hello vonnie
Mike Driver
Three Goblin Art
Claire Keane
YOU ARE THE REASON
Sade Olutola
No title available
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
pixel skylines
d e v o n
Not today Justin
Cosmic Funnies
#extradirty
DEAR READER
One Nice Bug Per Day
todays bird
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
@theartofmadeline
roma★
Show & Tell
seen from Indonesia
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seen from Kenya
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@nocturnulramblings
It’s “lilac”, not light purple. Just like it’s “magenta”, not dark pink. Writer and children’s book illustrator Ingrid Sundberg has created a Color Thesaurus – a collection of 12 color charts that list the correct names of all shades. It’s a useful reference tool for artists, designers, firms, make-up professionals and anyone who’s planning to get their […]
300 Different Shades of Color
Writing Advice: At the Heart of Your Plot Lies a Question
I’ve been thinking a lot about story structure lately. It’s the thing I struggle with the most, as an author, and judging from a lot of stories I’ve read (and blurbs I’ve helped to write), it’s a big issue for others, too. A lot of times, people don’t realize that there are fundamental structural issues with their stories until they get to the marketing phase, when they go to write a blurb or query letter and realize they cannot condense their story.
I have some bad news for you: If you can’t elevator pitch your book, there’s a good chance that the problem is the book’s plot, not your innate blurbing skills.
I know. That’s a hard thing to swallow. And maybe I’m wrong - maybe you just need to work on your blurbing a little bit and it’ll all be just fine.
But maybe I’m not wrong. In which case, just humor me for a second. Your story will thank you for it.
Thing #1: Your world-building is not your story.
It doesn’t matter how much careful thought and planning you’ve put into figuring out the logistics of your world’s science, economy, government, etc. The intricate backstories and family histories might be totally important, but they’re probably not the plot. Until you have characters who want things and obstacles in their path, you don’t have a story.
Thing #2: Your character arc is not your plot
Characters should change. Your character should be transformed by the events of the story. This is, ultimately, where the story lies. It’s not, however, the plot. Why, you ask? Because plots are actually pretty generic. A plot is a framework, a set of expectations and structural beats that hold up the story. The story is the character’s development between Point A and Point B.
Thing #3: Plots are tied to genre
In the sense that I’m using plot here - expectations and structural beats - I would argue that “plot” is the essential defining characteristic of genre. Which is to say, the thing that unites books within a genre is that they all have essentially the same plot. But how can that be, you ask? Because…
Thing #4: “Plot” = The Story Your Reader Asks (and you have to answer)
What is it that keeps a reader turning the page? What compels a reader to finish a story? Compelling characters, cool settings, sure, ok maybe. But I would argue that at its heart, the thing that makes any reader keep reading (as opposed to, say, watching TV or playing soccer or giving their cat a bath) is curiosity.
Humans are naturally curious. We love gossip. We find it irresistible. There’s something in our genetic makeup that craves answers to questions, to gathering insider knowledge.
Which means that if you ask a question, and it seems like a fairly interesting question, the person hearing it won’t be satisfied until they know the answer.
So based on that assumption, I would argue that readers keep reading stories in order to find the answer to a question. I would also argue that, for the most part, the nature of that question is the same or pretty similar for all stories of a particular genre.
Some story questions:
Who did it? How did they do it? Why did they do it? (mystery)
Will they succeed in time/before bad thing happens? (fantasy)
Who will come out on top? (epic fantasy)
How could these two unlikely people possibly fall in love? (romance)
What actually happened? (thriller)
How will they get out of this? (adventure)
Are they going to survive? (horror)
Etc. etc.
Different stories will have different flavors of these questions, but at its core, every story should have a central question that drives the narrative onward - everything else eventually feeds in to answering that question.
You’ll note, too, that sometimes the question asked by the narrative itself is not really the question asked by the reader. For example: Ostensibly, the mystery in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is “What happened to Harriet?” But I think the real question is “How is the PI connected to the reporter? What’s actually going on here?” (which, you will note from our handy-dandy chart, makes this book a thriller and not a mystery).
“What actually happened the night of the murders?” <- Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. Definitely another thriller. (See also: “What actually happened to Amy?” at the heart of Gone Girl.)
“How is Katniss going to survive the Hunger Games?” (adventure! For all that it bills itself as a dystopia, Hunger Games is at its heart a survival story that calls back to Jack London).
There are more questions than the ones I detailed above, but those are some starters to whet the appetite..
The important thing to remember is that if your story doesn’t have a central driving question, it doesn’t actually have a plot. It may have a character arc! Lots of things might happen! It may have a story. But it will have no plot. And your readers might not know that’s what’s wrong with it, but they’ll notice it. They’ll pick up on it.
And when they do, what they’ll tell you is: The book is boring.
So the next time you’re struggling to write the elevator pitch for your story, or the story just isn’t coming together for you, stop and ask: What is the main question? What is the question that’s going to keep the reader turning the page?
Greyscale shaded sketch commissions of some Fallout characters done for @nocturnulramblings.
Something fun: anytime you can work together with another artist to help bring your characters more to life. Great work @malvalen-ooc !
Pick one and write a small story. Even just 100 words, something to get the creative juices flowing.
When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.
Stephen King (via wordsnstuff)
what if writers did streams like artists did
I think it was a Monty Python sketch that showed an author writing with a commentary like a sports commentator.
“And he’s started writing… no, he’s just written his name at the top of the page. He’s written ‘the’, a very strong opening, used in several of his books. Oh, no, he’s crossed it out again.”
“Ah, look, she’s opening the thesaurus again … perhaps she’s realized she used the same word six times in two paragraphs”
“Now that sentence is lovely, an excellent example of her style in - oh, no, she’s deleting it, never mind”
“This scene is clearly over, yet the brave author forges onward regardless…”
“She’s really picking up steam now, the words just flowing out from her - she’s stopped midsentence for some reason and is opening Buzzfeed”
“Choosing to google ‘which countries are nonextradition countries’ is a risk but it’s one some authors must take…”
Just start rolling your face on the keyboard at this point and let the Fates sort it out. Eventually you might get a sentence. Hey, if a random monkey can eventually write Hamlet?
love trying different coffee shops when I’m in a new city
me too
Write out this scene. Think about the sounds of pages turning. What is the person listening to on their earbuds? Most importantly, describe the taste of the coffee, the smell. I look forward to reading. When you are done, reward yourself with a cup of your favorite hot beverage!
Pixabay on Pexels
Try to describe this photo as if your audience couldn’t see it. Think about light, feel, sound and color. Tag me with your words :)
Your book is going to be great; just put one word in front of the other.
My favorite thing about being a writer is coming up with WIP details on the spot and pretending they’ve been part of the plot all along
But my least favorite thing about writing is editing out all the seeds of plots that never grew due to making conflicting details.
Fonts matter! Hah.
Think about who lives here. Wizard? Witch? Damsel? Knight waiting to be rescued by a spear wielding damsel?
Regret.
CARDIALGIA
[noun]
1. pain near or in the heart; suffering from or exhibiting overwhelming sorrow, grief, or disappointment, particularly due to romantic love.
2. heartburn.
Etymology: from Greek kardia, “heart” + algos, “pain”.
Day One Thousand One Hundred Nine.
my roots are lost in a ground that crumbles slips through fingertips and glides under swollen feet that are too tired to keep moving forward and refuse to look back
Very nice work and imagery!
“By light of moon and ray of star In frosty heavens shivering. Her mantle glinted in the moon, As on a hill-top high and far She danced, and at her feet was strewn A mist of silver quivering.“
J.R.R. Tolkien
