I'm a YA fantasy author trying to share awesome content about books, writing, and scenery, and, of course, connect with kick ass people. Website: www.MonicaAnneBooks.net
Back in October, I submitted a short story into a contest. I didn’t win and that’s okay.
I decided to enter because I’m looking to challenge myself.
I know that I’m not the best at suspense or fight scenes.
This story required me to use suspense, and I did an OK job.
I had to write a story around a Halloween fright.
What was nice though is that I was judged my peers and was given some great feedback on how to improve my writing.
I think that’s the thing about being a writer… we often hold our stories so tight and don’t want to let them go. We don’t want to get feedback (even if we say we do). However, for us to improve our skills and write better stories, we really need to be open to constructive criticism.
I wrote a short story. I’m so proud of myself. And the ending actually lands!
I’ve tried to write short stories before and didn’t really like the flow.
The one thing that I find difficult as the all-knowing writer is that whittle down all the details in the “world” I created. The audience doesn’t need to know EVERYTHING, even if I want them to know EVERYTHING. Lol
I think I’m getting better at the balance of dialogue and exposition as well.
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.
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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
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to expanding other people’s knowledge on this topic. Information literacy is a huge topic in high schools and universities, and one of the things teachers and librarians are struggling to help students understand is the fact that their search engine is not free of bias and may prioritize ads (or what it thinks you want to see based on your shopping experience) rather than actual information. It’s made more difficult by the fact that the technology in use is constantly evolving.
Also, big thanks to the folks who reminded me to fix the ref links in the original post. Not sure what I was thinking when I copied it over from FB, but it’s now fixed (can’t vouch for reblogs, this is Tumblr afterall).
Someone accurately noted that the bulk of the above links are databases, not search engines. The initial post called them research sites not search engines. If you want something better than Google, I would usually suggest using Duck Duck Go. Someone in the comments said it skews right, but I have not seen research or evidence to back that up, so proceed as you wish. I would recommend Firefox as a browser, and you could consider one of these search engines.
https://www.qwant.com/ - Search engine with no tracking or advertising
https://www.ecosia.org/ - Search engine that plants trees – has ads and that ad revenue runs the engine while funding tree planting
Additional Sites Recommended in the Comments
Here are some of the top sites recommended in the comments.
Academic/Reseach
https://eric.ed.gov/ - Education Resources Information Center, a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information.
https://www.jstor.org/ - academic digital library providing access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ - the National Institute for Health’s National Library of Medicine, PubMed comprises more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
https://www.researchgate.net/ - founded to address the problems in the way science is created and shared. Connects the world of science and makes research open to all.
https://www.academia.edu/ - platform that shares academic research
https://www.sci-hub.st/ - research publication library – technically pirated content, but please note that the researchers do not get paid for publication, and will often send you a PDF of their research for free if you ask, it’s the publications that want to restrict access to paying readers
Libraries
https://www.hathitrust.org/ – free digitized books from all over the world
https://z-lib.org/ – digital library providing ebooks for free
https://www.bpl.org/resources/history-and-political-science/ - History and Poli Sci at the Boston Library
https://www.gutenberg.org/ - free digital books, focused on works with expired US copyright – note, if you look for out of print books on Google, it will try to SELL you books that you can actually download FREE from Gutenberg (I’ve tested this multiple times)
https://archive.org/ - Internet Archive, a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
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Please visit my Resources for Writers page for other subject areas.
Sometimes, it’s just so defeating getting a rejection email or even just going through agent want list after agent want list, only to find out that YOUR BOOK isn’t what they’re wanting.
I know I just have to keep the faith, but it’s not always easy.
After my last searches and set of rejections, I had to take a break from it all.
It was heart wrenching knowing how long and how hard it was to create this amazing story, only to find out that either there aren’t agents wanting to even look at my book or who pass on it when they do. 🙄
But I’m ready to get back to it now.
However, I’m not looking forward to the gut punches that’ll come my way. Fingers crossed that there won’t be too many at least. 🤞
Feeling alone in a crowd of people. I like my introverted-ness, but it can be a lonely path.
Yes, it’s full of freedoms and fantasy worlds and beauty. But what is all that if you don’t have people as passionate about all those things as you are? They appreciate your unique view of the world, but they can’t possibly understand it.
On the subject of characters, let’s go over a pretty useful and universal profile template.
An important note: for each of these, ESPECIALLY the story or personality oriented questions, ask yourself WHY!
For example, WHY does this character have these enemies? WHY are they proud of or ashamed of this thing?
Also, this is quite a comprehensive list that takes into account many factors, so if you don’t have enough time, consider only doing this for your main cast or protagonist. :)
I hope you find these helpful!
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
1. Basic info
Name:
Role in story (ex. protagonist):
From (where their home is):
Age:
Birthday:
Gender:
Sexual Orientation:
Religious status:
Political beliefs (could be specific to your fictional world):
2. Physical Description
Height:
Build (body type):
Race, ethnicity:
Hair colour, length:
Eye colour, shape:
Clothing style:
Scars, other unique physical attributes:
General health:
3. Personality
(Optional) MBTI / Enneagram:
Introverted or Extroverted:
General traits:
General fears:
Proud of:
Ashamed of:
Hopes and dreams (can be short-term or long-term):
4. Relationships
Significant other(s) (if applicable):
Family:
Friends:
Enemies:
Role models / heroes:
Important acquaintances:
5. Abilities
Education background:
Social standing (ex. wealthy? powerful? imprisoned? etc):
General talents:
Unique talents:
Weaknesses:
Current occupation (could be a job, could be a position, like “student,” etc):
Past work experience:
6. Story
Main goal / desire (goal is more substantial, desire is something more intangible):
Main fear (preventing them from reaching their goal / desire):
Main problem to overcome:
How their personality will help them achieve their goal:
How it will hurt them:
How they will develop:
Backstory influence on their present conflict:
Worldview (ex. optimistic, cynical, etc):
(Optional) Type of character arc:
Specific mannerisms:
Specific dialogue / voice:
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
These are a lot of things here, but I promise, taking a few seconds and filling each out will really help you get a well-rounded sense of this character.
Many things such as mannerisms, enemies, voice, and personality will be influenced by the other categories, like social standing or education, so consider it!
