’m interested in!
How to write kids, if you don't remember being one or haven't lived with any
1. Kids never feel as small as you see them. A three year old thinks a one year old is a baby and a six year old is grown up. A six year old thinks a three year old is a baby and a twelve year old is an adult. Age is about perspective. One year is a huge age difference to a little kid.
2. Little kids might not be conscious of their physical limitations, but they can still be frustrated by them. A seven year old might see an adult do something relatively simple, like draw a straight line or perfectly crack an egg, and try to do the same thing, only to be frustrated when it doesn't work.
Imagine suddenly having an injury that makes a skill you use every day become difficult- you feel you should be able to do the thing, and you understand the thing should be easy for you, but it isn't. It can be immensely frustrating to have a brain that grasps a concept that language or fine motor skills haven't caught up to.
3. You know when you forget a word, and have to make something up on the fly to describe the word? That's pretty much exactly what learning your first language is like.
You know what you intend, but you don't have a way to express it, and it can move you to tears with frustration when everyone around you is suggesting the wrong thing, or seems completely certain they understand what you mean, and they don't.
You don't have a word for "Later"? You might try saying "next time", or, "after", or, "before tomorrow".
This might result in saying, "Are we going to the park next time?", "Are we going to the park before tomorrow?", or, "Are we going to the park after?", all of which can result in different answers.
4. Kids feel like adults are a different species. They don't get why we do certain things, and they don't understand why we don't want to run around with them all the time.
If sitting still is boring, coffee tastes bitter, and long conversations only happen with weird-smelling strangers who talk to them like they're stupid, then they truly will not understand why anyone would *want* to be left to have coffee with a friend without welcome distractions to make it bearable.
Aren't you bored? You aren't doing anything. How could you possibly be stimulated without any food or toys or music or anything? Why don't you just leave? Do you *have* to be there, the way you had to go to work? Adults are weird.
5. Children have complex social relationships that are just as varied as yours.
A room full of third graders might look like indiscriminate chaos to an adult, but pick a well connected kid, and they'll tell you that Megan is the fashion icon who can do hair really well, Thomas is the athlete, Gray gets mean when he has to share so nobody wants to play with him, Paisley can't read and the boys make fun of her for it so don't make her work in a group with Anthony, Dillon put a bug in their food once so they'll never trust him again, and Matthew's parents let him watch family guy so he says bad words and makes grown-up jokes that make other kids uncomfortable.
You don't see this stuff because you aren't inside the society. They are, and they do.
6. Time. Moves. So. Slow. Five minutes really does feel like half an hour. Sit still for five minutes? That's like you sitting in a waiting room at the DMV for an hour. Wouldn't you get annoyed and impatient? They haven't learned to hide their irritation yet. That's really the only difference.
7. "Reading in your head" requires understanding that you have a Voice, which people can hear, and Thoughts, which are audible only to yourself. This can be a difficult concept to grasp. If a kid is reading out loud, and you tell them to read quietly, there's a good chance they're going to whisper or mouth the words instead of going totally silent the way you might. Splitting the self into multiples like "Internal monologue VS public perception" or "What I look like VS how I think I look" is alien and bizarre. If a kid thinks they look like a Dragon and you laugh at them? Ouch. They might be mad for a while.
8. Repetitive chores make no sense when your awareness of time doesn't extend beyond a week or so. Why should I wash my blankets? They don't look dirty and I don't smell anything bad. Blankets don't get dirty unless you put dirt on them. If you put a blanket in a washer, you can't use that blanket AT ALL the ENTIRE TIME it's being cleaned. That might be an hour, but it will *feel* like a week. And you have to do that every two weeks?? That's overkill. Why even bother?
9. Kids have opinions about adults. They will have a sense about whether an adult is "real-kind" or "fake-kind". An adult who listens respectfully to what they have to say, asks thoughtful questions, and takes their concerns seriously? That's a good adult. An adult that oversimplifies their struggles, ignores their complex social rules, and gives bullshit advice like "just walk away from bullies" and "turn your chores into a fun game"? That's not a trustworthy adult. That's an Adult™. An Adult™ doesn't consider them to be a real human being with thoughts and emotions. An Adult™ sees them as an inferior, amusing pet. And they will actively sabotage An Adult™ like that.
10. Emotions are physical at a young age. Joy might make their body buzz until they can't help but wiggle or jump around. Sadness might be a huge physical pain in their throat and heart. Everything they experience is still relatively.New to.them, so there is very little frame of reference to decide if this is a "big hurt that will last forever and ever and never go away", or a "small hurt, that can be fixed easily and won't matter in five minutes". If someone lies to them about getting a cookie, that very well might be all the betrayal of your best friend sleeping with your husband.
Fortunately, a child probably won't be able to burn all your clothes in the yard without your notice.
— random character description questions on various topics 👀: a small list
as someone who constantly struggles about how to describe their characters, what to mention, and where to start, I've compiled a small list of things and scenarios to consider about your characters, focusing on random habits and traits that aren't just physical/visual to add some spice to your descriptions and help you figure them out a little bit better. feel free to use it to better flesh out your characters while writing, or have your followers send you one of these and answer to let everyone know your ocs/muses better!
how's the sound of their laugh? (if they laugh, that is!)
how do they respond when someone's feeling down?
how do they act around children?
do they make eye contact with others look at their feet/somewhere else?
how do they act when they cry? (if they ever do it)
are they a hug person or a handshake person?
what makes their eyes light up?
how do they react when they're caught in a lie?
do they smile with their teeth?
do they stand up with their back straight or slouched?
what do they do when they start getting impatient?
do they like to talk about themselves?
what's an item they always carry with them?
can they tell a joke without laughing before finishing it?
do they like to take pictures?
do they have any pets? do they like animals in general?
what's their comfort meal?
is there any subject they don't like to talk about?
how's their relationship with their immediate family?
are they chatty or reserved?
what do they do with their hands during a conversation? cross their arms? fidget with something?
10+ Questions for Character Creation
Here are some things to think about when creating new characters that will help you bring them to the next level. Some of these questions are interchangeable, but answering them can really help you when writing/playing your characters.
1. What do they want the most in the world? How far are they willing to go to achieve it? Specifically define what they wouldn’t do.
2. Who are they the closest to? How would they react if those people died? How would they react if those people betrayed them?
3. What is their worst fear? How would they react when faced with that fear?
4. What is the worst thing that ever happened to them? And what is the best thing? Define how it influenced them and/or their lives.
5. If they could change one thing about themselves/their lives, what would it be and why?
6. Are they addicted to something? From alcohol to the thrill of the hunt, define it and don’t forget to use it.
7. Did they ever kill someone? If so, how did they react after their first kill? If not, how would they react if they had to kill someone?
8. Would they ever sacrifice themselves? If so, what would they be willing to die for?
9. How do they react to meeting new people? Is it easy for them to socialize? If they were at a party, where and how would they spend most of the time?
10. What are their flaws and weaknesses? Is it something that they can work on and improve over the course of the story?
…
Let me know if you’d be interested in more writing tips like this and what specifically would you like me to focus on :) See ya!
Writing a good gift
I hate gift giving.
I mean, I love it when I know what to give but that’s rarely the case.
Thankfully, in fiction, character’s will like what we tell them to like. But a powerful gift within the narrative requieres a bit more than for the character to like it. So here’s a couple of ideas to help:
1.- Make it something useful. Show your character having a recurring problem, preferably something unimportant, something trivial. Don’t show them complaining, show their frustration through smaller details such as them taking a deep breath, rubbing their nose or pausing for just a second mid-task.
This shows two important details on part of the gift giver: them paying attention to notice the problem and them finding a solution.
Attentiveness plus problem solving. Meaningful no matter how minor.
2.- Make it something they like, but something they’ve bought up only passingly before. If it’s something they love and go on about, anybody could get the right gift. Make it a small detail, maybe they’re at a farm in an early chapter and the receiver mentions their favourite animal, towards the end of the book the gift givers gets a plush, a figurine or a necklace with the animal.
Same as before, attentiveness. Just make sure it doesn’t happen too soon, if the information is still fresh the reader will be like: “Well, you literally just bought that up to make this gift meaningful.” And they might be right, but give them time to forget and then be reminded and it’s like: “Oh! They remembered!”
I did a whole post dedicated to giving time for things to sit, it’s a thing.
3.- Make it hard. Hard to find. If they make it themselves, hard to make. Maybe they need to get the materials, hard to collect materials for? You ever heard of the McGuffin trope? Some people say it’s bad writing, personally, I believe it depends. But it’s the idea that the item doesn’t matter, it’s just an excuse for the actions to get it. Look at the gift like a McGuffin. But if you want it to be more meaningful, combine it with one of the previous points.
4.- Maybe the gift isn’t the important part, maybe it’s the way it’s wrapped, with her favourite colour wrapping paper, maybe it’s the hand written note with a desperate attempt at cursive because, “You’re hand writing is so pretty, I thought it must matter to you.” Perhaps it a hand-made card that goes with it. Perhaps they’re separated for a mission but the gift givers sneaks away and risks a lot to get the gift to the receiver despite it all. (This could also end in a big argument but that’s up to you).
Remember sometimes the point of a gift isn’t the gift but the situation surrounding it.
5.- Make it something important to the gift giver. This is a pretty common trope but when properly established it still gets me every time. This is the whole, “Here, take my dead mother’s necklace.” “But it means so much to you!” “But I’d rather you have it!” Trope. I’m a sucker for it.
Also, it doesn’t always have to come from the gifter. I have a scene way later on in my series where the love interest actually gives my main character something (not going to say what, that would be a spoiler) that he got from her father that once belonged ot her mother. It’s similar because the father gives it up so she can have it, but then it comes from the love interest. I’m not sure if this makes sense without context but obviously I don’t want to spoil like, final book scenes. But the idea is, there can be other characters involved in this, other than the two giver and receiver.
6.- Maybe it isn’t important, maybe it isn’t meaningful, maybe it become so over time. I have plenty of stupid bits of plastic that were given to me on a night out as a joke in between laughters, perhaps a baby Shark kinder egg or a pretty plastic ring. But then instead of getting rid of it, I put it away. I look back at it and smile remembering those nights. Something can be meaningless in the moment, but become meaningful just for staying around long enough.
Extra points if the grifter dies or otherwise leaves.
And those are my 6 tips. You can combine as you wish. Also, I used a love interest in one example, but anybody can give anybody a gift! I give gifts to my roommates, friends and family. And it’s just as important to work on the relationships that aren’t romantic as it is the romantic ones. (Unless you’re writing a romance I guess, but I only do fantasy, usually YA so, can’t really comment on that).
As usual, check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.
So, with christmas coming up, how’s your gift buying going? I knows it’s not that soon, but I have exams in November so I try to start really early. I have a special box where I just put things in.
EXTRA NOTE: I know, I know, I’ve been missing for a while. I’ve got one month at university and as always, exams, homework, chaos everywhere! I promise I’m still around, I promise I’ve got 18 drafts plus several lists of ideas. As soon as I have time I’ll get back into posting more often. I just have to prioritize school, work, paying for food and those good boring stuff!
Also, I’ll be putting my ebook on sale sometime this December for Christmas! So, you know, if you want a gift idea for someone who likes reading YA Fantasy with dragons, look out for that!
Okay seriously. Reblog if you're OLDER than 11.
why is it that not more than 1/20 of Tumblr haven’t reblogged this
Playlist for my WIP!!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Wrbj8KpMdP7zx78pHY42E?si=1EwyYgtSST2E2gbrqdlFGA
writing strong protagonists
protagonists are often meant to be relatable to the reader, but because one’s audience is so vast and varied, it can often mean that protagonists simply become flat.
but the key to writing a good protagonist, in my opinion, is making them sympathetic - and having something about them that appeals to the reader, whether that be their sense of humour, their moral compass, or their relationships with other people!
disclaimer: i am not a professional writer, i'm a student who writes for fun, so make sure you do your own research. this is based solely on my own experience and opinion.
give them purpose
this is quite basic, but every protagonist must have a very strong motivation that the reader sympathises with. it could be love, revenge, loyalty, fear, fulfilment, approval, or anything else. but when you clearly establish why your character is doing what they are doing and make sure that it is justified in their internal narrative (i'll elaborate more on this later), the reader will want to support them.
make them sympathetic
this is a continuation of the previous point, but essentially, you need to make sure that your character justifies their own actions in their internal narrative. even if they do something rash, immoral, unhinged, or poorly executed, the decisions that they make should seem to make sense to them. essentially, give them a strong moral compass.
add a sense of humour
especially if you're writing in the first person, let your character have a sense of humour! let them make rude comments internally about people walking by them, let them be awkward and uncomfortable, and let them laugh about stupid things constantly. adding a sense of humour lightens the tone and makes your character more human, and although it may seem like it at first, it doesn't take away from the depth or meaning of your writing at all. it just makes it fun to read!
in six of crows, the characters spend very long making fun of kaz and his bad hair, and the book has some very complex themes. percy jackson has a younger target audience, so the humour is laced throughout the storytelling rather than added in bits and pieces, but that only makes percy more likeable.
give them LOTS of flaws
do NOT hold back on your character's flaws. not only does this make their character development richer, it makes the characters sympathetic and fun to read about. if your character loses their temper at the drop of a hat, it leads to much more conflict. if your character is a pushover they'll end up doing many things that they don't really want to. if your character is selfish, they might push other people away. if your character is socially awkward, they could miscommunicate and/or end up in situations they don't want to be in.
when a protagonist is too perfect, they don't have enough internal conflict and also separate themselves from the reader, because your reader will relate to one if not all of the flaws your protagonist has, which will make them far more likeable.
make sure you know them
i put this as the final point because i feel like it's both the most obvious and the most important - you should know your characters inside and out. you should know how they would react to different situations and the way that the inside of their mind works so that you're able to translate that to your story.
hey there! i've read about internal conflict in your previous post. i have a question: can i still write about a person's internal conflict (who's not the protagonist) if my story is third-person limited? if so, how? thank you so much ♡
Internal Conflict vs Internal Monologue
It sounds like you're confusing internal conflict with internal monologue.
Internal monologue is a character's interior life... it's the exploration of their thoughts, feelings, opinions, memories, etc. While a character's thoughts and feelings can be explored in any POV to some degree, in first-person we can give the reader an intimate, unfiltered view of what's going on inside a character's head.
Third-person limited offers a slightly less intimate view of a character's thoughts and feelings, but because it's limited to one POV character at a time, it's still more intimate than what you'd get in third-person omniscient. You can explore multiple POVs in third-person limited. All you have to do is make sure you separate each character's POV by either a scene break or a chapter break.
Internal conflict, on the other hand, is the problem that exists inside your character's head (versus the one that exists in their world, which is the external conflict.) Examples of internal conflict would be a character feeling stuck in their life and wanting a change. Another example would be a character who feels responsible for the safety and well being of a loved one to the detriment of their own happiness.
The exploration of a character's internal conflict does not require an unfiltered view inside the character's mind, so it does not require first-person POV. It can be done in any POV. Simply figure out your character's internal conflict and find ways in the story to illustrate that conflict and how it relates to your character's thoughts and actions. Remember: you can explore character thought in third-person limited and omniscient, too. You're just not putting the reader inside the character's head.
I hope that answers your question! ♥
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When people talk about their 1st draft and rewriting, do they mean like LITERALLY rewriting EVERYTHING? Because to me at least, my 1st draft doesn't really change. Yeah I might rewrite some paragraphs that sound odd, or rephrase some stuff, dialogues also change to sound more natural, but I'd say 80% of it doesn't change, not a single word. I didn't spend months planning a story to rewrite it right after I finished it. Do I trust my writing too much? Or am I interpreting "rewriting" wrong?
What it Means to "Re-Write" a Draft
"Re-writing" is really just a synonym for revising and editing, and like revising and editing, what exactly it entails is different for every writer and every draft.
Lots of writers I know (myself included) like to actually rewrite a draft, but that doesn't mean writing it from scratch and scrapping a large part of what's already there. For some of us, rather than re-reading and making precision changes as we go, it's easier for us to just re-type what's there from the beginning, keeping everything we want to keep and changing everything we don't. Like everything related to writing process, what works for some doesn't work for others. So, if what you're doing works for you, keep doing it! :)
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Do you have any thoughts on writing a rich protagonist?
Portraying a Wealthy Character
1) Avoid Rich People Caricatures - Rich people tend to be portrayed as super stuffy, high class, arrogant, and miserly. While those people do exist, wealthy people don't all look and act one way, so it's a good idea to avoid those old clichés.
2) Well Connected vs Best Friends with Celebrities - Another rich people cliché is that they're all best friends with celebrities, go to celebrity parties, meet celebrities at dinner. Wealthy people do tend to be well connected, and sometimes rub elbows with high profile rich people at parties and events, but that doesn't mean they're best friends with celebrities or get invited to their parties. There are actually lots of rich people who can honestly say they're not good friends with a celebrity or haven't hung out at a celebrity's home. They're often as starstruck as anyone else is when they meet a celebrity.
3) Privilege Matters - One thing that's true of wealthy people is that their money affords them privilege a lot of people don't have. At the very least, their wealth shields them from the worries the rest of us frequently have. They have access to better healthcare, better education, better connections, better jobs, more services... the list goes on. So, whether or not your character acknowledges their privilege, it's a good idea to consider how it plays a role in their lives.
You can read up on wealthy people tropes (and clichés) at sights like TV Tropes and All the Tropes to make sure you put a fresh spin on your character.
Good luck!
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"Narrative distance"? Do tell!
Explain it in text? Without emphatic arm gestures or wine? Oh god. Okay. I’ll try.
All right, so narrative distance is all about the proximity between you the reader and the POV character in a story you’re reading. You might sometimes also hear it called “psychic distance.” It puts you right up close to that character or pulls you away, and the narrative distance an author chooses greatly affects how their story turns out, because it can drastically change the focus.
Here’s an illustration of narrative distance from far to close, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction (a book I yelled at a lot, because Gardner is a pretentious bastard, but he does say very smart things about craft):
It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
Henry hated snowstorms.
God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul
It feels a bit like zooming in with a camera, doesn’t it?
I always hate making decisions about narrative distance, because I usually get it wrong on the first try and have to fix it in revision. When I was writing Lost Causes, the first thing I had to do in revision was go through and zoom in a little on the narrative distance, because it felt like it was sitting right on top of Bruce’s prickly skin and it needed to be underneath where the little biting comments and intrusive thoughts lived.
Narrative distance is probably the simplest form of distance in POV, and there is where if I had two glasses of wine in me you would hit a vein of pure yelling. There are SO MANY forms of distance in POV. There’s the distance between the intended reader and the POV character, the distance between the POV character and the narrator (even if it’s 1st person!), the distance between the narrator and the author. There’s emotional distance, intellectual distance, psychological distance, experiential distance. If you look closely at a 3rd person POV story, you can tell things about the narrator as a person (and the narrator is an entity independent of the author) - like, for starters, you can tell if they’re sympathetic to the POV character by how they talk about their actions. Word choice and sentence structure can tell you a narrator’s level of education and where they’re from; you can sometimes even tell a narrator’s gender, class, and other less obvious identifying factors if you look closely enough. To find these details, ask: What does the narrator (or POV character, or author) understand?
I can’t put a name on the narrator of the Harry Potter books, but I can tell you he understands British culture intimately, what it’s like to be a teen boy with a crush, to not have money, to be lonely and abused, and to find and connect with people. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand (he doesn’t pick out little flags of queerness like I do, so he’s probably straight, for example), but he sympathizes with Harry and supports him. I like that narrator. I’m supposed to sympathize with him, and I do.
POV is made up of these little distances - countless small questions of proximity that, when stacked together, decide whether we’re going to root for or against a character, or whether we’ll put down a book 20 pages in, or whether a story will punch you in just the right place at just the right amount to make you bawl your eyes out.
There are so many different possible configurations of distance in this arena that there are literally infinite POVs. Fiction is magical and also intimidating as fuck.
*stares blankly with a look of sudden realisation*
I.. have been writing on and off all my life (though not professionally), and I’ve never actually put a name to thinking about this specific issue. Interesting! I think sometimes I struggle with keeping narrative distance consistent in what I write- tending to go into close focus on a character’s feelings and thoughts at the start more than later on, and more often when they’re feeling emotions like fear and anger than when they’re just.. thinking. Now I know that ‘narrative distance’ is a thing helps me better be on the lookout for that. Not that I’m saying consistency is necessarily best, but.. it would pay for me to be more conscious of what I’m doing.
We got this very quote about psychic distance in a story-writing course I took in college. Gardner goes on to say that it’s very jarring when the narration goes from one level of psychic distance to another that isn’t immediately beside it. Going from 2 to 3 is fine, but if you go from 4 to 2 without passing through 3 on the way, you don’t have a smooth narrative voice. (There was an example given that I can’t recall exactly, but it was something along the lines of “Ms. Jane Smythe had always disliked cicadas. Lord, she thought, they’ll drive me crazy! The young woman had never personally encountered any cicadas, but she knew what they were like.”)
OP makes some excellent points about other kinds of psychic distance, and now I want to think about how they apply to Steven King’s increasingly present narrator-voice over the course of the Dark Tower series.
