Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:
A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin
A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans
A clock that isn’t 24-hours
More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know
Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain
Multiple moons/no moon
Planetary rings
A northern lights effect, but near the equator
Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks
Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals
Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands
The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage
No concept of virginity or bastardry
More than 2 genders/no concept of gender
Monotheism, but not creationism
Gods that don’t look like people
Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats
Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot
Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom
“Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls
A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language
A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)
I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.
One Of The Issues With People Trying To Do World Building Can Be Seen Here Because, The Concept Of Marriage Can Be Excluded Entirely, In Place You Could Do Something Like, A Society Without Romantic Relationships Entirely It Could Be Utopian Or Dystopian As In A Society Where Everybody Is Able To Have Relations With Anyone Else Provided Consent, Or It Could Be Where Parents Are Chosen By Maybe The Government Or Maybe The Gods/God To Make Perfect Stronger Children
It’s important to ask what your why is—the main thing that gives you a strong sense of purpose and well-being. Once you crystallize this into a personal mission statement, you can find greater fulfillment, develop more confidence, and make more of a positive impact on people’s lives.
What Is Your "Why"?
Your why is your purpose in life, the driving force that keeps you going when times get hard and keeps you diligent when things are going well.
Everyone has a different why, although there are several common threads.
Love, success, legacy, security—these are just some of the main things people might articulate as their why.
Your why might be obtaining financial independence or finding a job that enables you to travel the world. It could be seeking meaningful relationships or pursuing your personal ambitions. Perhaps it’s looking at life with a sense of humor or with a focus on helping those in need. No matter what it is, it can serve as your North Star—a central guiding principle to help you make both everyday and extremely consequential decisions.
Tips for Identifying Your Why
It might seem like a lofty goal to identify your why, but it might be easier than you think. Here are seven steps to take action and find a greater degree of personal and professional purpose:
Ask a lot of questions. Take a Socratic approach to your own life as it stands right now. Start with why you’re even hoping to identify your why in the first place. Ask what your core values are and identify the things that leave you wanting more about your life and the things that fulfill you. Even if you ask a million questions before you firmly identify a crystal clear why, the effort will have been a good use of your time in the long run.
Be kind to yourself. As you ask yourself questions about what your own personal value set is, answers will start to come into view. This leads to a greater degree of self-awareness that can sometimes lead to judgment. No matter what, try to be patient and understanding with yourself as you try to figure out a mission or why statement that works for you. The kinder you are to yourself, the more honest you can be—and the more honest you can be, the sooner you’ll find your why.
Connect with your career. You’ll need to find a way to calibrate your why with the need to earn an income. For some, this is simple—financial security might be their most fundamental why, meaning they’ll find it easy to take any job that promises them security. For others, their why might be something more idealistic, signaling meaningful work might be more important than a high-paying salary. In any case, given everybody spends so much of their time involved in their career, you might want your workday to serve your why, whatever it is.
Help others. Your why is a means to improving not only your own life, but also the lives of others. Ask yourself how your personal mission statement can help you be a better leader for your team, a more caring provider for your family, and a more engaged citizen in your community. Your why should be able to touch every corner of your life and, by extension, every person in it, too.
Recalibrate regularly. You might not know how to live out your why right from the start—for that matter, it’s easy to get distracted from your sense of purpose even if you’ve had a lot of practice. To live your best life, create daily habits to remind you of your why. Add an upbeat playlist or self-help podcast to your morning routine. Check in with yourself throughout the day about how much you feel calibrated with your stated why or central purpose.
Revise your why when necessary. Identifying your why comes with a disclaimer: Real life throws a lot of curveballs, meaning your why might change a lot over the years. Even if your why in the short term is not your why in the long term, it’s useful to keep track of all your whys throughout your life. You might notice you’re trending in a specific direction with these core values, making it easier to define a more holistic and long-lasting why as a result.
Seek out new perspectives. Self-help means seeking out new perspectives and people to inspire you and further cement your why. Look for great leaders and mentors with a firm sense of self to help you develop your own. Read books and seek out content that serves you and boosts your productivity, positivity, and purpose.
Why Identify Your "Why"?
Crystallizing your why into an affirmative life purpose statement helps you solidify what matters most to you.
When you identify your why, you can wake up every morning like it’s New Year’s Day—full of resolution to make positive changes and focus on self-improvement.
Identifying your why will make you happier and help you impact people in a positive way.
The more you know why you do the things you do and the more purpose you feel in every step, the more likely it is you can improve the world as a whole, too.
1. TRAVEL – journeying from one location to another not only gives you opportunities to describe different places, it also allows you to develop:
Relative distances
Relative locations
Roads or ways
Modes of transport
Methods of navigation
The status of travellers/foreigners
The state of the home world
2. VIEWPOINTS – using a variety of different characters as lenses through which to view the world helps you develop greater depth and breadth.
3. GROUPS vs. INDIVIDUALS – cultures are created by the interaction between groups and individuals. Although dealing with larger groups of characters may lead you to make generalisations, it’s helpful for developing the “big picture” and contrasting it to the private and specific.
4. INTERNAL vs. EXTERNAL – the counterchange between the character’s internal and external worlds, and how the perception of one influences the other (for example, through symbols, metaphors, projection, manifestation, and bias) is a rich vein of material for developing your story world.
5. HOME – a character’s home or “ordinary world” is often an essential component of the story world, allowing you to create contrast and determine the character’s (and reader’s) perception of new cultures. And of course, it makes the return journey possible.
6. REVISITING – if you’ve never studied the worldbuilding of your favourite novels, you might be surprised to find how often characters revisit locations. This kind of repetition really cements the importance of a particular place in the character’s life.
7. TIME – placing the world in a timeline has many uses:
Develop history
Emphasise mortality
Describe (degenerative or regenerative) cycles
Show repetition
Show how things are forgotten or lost
Describe slower, long-term change
Give events varying degrees of temporal (and narrative) weight
When your Characters Need to Build Respect in their Relationship
In a relationship, respect describes each person's esteem and consideration for the other.
In relationships of mutual respect, both people demonstrate similar respect.
This manifests as both explicit respect, where you articulate your respect in front of other people, and implicit respect, where your actions suggest underlying trust and admiration. You may naturally feel respect for someone you admire and for whom you have strong feelings; however, it may be harder to show that respect in meaningful ways.
With practice, you can develop simple ways to show respect to family, friends, colleagues, and intimate partners while cutting out the signs of disrespect that often mar toxic or abusive relationships.
How to Build Respect in Your Relationship
Building true respect takes effort. In a new relationship, the lack of mutual understanding can make deep respect difficult to cultivate. Long-term relationships pose their own challenges, as it’s easy to take the other person for granted. Below are some ways to build and maintain respect with important people in your life:
Be attentive: Build a healthy relationship by paying attention to your partner. This will give you a sense of their wants and needs, what makes them happy, and what makes them feel safe. All of these help you exhibit respect.
Carefully choose your words: Even a fleeting unkind remark can damage a relationship and set back mutual respect. Sometimes you can more easily observe the hurtful power of words in other people‘s relationships. The disrespectful behavior you may observe, like belittling and name-calling, can be a window into your own behavior. If you suspect you also resort to toxic language, take steps to halt that behavior and communicate respectfully.
Offer validation: Few things promote respect, like having your feelings validated, especially when feeling overwhelmed or confused. Show respect by letting your partner know you hear them and appreciate their experiences.
Practice healthy conflict resolution: Disagreements happen, even in the most successful relationships. When the inevitable conflict arises, prioritize hearing the other out, exchanging different viewpoints, and agreeing to disagree if necessary. The alternatives—yelling, resentment, or the silent treatment—sometimes may feel justified, but they won’t help you build lasting respect. By committing to healthy conflict resolution, you emphasize how your respect your partner.
Respect yourself: Knowing your own needs and having healthy self-respect go hand in hand with respecting your partner. In a toxic relationship, a person exhibiting a lack of respect often suffers from low self-esteem and projects their insecurities onto their partner. They belittle them and deny them respect to feel relatively powerful. People who cultivate self-respect have an easier time showing respect to others.
Show patience: Patience works in tandem with respect in a loving relationship. Accept that you and your partner are both human beings who can make mistakes and rely on the other person’s patience. Make your partner feel respected by offering reasonable levels of patience as they work through issues.
Respect forms a cornerstone of healthy relationships. Whether you’re dealing with a coworker, a longtime friend, or a romantic partner, respect and trust go hand in hand. Mutual respect portends strong relationships by creating four significant relationship assets, which include:
Healthy boundaries: Even in a romantic relationship marked by true love, people need boundaries and personal space. A respectful significant other will accept your need to have space and time alone or with other friends. Respect that your partner has these needs as well.
Honesty: If you have true respect for another person, you will let them in on your honest thoughts and feelings. Honesty not only fosters respect and prolongs relationships, but it also promotes mental health and a sense of well-being.
Stability: Every relationship—business, artistic, friendly, romantic—goes through tough times. People grow and change, and circumstances aren’t always stable. A solid foundation of respect makes a relationship more likely to weather the ups and downs. This helps mutually respectful partners stay together for the long term.
Trust: In any respectful relationship, the parties involved enjoy a sense of security and trust. Your partner needs to know that you accept them for who they are and that you won’t quickly or harshly judge them. As you build trust, you create an environment safe for mutual respect.
Fable - a short story that illustrates a moral lesson.
The plot includes a simple conflict and a resolution, followed by a maxim.
Features anthropomorphized animals and natural elements as main characters.
The moral of a fable—an overarching rule to live by that transcends the specifics of the story—is usually stated at the end.
For example, in the fable of the wolf and the sheep, a wolf in sheep’s clothing is able to infiltrate the sheep’s pasture without raising any alarm, and easily make a meal out of the sheep.
The moral of the story is that appearances can be deceiving.
Central Characteristics of a Fable
Fables are defined by four central essential elements.
Symbolism. Characters in fables are stand-ins for humans, and their misadventures are meant to symbolize human behavior.
Anthropomorphization. In fables, animals and even inanimate objects (like the wind, or the sun) are the main characters of the story and are given human qualities. Some animals have specific traits associated with them. For example, an owl is wise, a fox is cunning, and a lion is brave.
Lessons. Every fable has a moral lesson at the end that arises from the story. For example: “Slow and steady wins the race.”
Humor. Fables often have a humorous tone when showing the foolishness of human nature.
How to Write a Fable
Step 1: Determine the Moral of the Story
Decide on a maxim that will be the focus of your story and come at the end of the resolution. The key is that a moral is a lifelong lesson or an overarching rule to live by. It is not a specific lesson that only applies in certain situations. For example, some common examples of morals are:
Treat others as you would like to be treated.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Appearances can be deceiving.
By contrast, “Always brush your teeth before you go to bed” is not a moral—it is too specific.
Step 2: Pick Your Characters
Choose two animals or inanimate objects to serve as your main characters.
Some fables have just one character, and some have more than two, but two is most common. In Aesop’s fables, which are the most well-known fables in the English language, the characters are usually forest creatures.
Think lions, mice, bears, foxes, spiders, and owls.
For your own fable, you can choose to stay in the traditional vein of forest creatures, or you can branch out and try something new.
Perhaps you’d like to create a fable that takes place at the bottom of the ocean, or on Mars. The choice is yours.
You also pick non-animal characters, like the wind, the sun, the sea, or even an object like a pot.
Your characters do not need names; they will be called what they are: the fox, the wolf, the sun, and so on.
Step 3: Pick Your Characters’ Traits
Whatever characters you choose, they will each need a defining trait that will play a big part in the story.
Many animals are traditionally associated with human qualities. For example, a wise owl; a crafty fox; an industrious bee; a tricky spider; or a strong ox.
Choose traits that you will be able to place in opposition to each other or contrast in some way with the plot of your fable. For example, in Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise is slow but steady, while the hare is fast but cocky.
Most fables have 2 characters, which makes it easy to contrast the negative consequences of one’s behavior with the positive consequences of another’s.
It’s also possible that the character with bad behavior wins the day; in this case, your moral will have something to do with trust, trickery, or bad faith.
Step 4: Shape the Conflict
Based on the characters and character traits you have identified, what kinds of conflicts could they get into?
Choose one simple conflict that will demonstrate their personality traits. Example: in The Tortoise and the Hare, a footrace is the perfect setting in which to contrast one character who is slow but determined and focused, with another character who is a fast runner but is braggadocious and easily distracted from his goal.
Consider using a graphic organizer to lay out your fable.
This can be a very simple chart, with columns going from left to right labeled “characters,” “personification,” “conflict,” and “outcome/moral.”
Step 5: Write
You are now ready to write. Remember that fables are very short stories, and simply written, with no extraneous details.
Finally, consider writing your fable in verse.
Rhyme and meter will make your fable memorable and fun. If you have more practice with narrative writing than you do with poetry, it will also offer a challenge, and an opportunity to exercise different writing skills.
The Origin of Fables
The word “fable” comes from the Latin “fabula,” or “story.” Most Western fables come from the famous fabulist Aesop, who wrote in ancient Greece. In ancient Greek education, students were taught fables and encouraged to make up and recite their own. Some of Aesop’s fables originate from India during the first millennium BCE.
Fables have a long European history. In the 17th century, French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine was inspired by Aesop to write fables that satirized the church, the court, and the ruling class of the time. De la Fontaine considered the moral to be the core element of the fable. Many European writers were inspired by de la Fontaine, including the Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov.
Traditionally, fables are written to teach children their culture’s appropriate behavior and values, but there are some exceptions.
For example, George Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm has some characteristics of a fable, even though it was a satire written for adults.
Examples of Famous Fables
The fox and the grapes. This fable is the origin of the phrase “sour grapes.” A fox spies a bunch of grapes high up on a branch and wants them badly. He takes a running jump to reach them but misses. He tries several more times, but to no avail. Finally, he gives up and walks away scornfully. The moral of the tale is: “There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.”
The lion and the mouse. A lion catches a mouse, who begs to be let go. The mouse promises to repay the lion in exchange for his life. The lion agrees and lets the mouse go. A few days later, the mouse comes upon the lion trapped in a hunter’s net, and, remembering the lion’s mercy, gnaws on the rope until the lion is free. The moral of the story is: “A kindness is never wasted.”
The tortoise and the hare. The tortoise and the hare enter a footrace. The hare jeers at the tortoise, remarking how naturally he is so much faster than the slow tortoise. During the race, the hare takes several long breaks and wastes time relaxing between quick sprints. Meanwhile, the tortoise chugs steadily along. In the end, the tortoise wins. The moral of the story is: “Slow and steady wins the race.”
The fox and the crow. A hungry fox comes upon a crow up in a tree with a bit of cheese in its mouth. The fox begins to talk to the crow, telling her she is so beautiful and must have a beautiful voice to match. At first, the crow stays silent, holding on to her cheese. But at last, after much flattery, she opens her mouth to crow. The cheese falls into the fox’s mouth. The moral of the story is: “The flatterer lives at the expense of those who will listen to him.”
Paragraph Transition - a sentence or unique paragraph that helps the reader move from one paragraph to the next, or from one idea to another.
A transition is the first sentence of a new paragraph.
Occasionally, the last sentence of the prior paragraph acts as the transition.
When a writer wants to transition link two substantial paragraphs, they can use a standalone transitional paragraph.
How to Transition Between Paragraphs
Understanding why we use paragraph transitions in the first place is obviously important, but learning how to effectively employ good transitions in your writing can sometimes come only through practice.
Outline your piece. Using an outline is vital to improving your writing process and should generally come before you start writing your piece. Outlining is important when you are working on transitional expressions and transition sentences because outlines give you a macro view of your piece as a whole, with signposts indicating the main ideas of each paragraph. Referring back to your outline can help you brainstorm types of transitions that set the stage for what’s to come and help your ideas flow.
Identify the subject of each paragraph. Once you’ve consulted your outline, it’s time to hone in on the main ideas of the paragraphs on either side of your transition. A good transition will have something to say about both the preceding paragraph and the new paragraph.
Track the overall arc of your piece. Transitions link two specific paragraphs, but make sure you have an eye on the overall arc of your essay. If you have a good sense of the bigger picture you can use your transitions to set up information that is still to come, beyond the next paragraph.
Brainstorm good transitional words. Transitional phrases often have similar word choice and style. Linking words and conjunctive adverbs are often used in paragraph transitions because they help establish the relationship between two separate ideas. Words like “therefore,” “nevertheless,” “although,” and “namely” quickly sum up how one idea relates to the next. Effective transition words keep your reader hooked into your piece.
Consider cause and effect. It’s not enough to simply link two subjects; transitional sentences should also effectively demonstrate how these ideas build on each other. This is especially true in academic writing or persuasive essay writing. It’s your job to convince your reader that you have built a coherent argument for your main thesis statement. Transition sentences can help show readers how your ideas build on each other and conceptually link one entire paragraph to the paragraph that follows.
Pay attention to style. The way that you transition between paragraphs and the types of transitions you use will depend on what type of piece you are writing. If you’re writing a high school- or college-level academic essay, you’ll probably want to avoid overly colloquial transitions. If you’re writing a personal essay or lighthearted humor piece, you should choose transitions that complement the voice of the piece.
Review your transition sentences separate from your piece. Once you’ve finished your piece, it’s useful to take a look at all your transitions out of context to make sure that you haven’t overused certain constructions or repeated word choice. Looking at a list of your transitions can also give you a good roadmap for the overall shape of your essay and can help you decide if you’ve built a cohesive piece of writing.
Reasons Paragraph Transitions Are Important
Paragraph transitions serve a variety of purposes, and understanding how they function within the context of a larger piece of writing is essential to clear writing. Usually transitions are full sentences that link paragraphs, but occasionally simple phrases or single words can effectively transition between two shorter paragraphs.
Paragraph transitions link ideas. First and foremost, paragraph transitions serve to link two ideas. A body paragraph is generally devoted to a main idea or concept that fits into the larger piece and explores a facet of the primary thesis statement. A transition sentence links your first paragraph to your second paragraph and so forth.
Paragraph transitions give your writing momentum. Paragraph transitions are incredibly helpful when it comes to building momentum in your writing. Effective transitions propel your essay forward and keep your readers engaged. This is particularly important in academic writing or professional writing that can otherwise feel dry or static.
Paragraph transitions improve readability. Transition words can help your readers track your ideas and understand how they relate to each other. Thoughtful transitions clue readers in to the progression of your ideas and your overall train of thought.
Paragraph transitions set the stage for new ideas. While effective transitions should tie up loose ends for material in the previous paragraph, it’s sometimes more important that they set the stage for the new ideas to come in the next paragraph. A written piece should have forward momentum, and transitions serve to prepare the reader for new information to come.
Character Mannerisms - a character’s unconscious individual gestures, affectations, or other distinctive behavioral traits.
These character quirks can be physical (like a character who constantly drums fingers on the table), vocal (like a character who mumbles), or have to do with a character’s personality (like a character with persistent anxiety).
In fiction, characters’ mannerisms help make them feel like real people and reveal character truths on an involuntary, subconscious level.
How to Use Character Mannerisms in Your Writing
Nonfiction and fiction writers alike use character mannerisms to create distinct, instantly memorable characters. However, these mannerisms can also serve practical purposes in your writing, helping to convey essential information about your characters or story. Here are the ways that you can use character mannerisms in your writing:
To convey self-image: You can learn a lot about fictional characters through their quirks, speech patterns, and personality traits. For instance, if one of your main characters enters a room with perfect posture and their head held high, readers might gather from their body language that they consider themselves to be proper, serious, or high-status. In this way, mannerisms are a way for a writer to adhere to the adage of “show, don’t tell” when it comes to character creation.
To show character development: In the same way that a character’s little quirks can give us initial information about that character, the addition or disappearance of character traits can let us know when they’ve changed. If the same character who entered a room with perfect posture at the beginning of your novel or short story leaves with a slouch, we can surmise that the character has lost confidence. The changing of character habits can help us track a character’s development.
To differentiate between characters: Each of your characters should have their own unique idiosyncrasies. Not only does that make it feel like the characters exist in real life, but it helps the reader tell the characters apart. Oftentimes, a reader will have an easier time remembering a character through their mannerisms than through their name or occupation.
To reveal information: A character’s mannerisms can reveal information about the scene or the plot as a whole. Say one of your main character’s traits is that they do not make eye contact and can’t stop fidgeting when they’re lying. If we find ourselves in a pivotal scene and our protagonist’s eyes dart to the ground when he’s telling his wife that he’s been faithful, the reader immediately knows that he’s been cheating on her. Oftentimes, mannerisms are a much more artful and direct way of revealing information than simply having the character say it out loud.
Describing aromas can add a whole new layer to your storytelling, immersing your readers in the atmosphere of your scenes. Here's a categorized list of different words to help you describe scents in your writing.
🌿 Fresh & Clean Scents
Crisp
Clean
Pure
Refreshing
Invigorating
Bright
Zesty
Airy
Dewy
Herbal
Minty
Oceanic
Morning breeze
Green grass
Rain-kissed
🌼 Floral Scents
Fragrant
Sweet
Floral
Delicate
Perfumed
Lush
Blooming
Petaled
Jasmine
Rose-scented
Lavender
Hibiscus
Gardenia
Lilac
Wildflower
🍏 Fruity Scents
Juicy
Tangy
Sweet
Citrusy
Tropical
Ripe
Pungent
Tart
Berry-like
Melon-scented
Apple-blossom
Peachy
Grape-like
Banana-esque
Citrus burst
🍂 Earthy & Woody Scents
Musky
Earthy
Woody
Grounded
Rich
Smoky
Resinous
Pine-scented
Oak-like
Cedarwood
Amber
Mossy
Soil-rich
Sandalwood
Forest floor
☕ Spicy & Warm Scents
Spiced
Warm
Cozy
Inviting
Cinnamon-like
Clove-scented
Nutmeg
Ginger
Cardamom
Coffee-infused
Chocolatey
Vanilla-sweet
Toasted
Roasted
Hearth-like
🏭 Industrial & Chemical Scents
Metallic
Oily
Chemical
Synthetic
Acrid
Pungent
Foul
Musty
Smoky
Rubber-like
Diesel-scented
Gasoline
Paint-thinner
Industrial
Sharp
🍃 Natural & Herbal Scents
Herbal
Aromatic
Earthy
Leafy
Grass-like
Sage-scented
Basil-like
Thyme-infused
Rosemary
Chamomile
Green tea
Wild mint
Eucalyptus
Cinnamon-bark
Clary sage
🎉 Unique & Uncommon Scents
Antique
Nostalgic
Ethereal
Enigmatic
Exotic
Haunted
Mysterious
Eerie
Poignant
Dreamlike
Surreal
Enveloping
Mesmerizing
Captivating
Transcendent
I hope this list can help you with your writing. 🌷✨
Feel free to share your favorite scent descriptions in the replies below! What scents do you love to incorporate into your stories?
Plotting a story -- inductive and deductive plotting
When it comes to plotting habits in writing fiction, there’s a scale. Most people label the ends of this scale ‘gardener’ and ‘architect’, although the terms ‘plotter’ and ‘pantser’ are also in use. If you’re a writer, you probably know this scale, but I’ll briefly explain for those who haven’t and then get into my model.
An architect, or plotter, is a writer who thrives with a lot of planning. Like an architect planning a house, they assess what story they’re telling in advance and what needs to happen to tell it. They assess the materials, plan and measure the acts (if they’re using an act structure), decide on the climax and how the characters will develop and map those onto the plan. Then, with a plan, they write.
A gardener, or pantser, by contrast, writes ‘by the seat of their pants’. Pantsers may or may not know where their story is going in broad terms, but they certainly don’t know in any detail beyond ‘this’ll be a cool scene if I can get it there’. To these people, writing is less like architecture and more like gardening – you can build your beds and plant your seeds, but a whole lot of what’s going to happen next depends on how the plants grow, and all you can do is keep an eye on them and prune or train them as necessary. You can dream about what your garden will look like in the spring, but you won’t know until you get there.
Plotters and pantsers are not two distinct categories of writers, but ends on a scale. The writer who ad libs sentence by sentence with no goal at all is extremely rare, as is the writer who starts from an overall view of the plot and cuts it down and down until they’re planning on the sentence level. Most writers tend towards one end of the scale to a greater or lesser degree, but very few write completely using one method and none of the other.
The plotter/pantser scale is one that many writers find incredibly useful to help them understand their own process. By knowing where you are on this scale, you can better understand how you write and better understand how the habits and advice of other writers may or may not be useful to you. (A pantser trying to meticulously plot their story in advance following some formula they found in a writing advice book is wasting their time.) However, this model has little utility beyond that, which is why I find it more useful to address the phenomenon not as a scale, but as the manifestation of two separate skills, that I like to call deductive and inductive plotting.
In logic, deductive reasoning is when you take broad rules or generalities and apply them to specific circumstances to predict things – you start big and go little. “Things fall when you drop them, therefore if I drop this rock it will fall” is deduction. Inductive reasoning is the opposite – you start with small observations and build them into a pattern to predict something bigger. “I dropped seventeen objects and they all fell; therefore, perhaps when you drop things, they fall” is induction. (There’s also abductive reasoning, but that doesn’t fit into our plotting skill metaphor.)
In my experience, these skills match to the habits of plotters and pantsers. Plotters, or architects, assemble a big picture of the story they want and then deduce their individual scenes and fill in the lines to map to their overall general picture. They are deductive plotters. If you ask a deductive plotter to start writing without an outline, they become lost and their output seems directionless and erratic – how can they know what to write if they don’t have an outline to break things down from? Deductive plotters tend to think of stories in terms of overall structures and themes that can be broken down into characters and events and put on the page.
Pantsers, or gardeners, are the opposite. They’re if-then writers, and build the plot upwards from the individual actions of their characters and create the story from the sum total of those interactions. They are inductive plotters. Brandon Sanderson often describes a pantser’s first draft as just a really thorough outline, and he’s not wrong; a pantser needs the scene-by-scene minutae to know what happens next. How are they supposed to build an outline if they don’t know what happens next? If you ask an inductive plotter to build and follow a thorough outline, their writing often comes out as wooden and arbitrary as they have to force the actions of the characters between the restrictive rails of predetermined plot. Inductive potters tend to think of stories in terms of characters and discrete events that build up into something bigger with a consistent mood or theme. Inductive plotters sometimes complain of their characters having a life of their own and defying the plot – this is the effect of their moment-by-moment if-then reasoning of the character’s next action not matching their initial predictions, and surprising them.
Again, the vast majority of writers have some rudimentary skill in both inductive and deductive plotting. A strong deductive plotter (architect) can usually sit down and infer line-by-line a scene that their outline lists as “the three characters meet in the coffee shop and share evidence, Rosemary sees Harold’s notes and realises where the gun went.” Similarly, a strong inductive plotter (gardener) usually has some idea of where their story is headed next even if they don’t know how long it’ll take to get there or what complications will pop up in the meantime. But I’ve never met a writer who is equally strong in both inductive and deductive plotting; most writers specialise heavily in one, and tend towards one end of the scale. I think this is because there’s such a huge overlap in utility; when we start learning to write, we start plotting in whatever way is easiest for us, and train that specific method over decades. There’s little reason to invest even more decades into getting just as good with the other method when your favoured method already achieves everything you want.
I find that viewing this scale as the result of two skills, inductive and deductive plotting, can be very helpful in understanding specifically how we write. Thinking of myself as a heavily inductive plotter with rudimentary deductive plotting skills has really helped me understand why some methods of writing work for me and others don’t, as well as help nail down specific weaknesses in my writing. I also find it useful to think of writing styles and strategies not as some unchangeable characteristic we were born with (as the plotter/pantser scale is frequently envisioned), but as skills that can be built. You don’t write the way you write because you happen to be a plotter or pantser – you write the way you write because that’s what you learned to do! And it was hard! And you did it! Be proud of your skill!
Rewriting - the process of going through a rough draft and fixing things that don’t work for you, whether that’s changing the word choice in a single sentence or cutting entire sections that feel like fluff.
Rewriting is the part of the editing process that usually refers to the larger changes that comprise a whole new draft.
If you put real work into your rewrite, a good piece of writing can become great.
Tips for Rewriting Your Manuscript
The revision process is different for everyone, but here’s some rewriting advice to help you along:
Take time away. You’ve finished the first draft of your written work, and yet there’s something overall that is unsatisfying for you—perhaps a character seems flat or one of your central points is uninteresting to you. It can be very hard to determine if something is actually boring or if you’ve just grown sick of it, which is why it’s important to take some time away from a project before editing it. Try putting the manuscript aside for a few weeks or months before you do start rewriting. Even a little break can give you a fresh eye later.
Break your work and put it back together. Don’t be afraid of “breaking” your piece. Chances are a rewrite will make you work better, not worse. Expect the first draft to need major retuning. Often all of the ingredients of a good piece are there. Sometimes a revision is less a matter of rewriting and more a matter of reordering, digging deeper, slowing down here, speeding up there, etc. In further reads of your manuscript, identify what’s not working. Don’t be afraid to rewrite your early chapters or revise your main characters. Maybe the idea itself needs to evolve. This is all part of the process of editing, and it can be frustrating. But don’t give up on your idea.
Pretend to be someone else. When you do return to your manuscript to edit it, try to pretend that you’re someone who’s never read it before. Be someone else entirely—your best friend, your ideal audience member—but read your writing trying to imagine how they will see it. What would their response be? Don’t focus on perfection; keep your attention on the story.
Get feedback from an editor or writing partner. At some point, you’ll need to show your work to other people. A new reader can provide valuable feedback, but finding a good one can be difficult. You’ll want to choose someone who likes the type of writing you’ve done and who isn’t going to be inclined to praise your work just because they love you—in other words, you need someone relatively objective. Other writers are often a great choice as readers. They understand what makes a novel work and where it can be improved. Often you can set up a trade, where you read their manuscript in return. Listen to your editors and readers and try what they suggest. Each idea might not work, but discovering that is a valuable lesson in and of itself; sometimes by figuring out what’s not right, you come up with something that is.
Spend a limited amount of time working on problem areas. Sometimes it’s hard to decide when you’re done with a manuscript. You may have a whole draft but find yourself disliking it. Don’t spend too much time editing the same problem areas over and over. This is a type of procrastination and will generally only augment your feelings of frustration. Try to find a balance: Edit to smooth out your writing, but don’t edit so much that you ruin the original magic of your novel.
Look for passages that need rephrasing. Once you’re happy with your draft, do a line edit, looking at language, formatting, and style. Look especially for sections where the writing seems different—maybe it’s too sloppy, or something is overwritten—or sequences where someone acted out of character. Search for sections that are too heavy on dialogue, or too dense with exposition, and try to balance them out. Let your instincts guide you to the places where something feels off, and go back to them later for correction.
Try color-coding. Create a color-coding scheme to keep track of the condition of your writing. Mark all the writing you’re satisfied with in green, the writing you’re not sure about in yellow, and the writing you know needs to be improved in red. As you review your manuscript, your goal will be to get everything green. Having color cues and a concrete objective can gamify the experience of editing and turn it from a tedious exercise into a challenge.
Ask lots of questions. When you have a complete draft of your novel, use the following checklist for your editing process: What is my major dramatic question? What areas have problems with pacing (i.e. too much dialogue, too much exposition)? What areas do I need to work on to buttress my main storyline? What areas are superfluous and distract from my main story? Does my ending answer the major dramatic question? Your answers here could make for significant revisions.
Read your work aloud. As you move into the more polished drafts of your work, read the text aloud. This will train your ear to edit and fine-tune your own writing. Reading your work aloud is a great way to catch grammatical errors, awkward sentence structure, and typos that your eyes skim over when reading your own words on a computer screen or piece of paper. The only caveat here is that you don’t want to do too much at once, or you will stop listening.
Print a hard copy. When you go back to the manuscript, try to print out a physical copy. This can put you closer to a reader’s experience. This not only gives you space to take notes on problem areas, it makes a mysterious difference in how you read stories.
When you’re writing something for the first time—especially if it’s a longer piece of creative writing—you probably won’t know exactly where things are going until the whole thing is finished. Once you’ve finished your first rough draft, you can start the rewriting process, taking everything you learned from the old version and using it to strengthen subsequent drafts. Rewriting is all about finding surprises along the way and starting to tease out the shape of your story.
Exercise your creative writing muscle with this list of creative writing prompts and story starters.
Make 3 Lists
One of the best ways to brainstorm creative writing ideas is by making lists, then seeing how different items on those lists clash or combine.
10 true events: These events needn’t be “big” or “important”: just things that happened to you or someone you know, or items you read about in the news.
10 characters: These could be characters you’ve already worked with, people you’ve seen but never spoken to, family members, high school teachers, or even historical figures that fascinate you.
10 story shells: These are simple stories that can serve as building blocks for your own idea. Examples include fairy tales, myths, even family stories that were passed down to you. No need to write about them in detail: simply list a few words that sum up the story.
Now, take one item from each list—one event, one character, and one existing story shell—and use them to brainstorm a new story. What happens when you drop a character of your own into a classic folktale? How would Abraham Lincoln deal with a personal event you experienced personally?
Explore Your Interests
Make a list of all the subjects or activities that you’re drawn to you right now.
It doesn’t matter if you just thought of them today.
Freewrite on each topic until you fill a single page.
What’s exciting or intriguing to you about this subject? Is it something you’ve always wanted, or something you’re afraid of? Why?
Repeat this creative writing exercise for each subject. Then, review your free writing, and look for recurring themes or dramatic situations.
Write (Or Rewrite) Your Opening Line
Your opening line is often one of the most important lines in your entire novel or short story.
A great first line doesn’t just grab the reader’s attention: it distills the writer’s theme, main character, or premise.
Just as an opening line captures something essential about an existing story, it can also help you discover the seed of a great story.
To jumpstart your creativity, try writing seven opening lines that serve as “doors” for future stories or novels.
Take a few notes about why each would make a good entryway for a reader.
If you’re in the middle of a novel or short story, overcome your writer’s block by writing seven new opening lines that could serve as alternate doors for your existing manuscript.
Then, test each opening line against the following criteria:
Does it create a mystery to pull your reader in?
Does it contain concrete significant detail?
Does it convey the voice of your narrator?
Play With Structure and Genre
Entering an existing story at different places and in different styles can help you find a fresh take on your premise. Consider the following examples, which manipulate structure and genre to take “Little Red Riding Hood” to new places.
Start in the middle: “It was dark inside the wolf. The grandmother who had been gobbled whole couldn’t say a word, because it was quite stifling and full of old chicken parts and plastic bags that the wolf had eaten by mistake.”
Start with a flashback: “Every time the grandmother remembered what an awful time she had had inside the wolf.”
Use time jumps: “Little was Little Red Riding Hood to know that in two weeks’ time, she would be looking back on one of the most definitive events of her life.”
Write it as a detective novel: “There on the floor lay either one corpse, that of the wolf, or two, because in some versions the grandmother doesn’t come out of it so well. What had caused this double murder?”
Use Dialogue to Find Your Story
Dialogue can be an effective tool for discovering story and characters. Here are a few creative writing ideas for using dialogue as a jumping off point.
Eavesdrop in public spaces. Go to a public place where people tend to converse, like a cafe, bar, or subway. Spend 10 minutes eavesdropping on a conversation. Record everything those people say, and how they say it, as specifically as you can. Later, transcribe this conversation into a word processing document as faithfully as you can. What conclusions can you draw from what you heard? Who has more power? Who wants what? Who was listening more closely? Then, in a new document, select the part of the conversation that most interests you, and use it as the seed of your new story. (As a bonus, documenting real-life conversations can also help you develop your dialogue writing skills.)
Create conflict with dialogue. Write one page of dialogue between two or more people about a controversial topic (e.g. where to eat dinner, purses for men, the old Chevy that’s been following them for a mile). Make them disagree. Once you’ve finished the conversation, go back over it and add in descriptive sentences throughout until you feel that it’s balanced. This type of dialogue can form the basis of conflict, which is a useful tool for keeping readers engaged throughout your narrative.
Use Setting to Find Your Story
Like dialogue, setting can serve as a major inspiration for your story. Here are a few story prompts to help you choose, research, and invent locations that will serve as the foundation of your story.
Creating setting from imagination. Select 3 ordinary or extraordinary locations, then write a paragraph describing each one. Examples of settings include a train station, the top of a skyscraper, a busy restaurant, or a junkyard for old ships. Try to write from the point of view of a particular character you might find in that setting, and let the details emerge from the character’s sensory experience or action. Mix predictable details with those that will surprise the reader.
Visit a new place. Go to a location you’ve never visited before (either from a setting you’ve already chosen, or a place nearby that you find interesting). When you first arrive, spend some time absorbing it through your senses only—no writing yet. Pay attention to the things that strike you most. Afterwards, do some journaling about the place. Remember to include the sensory details—what it looked, felt, smelled, and sounded like.
Creating a setting from memory. Conjure a memory from your childhood, one that has stayed with you over the years. Take a few notes about anything you remember. Where did it take place? Who was there? What did it feel like to be you at that moment in time? Now, de-people the scene, and describe only the setting using concrete, significant details that rely on every sense: touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight. For an added challenge, perform the same exercise as above, but this time prohibit yourself from using any visual details. This will focus and sharpen the other sensory images in the memory, revealing unexpected insights.
Describe an Object
Spend 15 minutes describing an object that everyone takes for granted.
Pretend you are writing to someone in the far future (or, perhaps, an extraterrestrial) who has never encountered this item before.
What’s the most specific thing you can say about that object?
What’s something you never noticed about it until you described it to someone who has never seen one?
Flesh Out Your Characters
A story is nothing without characters—in fact, great characters will often take your novel or short story to wonderfully unexpected places. Here are some creative writing prompts to help you build characters.
Write your heroes. Make a list of your real-life heroes and list the qualities they possess. What challenges did they face that made them heroic? Which qualities did they exhibit to face those challenges? In looking at this list, do you see any common themes emerging? Which character tugs most at your heart? Write a page describing one of your heroes.
Write a difficult character. The best characters make difficult, and often controversial, choices. Pick one of the characters below. Write a short narrative from their point of view, justifying their actions to someone they care about. Don’t edit too much: just free write and let the character speak. Characters: A hit man who just killed a young girl. A corporate executive who just cheated on his or her spouse. A prison guard who nearly beat an inmate to death. A teenage boy who went on a shooting rampage. A police officer who shot a woman in her backyard. A villain’s backstabbing best friend.
Use real people for character inspiration. Go to a public place where you can freely observe other people. Choose a stranger and imagine a few character details for them. What’s their name? What mood are they in? Why are they there? Write a one-page monologue from their point of view that reveals what they’re thinking. Show their thoughts, but also show the world around them and how they interact with it. Try to develop an inner monologue that is at odds with the world around them or with the way they appear to be.
Create Suspense
Suspense is what keeps your readers engaged and reading your book.
Choose a mundane moment from any of the writing you’ve done so far.
For example, pick a scene where your protagonist is walking, eating or having a quiet discussion.
If you don’t have a scene like this yet, select a topic from the list below:
A spider crawling up his web
A child coming out of school
Two people sitting in a car at a stop light
A teenager lying in bed at night
A group of men going into a stadium
A woman eating alone in a restaurant
Write a paragraph (no more than a page) turning your mundane scene into a suspenseful moment. You only have one paragraph and one page, so if there’s something your reader needs to know in order for things to make sense, find clever ways to blend that information into the narrative.
Play With Time
Finally, bending, stretching, and distorting time can help you discover interesting perspectives and deal with writer’s block. The following writing tips will help you play with the concept of time in your creative writing.
Take a narrative time leap. This exercise allows you to practice narrative time leaps and explore the consequences of “long time” (a mode of fictional time that covers a lot of ground—decades or more). Select an event you’ve written about in a story, exercise, or work in progress. Now, fast forward one of the characters 30 years into the future, and have them recount that event in retrospect. How did the past 30 years alter the event in their mind? How did the event alter their life? What factors changed their perspective over time? Did the fast-forward change your perspective and you new ideas?
Write a letter to the future. Write a letter to someone in the future. This could be a person you haven’t met, your ideal reader, your future spouse, or own child or grandchild. What do you say to someone who isn’t here, but will be in the future?
Young adult fiction is a genre of literature that bridges the gap between middle-grade fiction and novels written for adults.
Clichés flood the YA fiction world, and an author should do their best to try and avoid them—unless they can provide a fresher take. Since YA is usually written by adult authors and not actual young people, this can sometimes make it feel like there is a divide between the YA author’s voice, and the voice of the character they’re trying to write. This divide manifests itself in the form of the same old YA tropes that can make your writing feel tired and not relatable to a young adult audience.
Character tropes. Young adult books have a habit of falling into the same old YA tropes: there’s a bad boy love interest from the wrong side of the tracks, or a strong female character who doesn’t know she’s beautiful until a guy tells her so. There’s the volatile angsty teenager, or there’s ‘the chosen one’ who is reluctant to be a hero until they realize they’re the only one who can defeat the bad guys and save the world. While some of these premises have turned into successful franchises, many of the characters in stories like these are often predictable: we know the defiant teen hero will eventually accept their destiny and save their people. These kinds of characters oversaturate the YA genre, making it feel more two-dimensional and lacking any real unique character development.
Plot tropes. Books like The Hunger Games or Twilight series have driven an influx of YA books about love triangles or love at first sight, which means your new take on the subject will have a lot of competition. The interests of young readers are often underestimated, believing them to be unable to appreciate more sophisticated subject matter. This can lead authors to stick with what they believe teens are still into reading, like problems with bad parents or a character discovering they have powers or are secret royalty. While your YA plots don’t have to deal with hard adult scenarios, they also shouldn’t be overwritten and generic just to pander to readers.
Overloaded quirks. Some YA writers will have young characters say things or behave the way they’ve seen across social media or in other YA writing. Making a male or female protagonist too quirky to be relatable contributes to the frustration that many YA readers feel about the genre. This applies to the kind of slang your main characters use. Teenagers don’t sincerely say “lol” to one another out loud, or start every sentence with “ugh.” Writing their dialogue this way makes them feel like cartoonish representations of how an adult thinks a young person speaks, increasing the distance between YA writer and YA reader. Quirks should only serve to enhance the character you’ve created, and not make up their entire personalities.
Adult perspectives. Teenagers are often driven by hormones and emotions—they lack the experience, logical thinking, or point of view that many adults do. When writing YA books, it’s important that the author keeps in mind the age range of their teen characters, and what a young person would be feeling and experiencing during the hard times of their own real life. All people were teenagers at one point, and it is the shared emotional truth of growing up that should be drawn from (not how an adult feels now looking back on it. In a YA novel, the story should be told from the teen character’s POV, increasing the chance that your main character’s voice will appeal and empathize with its young adult readers.
Writing great chemistry can be challenging. If you’re not super inspired, sometimes the connection between your characters feels like it’s missing something.
Here are a few steps you can consider when you want to write some steamy romantic chemistry and can’t figure out what’s blocking your creativity.
1. Give the Love a Name
Tropes have a bad reputation, but they can be excellent tools when you’re planning or daydreaming about a story. Giving the romance a name also assigns a purpose, which takes care of half the hard plotting work.
You can always read about love tropes to get inspired and think about which might apply to the characters or plot points you have in mind, like:
Friends to lovers
Enemies to lovers
First love
The love triangle
Stuck together
Forbidden love
Multiple chance love
Fake lovers turned soulmates
There are tooooons of other tropes in the link above, but you get the idea. Name the love you’re writing about and it will feel more concrete in your brain.
2. Develop Your Characters
You should always spend time developing your characters individually, but it’s easy to skip this part. You might jump into writing the story because you have a scene idea. Then the romance feels flat.
The good news is you can always go back and make your characters more real. Give them each their own Word or Google doc and use character templates or questions to develop them.
You should remember to do this for every character involved in the relationship as well. Sometimes love happens between two people who live nearby and other times it happens by:
Being in a throuple
Being in a polyamorous relationship
Being the only one in love (the other person never finds out or doesn’t feel it back, ever)
There are so many other ways to experience love too. Don’t leave out anyone involved in the developing relationship or writing your story will feel like driving a car with only three inflated tires.
3. Give the Conversations Stakes
Whenever your characters get to talk, what’s at risk? This doesn’t have to always be something life changing or scary. Sometimes it might be one character risking how the other perceives them by revealing an interest or new fact about themselves.
What’s developing in each conversation? What’s being said through their body language? Are they learning if they share the same sense of humor or value the same foundational beliefs? Real-life conversations don’t always have a point, but they do in romantic stories.
4. Remember Body Language
Body language begins long before things get sexy between your characers (if they ever do). It’s their fingertips touching under the table, the missed glance at the bus stop, the casual shoulder bump while walking down the street.
It’s flushed cheeks, a jealous heart skipping a beat, being tongue tied because one character can’t admit their feelings yet.
If a scene or conversation feels lacking, analyze what your characters are saying through their body language. It could be the thing your scene is missing.
5. Add a Few Flaws
No love story is perfect, but that doesn’t mean your characters have to experience earth shattering pain either.
Make one laugh so hard that they snort and feel embarrassed so the other can say how much they love that person’s laugh. Make miscommunication happen so they can make up or take a break.
People grow through their flaws and mistakes. Relationships get stronger or weaker when they learn things that are different about them or that they don’t like about each other.
6. Create Intellectual Moments
When you’re getting to know someone, you bond over the things you’re both interested in. That’s also a key part of falling in love. Have your characters fall in intellectual love by sharing those activities, talking about their favorite subjects, or raving over their passions. They could even teach each other through this moment, which could make them fall harder in love.
7. Put Them in Public Moments
You learn a lot about someone when they’re around friends, acquaintances, and strangers. The chemistry between your characters may fall flat if they’re only ever around each other.
Write scenes so they’re around more people and get to learn who they are in public. They’ll learn crucial factors like the other person’s ambition, shyness, humor, confidence, and if they’re a social butterfly or wallflower.
Will those moments make your characters be proud to stand next to each other or will it reveal something that makes them second guess everything?
8. Use Your Senses
And of course, you can never forget to use sensory details when describing the physical reaction of chemistry. Whether they’re sharing a glance or jumping into bed, the reader feels the intensity of the moment through their five senses—taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell.
Characters also don’t have to have all five senses to be the protagonist or love interest in a romantic story. The number isn’t important—it’s how you use the ways your character interacts with the world.
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Anyone can write great romantic chemistry by structuring their love story with essential elements like these. Read more romance books or short stories too! You’ll learn as you read and write future relationships more effortlessly.
Symbol - anything that hints at something else, usually something abstract, such as an idea or belief
Literary symbol - an object, a person, a situation, or an action that has a literal meaning in a story but suggests or represents other meanings
2 Types of Symbols
GENERAL
A general symbol is universal in its meaning
Even if the symbol were removed from a work of literature, it would still suggest a larger meaning
Example 1: While the sea symbolizes the universal voyage from life to death in The Odyssey, it retains this association independent from literature. The "sea" is a general symbol.
Example 2: In poetry, a "rose" often is not only a flower, but also a general symbol for romantic love.
SPECIFIC
A specific symbol is not universal in its meaning
It acquires a specific meaning based on how it relates to the content of a novel, poem, etc.
The symbol's significance exists only within the context created by the author
Example 1: A hunting cap in The Catcher in the Rye has no universal meaning, but within the novel it is worn backwards and symbolizes a looking back at childhood.
Example 2: A pair of eyes on a billboard in The Great Gatsby has no universal meaning, but within the story symbolizes the eyes of God watching humanity.
Tips about Symbols
The story itself must furnish a clue that a detail is to be taken symbolically. Symbols nearly always signal their existence by emphasis, repetition, or position.
The meaning of a literary symbol must be established and supported by the entire context of the story. The symbol has its meaning in the story, not outside it.
To be called a symbol, an item must suggest a meaning different in kind from its literal meaning; a symbol is something more than its class or type.
A symbol may have more than one meaning. This does not mean that the symbol can mean anything you want it to because possible meanings are always controlled by the context.
4 Steps When Writing About Symbolism
1. Determine what objects, characters, or actions are symbolic
To identify a symbol, note if an object seems to:
appear repeatedly
have an unusually vivid quality
be described with language conveying much emphasis
have more significance than its literal reality would suggest
2. Determine symbolic meanings
Carefully examine how the symbol functions in relation to the story
Ask yourself what idea is represented by the symbol
3. Classify the symbols
Classification may reveal opposite relationships, such as symbols of good and evil, life and death, or eternal and ephemeral
Or symbols may fall into isolated categories, such as destruction, innocence, or sexuality
4. Classify the meanings of a symbol
Determine how much depth a particular symbol has and classify its possible meanings
While your paper may focus on only one major symbol, you may be able to divide it into two specific meanings and two general meanings
If these writing notes help with your poem/story, do tag me. Or send me a link. I'd love to read them!
Writing is a painful process and most experienced writers will tell you that good writing involves substantial rewriting. An essential part of the rewriting process is combing through your work and cutting out material that isn’t essential. Sometimes this means we have to lose things that we are proud of and attached to. When you edit out material like this, you are killing your darlings.
The phrase “kill your darlings” has been attributed to many writers over the years.
Writers as varied as Oscar Wilde, G. K. Chesterton, and William Faulkner have been credited with coming up with the phrase.
But many scholars point to British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who wrote in his 1916 book On the Art of Writing: “If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’”
Since then, variations of Quiller-Couch’s phrase has been used by many writers and scholars. Stephen King had this to say on the art of writing in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
Writing Tips: Kill Your Darlings
Whether you are writing an op-ed or a short story, the process of killing your darlings is an essential part of editing. Here are some tips to help you keep an eye out for material that you might want to leave on the cutting room floor:
Look for redundancy. One simple, practical rule as you approach editing a piece of writing is to keep an eye out for redundancy. One of the most common reasons to kill your darlings is that you have overemphasized elements of your work in some way. In order to make yourself a better writer, you obviously want to highlight your strengths—but at the same time, you want to avoid overuse. A common thread in most writing advice is to trust your audience and let your work speak for itself without resorting to over-explanation.
Keep an eye out for overly cute or witty turns of phrase. Many good writers go through a stage of using overwrought purple prose as they develop their own signature writing style. Fine writing is concise, and experienced writers aren’t afraid to cut a phrase or sentence that might sound pretty but in reality, is an extraneous ornament that doesn’t serve the overall piece.
Cut out unnecessary plot. If you’re working on a narrative, killing your darlings might include getting rid of full subplots or an extraneous plot twist that isn’t necessary. It’s best to streamline your narrative and get rid of story elements that distract your reader.
Combine characters. One problem that fiction writers have is introducing too many characters into a story. One way around this is to combine characters that share personality traits or serve similar narrative functions. Tertiary characters are important in advancing your plot or fleshing out aspects of your main character, but if a supporting character lacks a clear purpose or point of view, consider cutting them or combining with another small character.
Repurpose unused writing elsewhere. If you can’t bear the thought of cutting a few unnecessary characters or plot lines out of your first draft, you can always spin these elements off into standalone story ideas. The beauty of creative writing is that one project can often inspire your next project. Killing your darlings can be an opportunity to remove story elements that might even function better as standalone ideas.
Seek outside eyes. One of the most important things you can do as a new writer is share your work with peers and seek the advice of beta readers. Network with other writers and consider joining a writing workshop or class. Having trusted friends and collaborators can provide you with readers who you rely on to give you honest feedback about the elements of your work that are working and the parts of your writing that you should cut.
