[inthedarktrees]

Lisa Marie as Vampira

Ed Wood (1994) dir. Tim Burton

[charnel-grounds]

VAMPIRA

Plan 9 from Outer Space | 1958 | dir. Edward D. Wood Jr.

[vanliewflynn]

[carm3n-carm3n]

[stars-bean]

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) dir. James Signorelli

[spikedaily]

What is this to you? This thing we have? Buffy and Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (seasons 5, 6 & 7).

[no-resolution]

Happy 29th anniversary to the show of all time!!!

(Premiered March 10th 1997)

[no-resolution]

1x05 -> 5x07 -> 7x11

[nicemices]

"I asked ChatGPT" well I asked Rupert Giles and he sighed and took off his glasses and started cleaning them

[sophsun1]

#me

[humbug-demartino]

The different costumes of the Daria Day Intros

[denssonfilm]

[quasarkisses]

a massively extended version of ruthlesscalculus’ post

General Tips

Joss Whedon’s Top 10 Writing Tips

Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

34 Writing Tips that will make you a Better Writer

50 Free resources that will improve your writing skills

5 ways to get out of the comfort zone and become a stronger writer

10 ways to avoid Writing Insecurity

The Writer’s Guide to Overcoming Insecurity

The Difference Between Good Writers and Bad Writers

You’re Not Hemingway - Developing Your Own Style

7 Ways to use Brain Science to Hook Readers and Reel them In

8 Short Story Tips from Kurt Vonnegut

How to Show, Not Tell

5 Essential Story Ingredients

How to Write Fiction that grabs your readers from page one

Why research is important in writing

Make Your Reader Root for Your Main Character

Writing Ergonomics (Staying Comfortable Whilst Writing)

The Importance of Body Language

Character Development

10 days of Character Building

Name Generators

Name Playground

Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test

Seven Common Character Types

Handling a Cast of Thousands Part 1 - Getting To Know Your Characters

Web Resources for Developing Characters

Building Fictional Characters

Fiction Writer’s Character Chart

Character Building Workshop

Tips for Characterization

Character Chart for Fiction Writers

Villains are people too but…

How to Write a Character Bible

Character Development Exercises

All Your Characters Talk the Same - And They’re Not A Hivemind!

Medieval Names Archive

Sympathy Without Saintliness

Family Echo (Family Tree Maker)

Behind The Name

100 Character Development Questions for Writers

Aether’s Character Development Worksheet

The 12 Common Archetypes

Six Types of Courageous Characters

Kazza’s List of Character Secrets - Part 1, Part 2

Creating Believable Characters With Personality

Body Language Cheat Sheet

Creating Fictional Characters Series

Three Ways to Avoid Lazy Character Description

7 Rules for Picking Names for Fictional Characters

Character Development Questionnaire

How to Create Fictional Characters

Character Name Resources

Character Development Template

Character Development Through Hobbies

Character Flaws List

10 Questions for Creating Believable Characters

Ari’s Archetype Series

How to Craft Compelling Characters

List of 200 Character Traits

Writing Characters of the Opposite Sex

Making Your Characters Likable

Do you really know your characters?

Character Development: Virtues

Character Development: Vices

Character Morality Alignment

List of Negative Personality Traits

List of Positive Personality Traits

List of Emotions - Positive

List of Emotions - Negative

Loon’s Character Development Series - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Phobia List A-L (Part 1), M-Z (Part 2)

30 Day In Depth Character Development Meme

Words for Emotions based on Severity

Eight Bad Characters

High Level Description of the Sixteen Personality Types

Female Characters

How Not to Write Female Characters

Writing Female Characters

How to write empowering female characters

Why I write strong female characters

Red Flags for Female Characters Written by Men

Writing strong female characters

The Female Character Flowchart

Eight Heroine Archetypes

Male Characters

Eight Hero Archetypes

Tips for Specific Characters

Writing A Vampire

Writing Pansexual Characters

Writing Characters on the Police Force

Writing Drunk Characters

Writing A Manipulative Character

Writing A Friends With Benefits Relationship

Writing A Natural Born Leader

Writing A Flirtatious Character

Writing A Nice Character

Fiction Writing Exercises for Creating Villains

Five Traits to Contribute to an Epic Villain

Writing Villains that Rock

Writing British Characters

How To Write A Character With A Baby

On Assassin Characters

Dialogue

It’s Not What They Say…

Top 8 Tips for Writing Dialogue

Speaking of Dialogue

The Great Said Debate

He Said, She Said, Who Said What?

How to Write Dialogue Unique to Your Characters

Writing Dialogue: Go for Realistic, Not Real-Life

Point of View

Establishing The Right Point of View

How to Start Writing in the Third Person

The I Problem

Plot, Conflict, Structure and Outline

Writing A Novel Using the Snowflake Method

Effectively Outlining Your Novel

Conflict and Character Within Story Structure

Outlining Your Plot

Ideas, Plots and Using the Premise Sheets

How To Write A Novel

Creating Conflict and Sustaining Suspense

Plunge Right In…Into Your Story, That Is

Tips for Creating a Compelling Plot

36 (plus one) Dramatic Situations

The Evil Overlord Devises A Plot: Excerpt from Stupid Plot Tricks

Conflict Test

What is Conflict?

Monomyth

The Hero’s Journey: Summary of Steps

Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes

Plotting Without Fears

Novel Outlining 101

Writing The Perfect Scene

One-Page Plotting

The Great Swampy Middle

How Can You Know What Belongs In Your Book?

Create A Plot Outline in 8 Easy Steps

How to Organize and Develop Ideas for Your Novel

Create Structure in your novel using index cards

Choosing the best outline method for you

Hatch’s Plot Bank

Setting & Worldbuilding

Magical Word Builder’s Guide

I Love The End Of The World

World Building 101

The Art of Description: Eight Tips to Help Bring Your Settings to Life

Creating the Perfect Setting - Part 1

Creating a Believable World

Setting

Character and Setting Interactions

Maps Workshop - Developing the Fictional World Through Mapping

World Builders Project

How To Create Fantasy Worlds

Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds

Creativity Boosters* denotes prompts

*Creative Writing Prompts

*Ink Provoking

*Story Starter

*Story Spinner

*Story Kitchen

*Language is a Virus

*The Dabbling Mum

Quick Story Idea Generator

Solve Your Problems By Simply Saying Them Out Loud

Busting Your Writing Rut

Creative Acceleration: 11 Tips To Engineer A Productive Flow

Writing Inspiration, Or Sex on a Bicycle

The Seven Major Beginner Mistakes

Complete Your First Book with these 9 Simple Writing Habits

Free Association, Active Imagination, Twilight Imaging

Random Book Title Generator

Finishing Your Novel

Story Starters & Idea Generators

Words to Use More Often

Revision & Grammar

How To Rewrite

Editing Recipe

Cliche Finder

Revising Your Novel: Read What You’ve Written

Writing 101: Revising A Novel

20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes

Synonyms for the Most Commonly Used Words of the English Language

Grammar Urban Legends

Tools & Software

Tip Of My Tongue - Find the word you’re looking for

Write or Die - Stay motivated

Stay Focused - Tool for Chrome, lock yourself out of distracting websites

My Writing Nook - Online Text Editor, Free

Bubbl.us - Online Mind Map Application, Free

Family Echo - Online Family Tree Maker, Free

Freemind - Mind Map Application; Free; Windows, Mac, Linux, Portable

Xmind - Mind Map Application; Free; Windows, Mac, Linux, Portable

Liquid Story Binder - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free trial, $45.95; Windows, Portable

Scrivener - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free trial, $39.95; Mac

SuperNotecard - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free trial, $29; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable

yWriter - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free; Windows, Linux, portable

JDarkRoom - Minimalist Text Editing Application; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable

AutoRealm - Map Creation Application; free; Windows, Linux with Wine

Specific Help

Fashion Terminology

All About Kissing

Genre Help: Romance

187 Mental Illnesses

Types of Mental Illness

Eye Color List

Spectral Groupings

[disabledbysociety]

Whelp, time to be a famous writer.

[sangeria]

Ultimate Writing Resource List

[writingbox]

What To Do When You Have No Plot

Sometimes you want to write, but you have no plot ideas. Perhaps your fingers are itchy to write, you want to meet a submissions deadline, a character is bugging you to tell their story, or a single image, phrase, or scene is sitting heavy in your head. But you still can’t find the whole story.

So what can you do?

Start with characters: find their names, their backstories, their relationships. Create detailed descriptions, draw them, build their family trees. Get them interracting, put them into a room together, or bump them into each other in the street. Read their diaries, their love letters, their bank statements. Get to know them inside out. This is one place where you may find your story.

Start with a world: create your map, name the towns, lakes, forests, and mountains. Work out the trade routes, position the markets, the ports, and the industry. Find the history, predict the future. Draw out the borders, bring war, re-draw the borders. Get down to street level and see who lives there. Walk the streets yourself. This is one place where you may find your story.

Start with a room: stand in the middle of a room and open your eyes. What does the room look like? What’s in it? How many doors and windows are there? What is the room used for? Who uses it? What has happened here, and what is going to happen here? This is one place where you may find your story.

Start with an object: pick something up into your hand. What is it? What is it used for? Who owns it, and who owned it before them? What is it worth, either monetarily or sentimentally? Has it been lost, found, stolen, given away? Why is this object important? This is one place where you may find your story.

[whataboutwriting-blog]

Outlining your Novel

Now that NaNoWriMo is getting closer, it’s time to start thinking about planning and outlining. While this is a strategy that doesn’t work for everyone, it’s undeniable that it might come in handy when it comes to writing a novel.

If you’re still deciding whether outlining is for you or not, you might want to take a look at the bullet points below. We put together the pros and cons of outlining. These cons are arguments often used by those who don’t like outlining, and we also present ways of going around those cons. However, as you will conclude after this, there is no right answer when it comes to knowing whether you should outline your story or not. It works for some people, but it just doesn’t for others. After reading this, though, you’ll hopefully have a clearer idea of where you stand when it comes to this.

Pros of Outlining:

You’ll write faster. If you know exactly where you need to take your story next, it makes writing easier, thus allowing you to write faster. Writing faster works as great motivation, given that you’ll feel more productive and want to keep going.

It’s not as likely to get stuck with plot twists. Given that your plot twists and what happens afterwards are already planned out, there’s less of a chance of you being stuck wondering where you should take your story next. 

You’re less likely to get writer’s block. While losing the motivation to write can happen to anyone while writing a story - whether they planned it out or not -, if you know where your story is going, it’s less likely that you’ll get writer’s block. Still, it’s always good to keep track of the things that can motivate you.

It avoids inconsistencies. If you have an outline of your plot that you can go back to later, it makes it easier to avoid inconsistencies. The same thing happens if you decide to outline the basic aspects of your character’s life and personality.

It increases the chance of having a good first draft. The less you have to edit after writing your first draft, the better (as long as the final product is exactly what you feel it needs to be). With an outline, you increase the chances of having a first draft that pleases you instead of one that feels like a burden to edit.

Cons of Outlining:

It keeps you from being spontaneous. However… While, with an outline, it’s expected that you have most of your story planned out, nothing is 100% set. There’s no rule saying you can’t go back and change your mind. As your story progresses and you feel the need to change something in order to keep your characters in character or for the sake of the plot, there’s nothing keeping you from doing so. It’s okay to go back and change your outline if you feel the need to do so.

It may turn out to be not as good as you thought. However… Sometimes, a certain idea sounds great when you outline a story, but as you write it down… It just doesn’t seem as good. However, like I said above, if you have a completely different idea and the plan you originally had becomes useless, it’s okay to let go of that outline or start an outline from scratch. Again, outlining a story is supposed to help you, not be a burden. Don’t feel obliged to follow an outline if it’s becoming too difficult. It’s okay to give up on it and/or start a new one.

How does one outline?

Brainstorming. I think brainstorms are one of the most powerful things when it comes to planning out your novels. Write down every single thing you can think of about your story. Don’t worry about whether it makes sense. Just write down aspects of your story, whether they’re going to be important, crucial or useless. Just write things down. This will give you material to work later on.

Connect the ideas. Now, try to create some kind of connection between your ideas. Connect the ones that are related, and make sure you also write down how they are related to each other. If there is any idea that doesn’t seem to fit with any of the others, ask yourself if it is important in your story. If the answer is yes, ask yourself why, and how it will fit in your story.

Develop your characters. Your story is going to be strongly influenced by your characters’ goals, motives and personalities, and therefore it’s important that you know them well enough before starting to actually plan out your story.  

Take a break. Stepping away from what you already have and forcing yourself to think about something else puts things in perspective. When you go back to thinking about it, you’ll be able to have a more unbiased opinion about it. Check if the ideas and their connections still make sense.

Break the story into chapters. This allows you to have an organized plan, to which you can go back later if need be. Deciding what happens on chapter one, chapter two and so on can help you making sure you have a well-structured story. You can also write down a list of the events that happen, in the right order, and then see how you can divide them by chapters.

Edit your outline. Go back and read everything. Does the beginning of your story ignite the conflict, or does it take too long for it to start being… a conflict? Does every question get its answer? Is your conflict resolved by the end of your book? If you answer no to any of these questions, it’s time to go back and edit what needs to be edited!

Don’t be afraid of skipping or adding any step. This is not an exact science, and outlining works differently for all of us. You just have to find your style, to realize what works best for you. These tips might help you, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to them.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to write anything in text form. Diagrams also work for most people, though they can get confusing if you add too much information, or incomplete if you add too little information. You have to find what works best for you.

There are several methods used for Outlining, most of them more precise then the tips above, so make sure you also check those out. (Links below)

For further reading: (I took inspiration from these websites, so check them out!)

Sample Novel Outline

How to Outline a Novel

Outline your Novel in 30 Minutes

Easy Novel Outline

Outlining Your Novel: Why and How

Snowflake Method

The Headlight Method

[bringing-sexy-bach]

“But the Bible says…”

[ruinedchildhood]