Hello! Welcome to my blog! Here I compile notes and reblog posts I think would be useful to come back to in the future.
Main blog: @yanns
If you're looking for something specific, here are all the posts/reblogs you can find (that I could remember).
Warning: LONG POST
Tags included at the very end.
Body Language
Ways To Describe Facial Expressions by @introvert-unicorn
Eye Movements by @writingquestionsanswered
Physical Reactions by @creativepromptsforwriting
Relationships
Basic Writing Tips for Writing Siblings by @lazyprompts
Strong Friendship Not At All Romantic by @writingadvice365
Writing Believable Friendships by @bluebxlle-writer
How To Write A Slow Burn Relationship by @dearwriters
Chemistry by @sweet-as-writing
Describing People
A List of Nice Words to Describe People by @introvert-unicorn
Describing Body Parts ;)
Describing Eye Color
Outlining
Story Outlining Methods, pt 1: TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS by @foxiswriting
Story Structures for Your Next WIP by @perpetual-stories
Characterization
Writing Jealous Characters by @bluebxlle-writer
Intrusive Questions About Your OC by @sapphicrot
How I Create My Characters by @bluebxlle-writer
Character Arc by @avelera & @ahb-writes
Vocabulary
The Right Word by @darkisrising
Feeling Words
Instead of Using "Very"
Instead of Using "Very" pt 2
Ways to Say "You're Welcome"
Other Ways of Saying "On The Other Hand..."
Ways to Say "I Think..."
Some of My Favorite Words by @littlewhispersofsolitude
Words to Use in Stories by @littlewhispersofsolitude
Scenes
Your Opening Scene by @underhillwriter
Tips for Writing a Difficult Scene by @thatwritergirlsblog
Writing Fight Scenes by @bluebxlle-writer
Prompts
101 Ways To Say "I love you" by @emswritingprompts
Prompts that Make Me Feel Things by @screnwriter-old
From The Villain Sentence Starters by @nightprompts
Sacred Romantic Moments by @old-screnwriter
Resources
Fantasy Clothes (ask/answer) by @sanctimonies
@creativepromptsforwriting's advice
IMPORTANT REMINDERS FOR WRITERS by @old-screnwriter
Resources for Writers by @stinastar
Language of Flowers by @introvert-unicorn
NaNoWriMo Hack by @samayla
Feeling Stuck by @the-writers-bookshelf
Dialogue Resources by @writingadvice365
Five Real-Ass Tips For Writing A Novel by @maxkirin
List of Writing Websites by @bibwu-movedlol
How Long Should A Chapter Be by me hehe
Reminder for Chapter Length by @mellorocket
RESOURCES FOR YOUR NEEDS by @sassycolortheorist101-blog
Websites for Writers {masterpost} by @2soulscollide
Your English Teachers Lied To You by @emilyoracle
Note: Take advice with a grain of salt. These are supposed to be educational, inspirational, and/or motivational. If you have any corrections, requests, suggestions, or anything really, shoot an ask! or a submission! or a DM!
To the people who were tagged, let me know if you're uncomfortable having your post and/or blog mentioned here and I'll make edits ASAP.
i'm back! i took a supposedly short break that ended up being much longer than i'd hoped it'd be. i don't even remember when i last opened tumblr, honestly.
during this break, i also had a period of "semi giving up on writing" (dramatic, i know). so, basically, in conclusion (yes i know this is too much), i haven't been writing much; no practicing, no researching, nada. just me distancing myself from everything.
i don't even know if i'm using the quotation marks and the semi colon correctly.
but fear not! i am back, and i will be rereading all the things I've reblogged, i will be going back into writing, doing some research, and sharing what I've learned.
also, quick note, if any of you have any resources you'd like to share, please do! we must stick together! my inbox (or whatever it's called) is always open.
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
⁂
Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free
This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite.
Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal.
Let the bad guy get an extremely important win.
Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.
Don’t always give characters closure.
(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)
A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.
A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.
A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine
Make it the main character’s fault sometimes.
And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.
MC must choose the lesser of two evils.
MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.
Rejection is a powerful tool.
People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.
MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them
MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.
MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)
On the flipside, make your main character keep going.
Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.
“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?
Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost.
Also remember that the things that make us sad, angry, or otherwise emotional as readers are the same things that make us feel that way in our day-to-day lives. Creating an empathetic main character is the foundation for all of the above tips.
Sad things you can do in a book other than killing of a character
Character death is sad, but it also has huge consequences on your plot that can’t be reversed. Not to mention, depending on your genre, character deaths are often reserved for later in the series as a way of telling the reader that things are getting serious.
So, until that moment, here’s a quick list of things you can do to tug at your readers emotions:
1.- Destruction of an item of value. For this to work you’re going to have to set this up early on, it could be a childhood toy they need to sleep at night, a necklace they swear gives them good luck, and old family trinket or any number of things. The important thing is you show just how important it is to the character, make them happy and excited just to talk about it. Later on your character will feel loss and so will the audience.
2.- Arguing. Two characters with a strong bond arguing can be heartbreaking, even if you know the argument is going to resolve itself eventually, going from cuddles and banter to cold looks and the silent treatment, can easily hurt the audience just as much as the characters.
3.- Betrayal. When well done, it’s worst than character death. When you as a reader fall head over heels in love with a character, only for them to betray the rest, it’s heartbreaking, especially if when you read back the foreshadowing was there. It was so obvious yet you were all so blind! As blind as the other characters. Also, unlike character death, they’re still there, there to taunt you with their mere existence.
4.- Failure. We have probably all felt that emptiness, that feeling as the world crumbles around us, haplessness, when we failed an exam in school or just couldn’t get the house clean in time for that visit. Take that feeling and reflect it into your characters, it doesn’t have to be an exam, it can be anything, a task they’re parents asked them to do and they tried their best, a mission, anything. Just let them fail and feel the world crumble.
5.- Being forced to stay behind. Following from point four, if a character is not good enough they can be left behind, perhaps it comes from a place of love, an attempt to protect them from enemies too strong, yet it still hurts. Perhaps they haven’t failed, perhaps they are left behind for another reason, because they are “too valuable”, or because they’ll be more useful back home. Either way, watching those close to you go of to fight for what you believe in, without you, can be painful.
6.- Finding out something they believed in was a lie. It can be something relatively insignificant, an assumption they never bothered to question. Or something world shattering. Allow me to offer up an example with an unimportant spoiler from my second book (it’s not even out yet but oh well): in this book, while talking about some law, Henry realises his daughter believes he and her mother were married. This is an assumption Itazu made and never questioned. It affects nothing, nothing changes, yet finding out her mother and her father were not the happy married couple she’d always pictured, it’s painful.
This could also be something huge, finding out you’re adopted for example.
7.- History. Oh, history, how depressing it can be. And if you have a fantasy world you have many opportunities to go into this. From slaughters to slavery, finding out how society got to where it is, the base on which it is built. Well, it’s pretty depressing. Obviously be careful how much inspiration you take from real world history and always be respectful and do your research!
8.- Scarring. An injury can be painful, it can be scary. And depending on what caused it, leave you with traumatising memories. Now add to that a physical visible reminder on your skin you can never remove. Well, that can be pretty horrible. Imagine the scar came from a battle the protagonist longs to forget, but can’t because every night before going to sleep they can’t help but glance at their arm where the nasty scars forever lies.
As usual, check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.
This another post I could probably do a part two on someday. Can you think of any books where any of these are done effectively? Do any of these happen in your owns book? Please tell me! I love hearing from you all.
In a lecture series on Youtube, #1 New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson talks about the three P's of plot structure: Promise. Progress. Payoff.
Promises are particularly important in the beginning of the story, as they draw in the audience.
Progress keeps the audience invested, particularly through the middle of the story. If there is no sense of progress, then the reader feels as if the plot isn't going anywhere.
Payoff is what fulfills the promises of progress. It rewards the audience for sticking around, and if done properly, creates a feeling of satisfaction at the end of the story.
While all three can be tricky in their own right, many writers struggle to create a proper sense of progress, which can lead to saggy middles.
Luckily, Dramatica Theory breaks plot down into eight story points that essentially encapsulate progress.
If you apply them to your stories, your writing will always have progression through the middle.
1. Goal - Every story has a goal. It may be a goal of aspiration, such as becoming a top chef. Or it may be a goal of thwarting something, such as stopping a murderer. Whatever the case, a story's goal is what enables us to measure progress. If there is no goal, then what one does, doesn't really matter. We have no orientation or purpose, so there is no sense of moving forward or backward. The goal allows progress to happen.
2. Requirements - In order to achieve the goal, something is required. This can be broken down into two variations. In one, the characters must follow an order of steps, like following a set of directions. In the other, the characters must do or obtain things in any order, like a shopping list. The characters in Jumanji, for example, have the goal to restore the world to normal. The requirement is to win the game. But they must do this in a proper order--they can't skip turns.
3. Consequences - Consequences are what happen if a goal isn't achieved or hasn't yet been achieved. In some stories, the protagonist is trying to prevent the consequences, but in others, the protagonist is trying to stop the consequences that are already happening. Consequences might be thought of as overall stakes. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, if Ralph and Vanellope don't buy a new steering wheel for Sugar Rush, then its characters will be homeless.
4. Forewarnings - Forewarnings convey that the consequences are getting closer, becoming worse, or becoming permanent (depending on the story). If a dam is in danger of breaking, then a forwarning may be a crack that shoots out water. In Back to the Future, Marty's family slowly disappearing from a photograph works as a forewarning.
5. Dividends - Characters will likely receive small rewards for little successes along the journey to the goal. These are dividends. For example, on her journey to fight in the war in her father's place, Mulan is rewarded honor and a place in the military when she is able to retrieve an arrow from a wooden post that none of the men could get down.
6. Costs - Just as the journey may include dividends, it also entails costs. These have negative impacts on the protagonist's well-being. In order to win The Hunger Games, for example, one must be willing to kill others, which also includes psychological trauma. In order for Frodo to get to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, he must suffer a loss of innocence. This is a cost.
7. Prerequisites - There are often certain essentials one must have, to pursue the goal at all. These are prerequisites. Prerequisites on their own don't bring the goal closer. This is why they aren't requirements. In Interstellar, a spaceship, equipment, and astronauts are needed to travel space to find a new home (goal). But simply having those things doesn't necessarily mean the characters are closer to discovering a liveable planet.
8. Preconditions - Preconditions do not directly relate to the goal. They are "non-essential constraints or costs placed on the characters in exchange for the help of someone who controls essential prerequisites." In Karate Kid, a prerequisite is that the protagonist must receive extra lessons from a master, but the master adds the precondition of doing chores. One does not technically need to do chores to do karate.
Some of these points are more direct--like requirements--while others are more indirect--like preconditions. The direct points will usually be more intense than the indirect. As you apply these elements to your stories, you'll create a sense of progress--especially through the middle, which will help make any story more satisfying.
1. Do you write your first draft by hand, or digitally?
2. Do you have a writer’s notebook?
3. Planner, pantser, or planter?
4. What is your favorite place to write?
5. What is your least favorite place to write?
6. What is your favorite writer’s drink?
7. What do you like to eat when you’re writing?
8. Do you like to write where it’s quiet, or with noise? If noise, what kind?
9. Do you have a favorite writing season?
10. Do you make imageboards or storyboards or playlists before you write a story? Do you do them during? After?
11. How do you feel about worldbuilding?
12. How many drafts does your work go through before you’re ready to show it to people or publish?
13. How do you feel about editors and editing?
14. What is your favorite part of the writing process?
15. What do you do when you have no inspiration, but have to put something on the page/get that story finished?
16. What do you do when you have lots of inspiration, but no way to actually sit down and write?
17. Have you ever dreamed something that ended up in a story?
18. How often do you hit save/back up your work?
19. What is your favorite punctuation mark?
20. Have you ever gone to school for writing? Would you?
21. How do you get better at writing? Do you read articles, blogs, or books about writing for tips and tricks? Watch videos? Make it up as you go along? Something else?
22. What’s something you wish you learned earlier as a writer?
One of the best tips for writing descriptions of pain is actually a snippet I remember from a story where a character is given a host of colored pencils and asked to draw an egg.
The character says that there’s no white pencil. But you don’t need a white pencil to draw a white egg. We already know the egg is white. What we need to draw is the luminance of the yellow lamp and the reflection of the blue cloth and the shadows and the shading.
We know a broken bone hurts. We know a knife wound hurts. We know grief hurts. Show us what else it does.
You don’t need to describe the character in pain. You need to describe how the pain affects the character - how they’re unable to move, how they’re sweating, how they’re cold, how their muscles ache and their fingers tremble and their eyes prickle.
Draw around the egg. Write around the pain. And we will all be able to see the finished product.
17. Have you ever dreamed something that ended up in a story?
Hello!
Thanks for asking! It's happened before. You know how dreams sometimes have these brilliant premises but you never get to stick around to finish the wacky plot?
It's always like that for me.
I literally have a folder for all my story ideas - and most of them came from dreams.
I already have an outline based on a dream that oddly reminds me of power rangers in a docs file that I don't know what to do with. It's just sitting there, waiting to be used.
Other things like snippets of cool things (like a kid manipulating a grown man into stealing magic from a mean teacher) is kinda incorporated into stories I'm already working on. They're just... toned down... like a 100 notches.
1. Do you write your first draft by hand, or digitally?
2. Do you have a writer’s notebook?
3. Planner, pantser, or planter?
4. What is your favorite place to write?
5. What is your least favorite place to write?
6. What is your favorite writer’s drink?
7. What do you like to eat when you’re writing?
8. Do you like to write where it’s quiet, or with noise? If noise, what kind?
9. Do you have a favorite writing season?
10. Do you make imageboards or storyboards or playlists before you write a story? Do you do them during? After?
11. How do you feel about worldbuilding?
12. How many drafts does your work go through before you’re ready to show it to people or publish?
13. How do you feel about editors and editing?
14. What is your favorite part of the writing process?
15. What do you do when you have no inspiration, but have to put something on the page/get that story finished?
16. What do you do when you have lots of inspiration, but no way to actually sit down and write?
17. Have you ever dreamed something that ended up in a story?
18. How often do you hit save/back up your work?
19. What is your favorite punctuation mark?
20. Have you ever gone to school for writing? Would you?
21. How do you get better at writing? Do you read articles, blogs, or books about writing for tips and tricks? Watch videos? Make it up as you go along? Something else?
22. What’s something you wish you learned earlier as a writer?
Hi there! I thought it would be nice to share a list of websites that I love for writing and planning my novels
↷
( world building )
fantasy map creator - I really like this map creator because it is VERY in depth, gives you pretty much any bit of information you would need for your story!
fantasy map creator no. 2 - this generator creates a slightly smaller map and gives you information, but not in as much detail as the previous.
medieval demographics creator - again, this gives you information for the wolrd you want to create, with no map, and just info on population and different settlements
star system generator - more for science fiction novels, this tool creates a star system consisting of different stars and optional terrestrial worlds.
science fiction world generator - this toll is similar to the fantasy world generator, and gives you interesting details on the physics of your planet, population etc.
traveler system generator - I’m not sure what the title of this means, but it creates a star system for you with an earth like planet and demographics for that planet
ultimate star system and world creator - this toll is my favorite. it gives you so much information and creates a whole star system for you with lots of interesting demographics
( name and plot generators )
fantasy name generator - this simply gives you a list of names for fantasy novels. personally, i prefer to research the meanings behind names but this can give you some inspiration.
ultimate fantasy generator - now this generator creates pretty much all you need to get ideas for your story!
fantasy calendar generator - this is super interesting tool that creates calendars for your novels that do not use earth time!
great name generator - i love this generator, it gives you names for japanese, chinese and russian characters, locations and corporations! i use it for a lot of my novels.
ultimate sci-fi generator - this is absolutely fantastic, it gives you characters, locations, plots etc. i love it!
more generators - this blog has some good tools for plot and character creations!
( help for writers )
plan your novel step by step and read blogposts - now novel is really great for planning a story and their blog is really helpful too!
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Reblog this to help a writer with their story! I might add more to this some other time, but I hope these are helpful for now!
Hello. We need to ask you something pretttyyy important.
So.
Right.
Ugh this sucks.
Right.
As you know the pandemic has proper knackered arts orgs and artists all over the shop and that, unfortunately, includes us. For the last 18 months, we’ve been unable to run our live events safely and, honestly? It’s left a huge hole in our beeswax. Add to the nightmare with the cowboy web developers and things at Writers' HQ are a little on the precarious side.
Recently the Arts Council decided we weren’t allowed to apply for the Culture Recovery Fund because we asked for both too much and too little (we don’t understand either)*. We have absolutely maxed out all available credit and aren’t eligible for any of the other covid support packages and eeesh it has left us in a very bum-clenchy situation.
Since the beginning of the pandemic we have run hundreds of free online workshops and courses for writers stuck in covid hell and worked our little butts off to make sure no one missed out on the community they needed during the weird-ass timeline we forked into in early 2020.
Last year, we awarded over 20 bursaries to systemically excluded writers, ran 312 webinars and workshops and saw our writers rack up over 200 publications and 50 longlistings, shortlistings and competition wins. One longlist had TEN Writers’ HQers on it, and one anthology featured SEVEN of you writerly maniacs.
But it’s not just about the publications. It’s about DOING THE WORK and hoo boy have our writers worked their arses off. We’ve seen 'em rack up those words, complete first drafts, fifth drafts, synopses, queries, collections, scripts, poems, a billion pieces of flash fiction, non-fiction, articles, journals, MA applications, podcasts, spoken word performances, self-published manuscripts, NaNoWriMo drafts and, most important of all, you’ve posted an endless stream of support and feedback on our forum, celebrating wins and rejections alike.
We love Writers’ HQ and we know it’s an important place for so many writers and we are determined that we won’t be scuppered at the final twist of the pandemic shitfight.
tl;dr: Writers’ HQ is really in the shits right now and if you have the resources to help us continue supporting writers across the world, we would very much appreciate it. We’re not a mega corp that can suck up the losses of the last 18 months. Writers’ HQ is a labour of love run by Sarah and Jo and Natalie (and Poppy and the rest of the amazing workshop team) from their living rooms because we believe the writing of stories should be accessible to everyone regardless of ability, class, neurodiversity or wealth, not just the rarified types normally allowed by the publishing gatekeepers.
So. If you can, there are three ways you can help us right now:
1. BECOME A MONTHLY MEMBER
Not only does your monthly sub give you access to like the best writing community and courses and workshops in the ENTIRE WORLD EVER PLUS ONE but it really is the best way to support us right now, and it helps us to continue offering plenty o’ free stuff for those who need the free stuff.
Get your membership here >>
2. DONATE TO THE WHQ BURSARY
Our bursary pot helps us to give systemically excluded writers access to all our writing resources.
Top up the pot here >>
3. SPREAD THE WORD!
Don’t keep us to yourselves! We’re too good to be a secret! Tell everyone you know about Writers’ HQ and let them see for themselves what awesome-sauceome writerly goodies we have to offer. If you have a website, please consider putting a link on it pointing to us, or just spam your friends demanding they check us out.
Thank you thank you we love you love you love you x
Thought I'd post my old writing advice guides onto this blog since I deleted my old one. I hope it's helpful!
::
Listen. I respect the hell out of teachers. The vast majority of them work crazy hard and most of the time, including the times they give you well-meaning ‘writing rules,’ only want to instill good and helpful habits into you.
That doesn’t change the fact that many of these rules are stupid.
Here are my top five ‘writing rule’ pet peeves, and five rules that should be followed.
✗ Don’t write ‘said.’
Okay, I know this is common knowledge by now, but it’s so important. The concept that you can never write ‘ so-and-so said’ is hurting novice writers’ narratives. Said is invisible. Said is powerful. Said is transformable. If every quote ends in a strong synonym, it is distracting. Sometimes, in an established repartee, quotes don’t need to be tagged at all. Or an adverb following ‘said’ might be better for the narrative than any single verb.
Eg. //
“I hate the rain,” grumbled David.
“I love it,” Claire announced.
“You love everything,” he muttered.
“Including you!” she giggled.
versus.
“I hate the rain,” grumbled David.
“I love it,” said Claire.
“You love everything,” he said impatiently.
“Including you!”
✓ Don’t write ‘something.’
Cold hard truth, baby. ‘Something’ is a draft word. It’s what you write when you want to think of a replacement. I cringe when I see it in a sentence that would have been improved tenfold by a specific noun or descriptive phrase in its place. There are times when ‘something’ works or is the only option, but experiment by replacing that word with more description before deciding it’s necessary to keep.
Eg. // He pulled something shiny from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A metal flask. versus. A flash of light caught the metal he pulled from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A drinking flask.
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✗ Avoid adverbs.
This is true and false, but I’ll address the false part first. The concept that you can’t use adverbs at all is ridiculous. Don’t blindly (!) replace every adverb in your prose with a single verb because someone said you should. You want whatever you are writing to flow well and to deliver the best impact or imagery. Sometimes that means adverbs. Or you might want the verb to be discreet (such as when using ‘said’) but still want to invoke emotion. That also means adverbs.
Eg. // "Don't do that!" she spluttered, panicked by the urgency of the situation. versus. "Don't do that!" she said frantically, panicked by the urgency of the situation.
✓ Use strong verbs. At least consider them.
Verbs make the world go ‘round, people. Most of the time, a strong verb will make your writing flow well and deliver the best impact or imagery. Weigh a strong verb against an adverb + weaker verb and decide the one you want to keep in a scene. Don’t just stick with whichever you wrote first because you grew attached to the sentence.
Eg. // She held up her blood-slicked sword proudly, her other fist raised triumphantly. versus. She thrust her blood-slicked sword into the air, her other fist clenched high in triumph.
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✗ Don’t use a thesaurus.
I. HATE. This rule. I had an English teacher in middle school who marked any words she thought you had looked up as wrong. As a young reader with a large vocabulary, I was always needing to prove that I hadn’t just picked a random synonym from a thesaurus, that I knew and deliberately chose those words. (That sentence has a great example of a necessary adverb! Get BENT Mrs E. (She also hated adverbs.)) This is the same idiotic concept as telling artists not to use reference images. Use a thesaurus if a certain word is failing you or you hate every word you’ve come up with yourself. There’s nothing bad or shameful about it.
Eg. // There are no examples for this. I’m not sure how I would even do that. Insert stock photo of someone perusing a thesaurus here?
✓ Don’t use words you aren’t comfortable with.
Now, when you search the great wide web for a synonym to a word and then choose whichever one sounds nice because hey, the internet said it was interchangeable, so it must be! … Yeah. Don’t do that.
I use a thesaurus to find words that I can’t think of in the moment but they are always ones I still know. Every word has a subtle (or not so subtle) connotation that you need familiarity with before deciding it is the perfect replacement. Know your words before you start playing Mix n Match.
Eg. // Amusement in the profession puts transcendence in the performance. (Utter nonsense, written by me and thesaurus.com) versus. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. (Inspiring quote, written by Aristotle)
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✗ Don’t end sentences with a preposition.
Whoever made up this rule is an elitist hack. (I just googled it, and supposedly it began with a bunch of 17th century scholars who thought English should have Latin’s grammar, so. Yeah. Elitist hacks.) Ending sentences in prepositions sounds wayyyyy more natural than the alternative. If you don’t want to sound stilted, beat this rule into the dirt.
Eg. // They didn’t know of what she was capable. versus. They didn’t know what she was capable of.
✓ Be conscientious of your sentence construction.
A lot of grammar rules are bogus. Not ending a sentence with a preposition, not starting a sentence with a conjunction, not laying face down on the floor and screeching… Oh, right, that latter one isn’t a rule, it’s just what you want to do when you have to think about grammar.
But, regardless of bogus grammar rules, you need to put thought into your sentence construction. Editing (not writing) is the best time to do this. That’s when you can make sure the words flow together naturally as an individual sentence, as part of a paragraph, and within the chapter as a whole.
Another common construction faux pas that I see is disregarding the sequence of events because you believe it will have greater impact. In reality, if you avoid putting your narration out of order, it usually results in stronger sentences.
Eg. // "Tell me it's not true!" He stood in the doorway after bursting into Kyle's room, panting from his sprint up the stairs. versus. He sprinted up the stairs two at a time and burst into Kyle's room without knocking. "Tell me it's not true!" he demanded breathlessly.
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✗ If you break writing rules you’re a bad writer.
If anyone tries to convince you of this, kick them in the neck. (You heard it here folks, kick your DANG TEACHERS IN THE NECK.) (Not really, please don’t.) (If you do, though, don’t say that I encouraged it.) (I’m not encouraging it, I just want to make that clear. Please be nice to your teachers, they have hard jobs.)
Rules were made to be broken. You just need to know the rules in the first place in order to decide to break them, so it’s never a bad thing to educate yourself on general writing advice. Still, there is a fine line between creative liberty and bad writing, and sometimes a famous book or author turns the latter into the former. Know your stuff, but don’t be afraid to throw your stuff into the fire and watch it burn. (Figuratively. Don’t literally throw your possessions into fire, that’s irresponsible on so many levels.) (A lot of parentheses in this rule rant.) (Now that’s just bad writing.)
✓ Take writing rules and advice with a grain of salt, but don’t ignore them.
As a novice writer, or even an experienced one, it is hard to differentiate between which rules work best in your own prose. You may only realize it in hindsight. That doesn’t mean you should ignore every piece of writing advice or dismiss criticism of your work. Think critically about your own style, read books you enjoy and think about their styles, and deliberate– don’t dismiss. Maybe your writing style requires no dangling prepositions or never using an adverb. That’s your decision to make. Just… don’t make it because you’re too stubborn to see how you can improve.
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That’s all I’ve got! Do you have any pet peeves about common writing advice? Feel free to reblog and add your own!
Don’t forget to write a sentence of your story today! Thanks for reading~
Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.
Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.
I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.
Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.
Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.
Useful alternative phrases include ‘far distant future’, ‘another time and place’, ‘the Age of Expansion had begun’ or any variation on that old faithful, the Historically Unmoored Number; ie ‘200 years after the first settlement of Mars’ or ‘100 years after joining the Galactic League’ or ‘50 years after the invention of FTL drives that don’t explode when you arrive’.
Not the school subject, which I know nothing about (sorry to my chemistry teacher). I’m talking about love. But more than that, chemistry is the way two people interact, and usually it is referring to a romantic sense (though there can be friend, familial, or even antagonistic chemistry). So here are some tips on creating and maintain some of those sparks to make your readers care about the relationships in your story.
Make it Slow
It doesn’t need to be slow burn. Hell, it could even be love at first sight. It’s not about the falling in love, it’s about the relationship itself. In real life, we don’t know what a partner is like until a month, 6 months, a year, maybe even a decade after being with them. First impression you is not the real you. Let the characters develop themselves naturally and slowly, and the relationship will not become too fast-paced and unrealistic.
Give them Differences
We’ve all heard the saying “opposites attract.” And since everyone is different in some way, that is true. Now, your romantic interests don’t need to be polar opposites. In fact, something which I will talk about soon is that they should have some similarities. But a difference creates conflict—good conflict. Conflict that can mirror character’s internal conflict, that can mirror the plot, that can lead to surprising bonds. Make your characters’ differences complement each other, and that will lead to great chemistry.
Give them Similarities
Wait, what? You just said to give them differences.
Well, yes. Both can be true. In the same way that every person on Earth is bound to have something similar and something different with every other person on Earth, your characters should have some similarities to go along with their differences. What is a common trait, or situation, or part of their identity that they can bond over. What do they share that nobody else shares with them? Answering this question can also answer the key question: why do these two characters specifically work well with each other, and not with anyone else?
Focus on Each Separately
You can’t make a good relationship unless the characters that are part of that relationship are also good. So, before you jump into trying to create chemistry, make sure your characters are fully fleshed out first. They should be able to stand on their own with their roles in the story. Make them complex, with motivations, goals, and a key role in the story before you pair them together.
