Once Upon a Daydream...

That's how all my writing starts. YA-obsessed writeblr.

[kiramartinauthor]

[butchamy]

Story idea when you try to actually write it:

[calamitycons]

Story idea when you first rewrite it:

Getting closer to what you saw in your head, eh? Keep at it!

[snurtle]

Your story when somebody else sees it:

[starspangledscarf]

hhhhhHHHHHHH

[thatincompetentperson]

(⚪д⚪)

[servicek9s-deactivated20180617]

This is a lovely post. It goes to show that when we percieve our own work, most of us have some type of insecurities about our own talents. 

[chocolate1721]

Mood

[alreadymissings]

sometimes i hate being a writer bc literally everything in the world can give me an idea for a story and that makes me want to write it before i finish the stuff i’ve already started and then that makes me want to punch myself in the face

[the-writers-bookshelf]

I can’t possibly overstate how important it is to have a writing project for fun. It gives you a playground to experiment and play around with words. It gives you a safe space to make “mistakes” and not write a picture-perfect plot. It takes the pressure off and lets your creativity bloom. Having fun with your writing is vital to maintaining your motivation, energy, inspiration, and growth.

[once-adaydream]

Wow, I need to remember this. I like having a goal, and actively working towards getting published, but I need to remember this.

[once-adaydream]

From my WIP Where Sea Meets Sand (Previously I Can See Her Now)

[thatwritergirlsblog]

Editing Your Prose

During the line editing and copy editing phases, the editing is focused on improving your prose. Here are 5 things to look out for (among many others):

1. Filter words

Filter words are words that filter the reader’s experience through that of the character. Words like “saw”, “heard”, “thought” etc.

These words should be removed where possible, because they break the reader’s immersion. They put an extra layer between the reader and what is happening in the story.

The reader already knows that whatever is being seen, heard, thought etc is being done so by the character. So, you can just describe whatever is happening without adding “she saw…” or “he heard”.

2. Overused words and phrases (also called crutch words)

Every writer has words or phrases they overuse. These should be cut because they once again break the reader’s immersion.

I recently had a beta reader tell me that I overuse “a muscle feathered in his jaw”. And it was scary how many times I had used that phrase in my manuscript.

So, use critique partners and beta readers to point out your crutch words. You can also use editing programs like ProWritingAid.

Remove around 80% of the usage of this word/phrase.

3. Dialogue tags

There are a few things to look out for when it comes to dialogue tags.

Make sure that you ONLY use tags where it is necessary - where it adds something to the words or is needed to avoid confusion.

Also, make sure that you do use dialogue tags where there is confusion as to who is speaking.

When using dialogue tags, use “said” unless a different tag will add something to the dialogue or change the meaning/tone of what is being said. “Said” should be used as much as possible because it becomes ‘invisible’ to the reader and doesn’t break their immersion.

4. “Very”

You should do a search in your manuscript document for the word “very” and remove 95% of it.

You can either just erase the word or use a stronger word in its stead.

The word “very” rarely adds anything and can slow down your story and make your your writing seem amateurish.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to dialogue, since people say the word “very” often.

5. Inconsistent punctuation or spelling

Are you consistent in your use of commas, dashes, capitalisation etc? Do you use British and American spellings interchangeably?

If you create your own world, make sure you keep the spelling of character and place names consistent.

You can check this manually, but you can also use ProWritingAid.

Reblog if you found these tips useful. Follow me for similar content.

[once-adaydream]

Just decided that one of my secondary characters wants to be a cosmetic chemist when she grows up and I think this makes her 1000% more awesome.

[once-adaydream]

After many, many months with the title I Can See Her Now, and feeling like it was just fine, with the help of my friends, I’ve found a title that fits much better. I also made a new cover because that’s more important than actually finishing writing the thing, right?

[once-adaydream]

After lots of time spent thinking about it, I am officially on Fiverr! I’m going to be offering editing, proofreading, and beta reading services, primarily for YA works to start. My first gig—beta reading—is up, and more will be following soon. If you are a YA writer looking for friendly, unbiased feedback, you can find out more here! 

p.s. if you reblog to spread the word, I’ll love you forever! 

[once-adaydream]

2020 / 50, 51, 52 & 53 of 40 / A Court of Thorns and Roses, Mist and Fury, Wings and Ruin & Frost and Starlight

Review: Honestly, I am mad at myself for taking SO LONG to read this series. Even after I’d  started reading more fantasy, I still thought it’d be too intensely fantasy for me. But I knew the first one had a Beauty and the Beast vibe, and I love retellings, so it was really only a matter of time. I read A Court of Thorns and Roses in less than two days. And one of those days I was working. I think it’s safe to say I enjoyed it. The second one, A Court of Mist and Fury, took me a little longer, (but I blame that on life, definitely NOT the book). I risked travel sickness with the third one, reading every time I was in a car. The voice was clear throughout and it was easy for me to imagine the world. I loved the entire cast of characters, and Feyre’s dedication and determination. I only had the first one in hard copy (the rest I borrowed ebooks from the library) but I will be buying hard copies of the rest as soon as possible because I know I’ll be rereading these in the future. 

[once-adaydream]

2020 / 49 of 40 / Last of Her Name

Review: I’ve had this on my TBR for a while now. For some reason, I couldn’t find it anywhere in the UK, but when I started my job in Vancouver, I found a copy at work. It’s still taken my some time to get around to reading it, but I finally did! Overall, this was a fun read. I enjoyed the characters and the world building a lot. There were times when the plot felt a bit flimsy? A few times, I noticed teeny tiny little plot holes, which took me out of the story a little bit, as I flicked back to see whether I’d misunderstood something. That said, Anastasia was one of my favourite films growing up, and this retelling had a lot to live up to. It didn’t blow me away, but I was disappointed either.

[firemoon42]

Ways to un-stick a stuck story

Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

Start fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between will come with time.

[concerningwolves]

Characters: Building, Breaking and Rebuilding

Characters are the inhabitants of the worlds you create. They drive your stories and pull in fans. They are how you provide representation and channel conflict. The problem is, these super important members of your paper population don’t like to behave.

Sometimes you need to break them down and start again

Look at where they started, their original inspiration or, if that’s too vague, their core characteristics. Remove everything else that contributes to their personality, such as backstory and desires. Just examine the set of basics that made their skeleton and ask yourself some questions. Some possibilities are:

What other desires might they have? How do these basic traits impact their relationships with others? What flaws might these traits and characteristics lead to? Why are they like this? Can they grow? If not, try tweaking their basics. What are their fundamental morals? Their personal code? Are there any tropes that they fall into? Do you like this trope? What could these basics do for creating conflict? How much pressure can they take before breaking?

After that, you can start to remould them based around those new answers. There is a set of important things that you should always consider when making characters, whether they are new ones or old ones being redone.

Desires

Without desires, your characters are listless and uninteresting. There is one exception, which I will cover later on, but for the most part characters must must must have at least one desire to drive them. It could be something really simple or honest, like a steady job or a roof over their head. If you’re creative, even the most basic of desires can drive an enthralling plot.

What does your character want, more than anything? What would they do to get that thing? How do their morals and personal code influence the lengths they will go to in order to fullfill their desires? Are their desires typically good things, or bad things? How does this drive them? Do their desires define them as a person, or are they just side wants that come to the forefront because of the plot?

Flaws

I made a post on flaws, traits and disabilities (link at the end), where I talked about the ways these things are linked but are not one and the same, and covered the different types of flaws. Some considerations:

How do these flaws govern their actions? Their relationships? What kind of flaw is it? Negative or positive? How could these flaws drive conflict?

Growth

Characters need to grow to keep interest. I still maintain that Jane Eyre is such a lovable character because we see her grow from a child who has strong ideas but is ill-equipped to convey them and so becomes difficult, into a woman who knows how to stand her ground and uphold her morals while learning along the way to forgive and understand. She’s only one example of literal thousands, but you would do well to keep this in mind. Growth doesn’t mean a total revolution of character, it just means learning and expanding from the original stem.

What could motivate them to grow? Why would they need to? Who helps them along the way? Would they understand their need to grow themselves, or would someone have to push them to it?

Bending and breaking

My favourite ever piece of advice is that your characters are like geodes and must be broken before they can be displayed in their full colours. I’ve forgotten where I heard it/read it, and the actual words, but the gist of the quote has stayed with me for years. It is so true! Find every weak point and jab your pointy pencil in there, hard.

What are their worst fears? Would could they do that would cause them huge emotional distress? Would could push them to do said emotional distress-causing thing? What are their limits? Who or what could be a point of weakness for them?

Making mistakes

Put simply, let your characters fuck up. They’re your characters, yeah, but they’re just characters. There is no need for them to be perfect, smart, witty players in your plot. Readers want to see themselves, at least in part, in the books they choose, and readers are only human.

What could your character do that would be irreversable? Would they care enough to try and reverse it? How would other characters react?

Real life

Following the same philsophy as above, let real life happen to your characters, even if they’re in space running through a hostile planet or a fantasy world of your own creation.

Do they have a family, children? Could they fall in love and mess up? Are there people being left behind for the sake of this character’s goals? Is there a family member or close friend who could die of completely mundane causes? If the situation around your character is anything but mundane, this would be all the more heart breaking. Are there any small, personal life things that they have forgotten about in the course of the plot?

Real life lends itself to sub-plots, which are really important for driving the story as a whole.

Loopholes

How do your characters fail to fit this criteria? What can you do with this? Can it be turned to your advantage? Be creative!

For example: the one exception to having desires could be the flaw of a character being exceptionally apathetic to the point of making thing s worse for other characters, or having to force themselves not to have any desires to survive (see: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood, in which Offred is a passive protagonist to make a point about the society of Gilead). In the case of the flaw of extreme apathy, play with what could potentionally change this. Or, as in the book Apathy and Other Small Victories, have a plot that revolves around the protagonist doing nothing and play with the chaos and hilarity that ensues. 

Finally, consider the world they live in. Study their backstory, what they came from and where they are going, and put all of these together.

Some other posts on characters to help you out:

Ways to create and develop characters

Rules for character building (including where they came from and where they’re going, and how this helps their growth)

Distinctions between flaws, disabilities and traits-  plus the different kinds of flaws and the considerations you could make

This has been part of my weekly set of advice articles. Each week I make an article or series of articles on the things you have asked for help with, or things that I feel need to be covered, such as aspects of representation. Check the tag, #artie gives advice.

If you need any help on anything else in the meantime, general or specific, drop an ask!

Best of luck ʕ •́؈•̀ ₎

[thewritingumbrellas]

Open up your manuscript.

Search for “there is” or “there was.”

Find all the description or action that starts with “there” and change it.

“There is a strike of lightning” becomes “lightning strikes the sky.”

“There is panic building in his chest” becomes “panic builds in his chest.”

Helps declump the writing

[once-adaydream]

Style is not something you can put onto your writing like a new set of clothes. Style is your writing. It is inexorably knotted to the content of your words and the nature of you. So do not pour the clay of your thoughts into the hard mold of some personal writing style that you are determined to have. Do not create in your head some witty, erudite, unmistakably exciting persona and try to capture him or her on paper. Also, do not try to write like Elizabeth Gilbert, Hunter S Thompson, Raymond Carver, or anybody else. If you fail you will look foolish, and if you succeed you will succeed only in announcing to the world that you are not very creative. Strive instead to write well and without self-consciousness. Then your style will emerge. It might be as specifically yours as your thumbprint, or it might be as common as sunshine. But at least it will be you.

100 Ways To Improve Your Writing, Gary Provost

[once-adaydream]

2020 / 48 of 40 / Poisoned

Review: I really enjoyed this one! A Snow White retelling with enough little twists to make it unique, while keeping the voice and feel of a traditional fairytale. I loved the addition of the clockwork heart, and the bigger evil that made the Evil Queen a haunted pawn in a wider game. The message sprinkled throughout was powerful (I was in tears by the end) and the story was written perfectly to encapsulate it. This is probably one of my favourite retellings, and if retellings are your thing, definitely give this one a read! I got this ARC through the bookstore I work at.

[once-adaydream]

2020 / 47 of 40 / Love & Olives

Review: Having spent many family holidays on various Greek islands, I was excited to find this ARC at work. I was looking forward to the Atlantis plot line and was ready for a cute, sunny adventure with a little bit of romance thrown in. In terms of the setting...I was disappointed. The overall scene-setting was okay, but I just felt like I wanted more. I struggled to stay invested in Olive, the protagonist, as she seemed to contradict herself a lot, feeling one thing one minute and the opposite the next. The Atlantis angle was fun, but not as in depth as I expected, and I think it could’ve benefited from being cut down – I ended up skimming a lot towards the end. On to the next read I guess. I got this ARC through the bookstore I work at.

[once-adaydream]

Introducing...

My main WIP at the moment is (tentatively) called I Can See Her Now. [EDIT: I’ve found a new title! Everything relating to this story will now be under the title Where Sea Meets Sand!] It’s been in progress for a long, long time, and has developed from a story I started when I was twelve or thirteen. The earliest document I have is dated 2013, but I know I started it a lot earlier than that. (Maybe one day I’ll post a snippet, depending on how bad it is!) Since then, I’ve read more and more, studied Creative Writing and Publishing at university, worked in two bookstores and one publishing house so I think it’s safe to say I’m far more experienced now. With every restructure, every brainstorming session, every redraft, I’ve put Grace (whose name has remained since the beginning) through A LOT. But I finally feel like I’ve found her story. 

Grace is fine. Her family have adjusted to life without Meg, and they are learning to live with their grief. But when Meg appears in a dream, Grace comes undone. Her friends, her family, even her new relationship with her brother’s friend Luke, she risks losing them all if she can’t face the death of her sister head on. As the dreams continue, Meg feels as real as when she was alive, but will that help Grace, or make things a hundred times worse?

Check out my Where Sea Meets Sand project page here and I’ll be tagging everything related to this project with #wip: where sea meets sand