Spinning Gold @spinningyarnintogold - Tumblr Blog

GUIDE: NAMING A TOWN OR CITY

This post was originally from a FAQ, but since the original link is now defunct, I am re-posting it here.

There are many things to keep in mind when naming the town or city in your novel:

1) Genre/Theme/Tone

It’s very important to consider the genre and theme of your story when choosing a town name. Take these names for example, each of which indicates the genre or theme of the story: King’s Landing (sounds fantastical) Cloud City (sounds futuristic) Silent Hill (sounds scary) Sweet Valley (sounds happy and upbeat) Bikini Bottom (sounds funny) Radiator Springs (sounds car-related) Halloween Town (sounds Halloween-related) Storybrooke (sounds fairytale-related) 2) Time/Place It’s also important to consider the time and place where your story takes place. For example, you wouldn’t use “Vista Gulch” as a name for a town in Victorian England. You probably wouldn’t use it for a town in modern day North Carolina, either. Vista is a Spanish word and would normally be found in places where Spanish names are common, like Spain, Central and South America, the southwest United States (including southern California), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Florida. 3) Size/Settlement Type An isolated town of 300 people probably won’t be Valley City, but a sprawling metropolis of 30 million could be called Windyville, because it could have started out as a small town and grew into a large city. 4) Geography Words like gulch, butte,and bayou tend to be regional terms. You probably wouldn’t find Berle’s Bayou in Idaho, or Windy Butte in Rhode Island. Words like mount, cape, and valley are dependent upon terrain. Most of the time, you won’t have a town named “mount” something unless there are hills or mountains nearby. You wouldn’t use “cape” unless the town was on a cape, which requires a large body of water. 5) History Is there a historical person or event that your town might be named after? The Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield is ironically named after its founder, Jebediah Springfield. Chattanooga, Tennessee is named after the Cherokee town that was there first. Nargothrond, in The Lord of the Rings, is an Elvish town with an Elvish name. 6) Combination of Words

person name + geographical term = Smithfield, Smith Creek

group name + geographical term = Pioneer Valley, Settlers’ Ridge

descriptive word + geographical term = Mystic Falls, Smoky Hill

person name + settlement type = Smithton, Claraville

landmark + settlement type = Bridgton, Beaconville

Word Lists

Types of Settlements

Geographical Features

Place Words

Common Suffixes

Other Descriptors

ahb-writes

Some helpful, basic guidelines for developing a consistent or thematic approach to naming villages or towns or cities in fiction.

And never forget, you can change it later … in fact, one can almost guarantee that the more village, town, or city names you come up with during the worldbuilding phase, the more likely you’ll change one (or all) of them in due time.

#worldbuilding #writing #writing advice #cities and towns

doe-prince

Honey is a comic based on my run on clangen (lifegen). I think I'll slowly post it here on tumblr, but it'll update faster on Comicfury.

This is not a Warrior Cats comic! They're just cats.

doe-prince

If you enjoy suffering, you can now get the completed pdf of Honey from my ko-fi shop!

doe-prince

artyphex

“There are no female aliens in our game because we don’t know how to make a female version of this alien” You know that alien you just designed? That male alien? Give it a female voice actor and have characters refer to it as she. That’s it. That’s literally all you have to do

Make her shorter if you must

Make her BIGGER if you aren’t a coward

moonwatcher13

Take your male alien bodytype, make her like 4 feet taller, give her an extra set of arms and sharper teeth, and as muscular as shit.

Boom.

skywalkerchick1138

lemonsharks

Give her natural camouflage and make the man like this

Make them exactly the same size and shape but different colors

Give him a huge flock of babies following him around to show off what a great lay he is

Surprise mPreganté

Exactly the same but one of them has a cool hat (you decide which)

Give her a sensible haircut for successful hunting while he has a big dumb mullet so big and dumb the food can see him coming and book it

Please just for the love of pie do not begin and end with boobs

foxpunk

do you all see my vision here

clockworkspider

You really need to make non-tragic past for your characters, significant people and events that impacted their lives, non-dramatic mundane moments that shaped them, happy memories, bitter memories, embarrassing memories.

Like yes the space princess lost her whole civilization, but did she have friends before that? Favorite place? Does she miss the sound of her favorite music she use to listen to?

stupid-elf

You need to show us the flowers for us to be sad when you write that they ripped the garden out

#writing advice #character backstory

fassina

This from In Writing, a collection of writers reflecting on practice, really resonated with me.

salvia-plathitudes

@thebibliosphere

#writing advice

gladosisalesbian

something that I feel like is missing from fandom nowadays is the idea that you dont have to have a unified, chronologically/tonally consistent interpretation of your favorite work. your fics dont have to fit within the same version of canon, even if theyre all canon-compliant on their own. your headcanons can contradict each other. be a multishipper. write metas that take two totally different interpretations of the same plot point. write a character as a villain and then write them as the hero next time. write a character as a lesbian and then write them as straight next time! engage in hypotheticals and drop them when you get bored! make up the rules as you go!! have fun with it!!!

incidentalcomics

The Shape of Ideas

the-starry-seas

Okay I'm curious because I've seen a lot of opinions going around about this lately. If more than one option applies, pick the one you most often feel. Reblog for sample size etc etc

A 'comment' means a comment left under a fic on a site like AO3 or FFN, a reaction in the reply or tags of a social media post, or directly messaging the author. This includes 'chapter kudos', emoji-only, one-word, gif reaction, and all other types of comments.

Should comment as payment: You think writers should get comments because they did a lot of work to write, edit, and publish a fic. They cannot receive money for this work, but they deserve to have something, so readers should make an effort to comment.

Should comment to connect: You think writers should get more comments so that they can respond to their readers, connect with others in their fandom, and build friendships. Readers should make an effort to comment so writers feel included in their community.

Should comment to show appreciation: You think writers should get more comments so that they can receive compliments and appreciation, and see what readers like about their fics or how certain scenes impacted them. Readers should make an effort to comment so that their authors feel appreciated.

Should comment for another reason: You think there is a different reason that readers should comment. Readers should make an effort to comment for this reason. (This is NOT a 'some or all of the above' answer. There is a 'you forgot to mention x' answer.)

Should comment when they want: You do not think readers should make an effort to comment on fics.

commenting on fics:

as a reader and writer, should comment as payment

as a reader and writer, should comment to connect

as a reader and writer, should comment to show appreciation

as a reader and writer, should comment for another reason

as a reader and writer, should comment when they want

Voting ended onDec 19, 2024

the-starry-seas

commenting on fics:

as a reader, i should leave comments as payment

as a reader, i should leave comments to connect

as a reader, i should leave comments to show appreciation

as a reader, i should leave comments for a different reason

as a reader, i should comment when i want

Voting ended onDec 19, 2024

the-starry-seas

commenting on fics:

as a writer, i should get comments as payment

as a writer, i should get comments to connect

as a writer, i should get comments to feel appreciated

as a writer, i should get comments for a different reason

as a writer, readers should comment when they want

Voting ended onDec 19, 2024

inkskinned

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

potionwine

#writing #this is so affirming of my own obsessive way of writing fics #that definitely causes a lot of desperation but also so much thrill #we have this thing in Finnish luomisen tuska #the agony of creation #I'm very familiar with that particular feeling #but I think you're gonna feel a bit of agony when you're passionate about what you're creating for many reasons #can you really just mellow if the need to write the story is almost a fever #you are giving pieces of yourself to your work #and sometimes that rips you apart and saves you a little

(via @raindroppoetry)

saszor

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

saszor

How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

#oh wow thank you #I was looking for this kind of thing not long ago #I hate searching for scar refs #to try and draw them properly #but so many results online are weird FX makeup #art tutorials #disability #burns

luwha

LMAO so, recently someone tried to SCAM me, so i'll show you what happened and the telltales of it being a scam.

This one is quite obvious but i know people who are just starting their artist careers and might not have experiece.

Follow the thread:

🚩#1: They pick your most famous/Popular art as reference. They don't know what you actually sell.

🚩#2: They will pick a random popular character. They're not roleplayers or anything. They're not here for the art in any level

You ask me, what are the odds they really like Goku? Oh, well, you'll see. At this point i check their profile for anythign that might indicate it, but as you'll see you won't have to.

vampireapologist-archive-deacti

One of my favorite thing I’ve learned about animals studies is that you should avoid using colorful leg bands when you’re banding birds because you can accidentally completely skew the data because female birds prefer males with colorful bands

Apparently if you put a red band on a male red wing blackbird his harem size can double

So like you can completely frick up the natural reproduction of a group of birds by giving a guy a bracelet so stylish that females CANNOT resist him

volcanokids

Me, putting a red bracelet on the leg of a male red wing blackbird: ON GOD we gonna get u some pussy bro

jordisstigander

I remember reading a study where researchers realized that female birds of a certain species preferred males with a darker breast. So they created what they literally called a “Super-Sexy Male” by catching a male and coloring his chest with a marker. They then ran dna tests on the eggs in the area.

Previously when the researchers had run these tests, they found a certain amount of infidelity was common for these birds. Somewhere around 10% of eggs were fathered by males who were not the primary mates of females.

After the advent of the Super Sexy Male, however, stuff got crazy in bird world. Infidelity skyrocketed, with upwards of 25% of ALL EGGS in the area being fathered by this specific male. Furthermore, his mate’s eggs were 100% his.

This is just insane to me. Just imagine you’re living your bird life when suddenly somebody scribbles on Dave’s chest and the ladies can’t stop throwing themselves at them. It’s stupid that we theoretically can wreck this kind of havoc on an ecosystem.

kirkspocker

via @elytrians

thebeautifulcomics

Here (1989) by Richard mcguire (raw magazine)

penny-anna

The problem w writing fiction is that you'll be like tee-hee I'm going to write a story about a fucked up little scenario that's got nothing to do with anything in real life, just some pure messed up nonsense, and then you finish it and take a step back and go aw rats I made a metaphor again

noirandchocolate

Several weeks ago one of my coworkers called me over into her cubicle and gave me a very unexpected gift. Her mother passed away recently, and she'd been packing stuff up at her condo to give to relatives and sell, so the home could be sold. The mother was an avid knitter and crocheter, and when my coworker came upon her stash of equipment, she told me, she "immediately thought of me as someone who might get some use out of it."

So, I have inherited a varied collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, cable needles, sewing needles, and, best of all, now-out-of-print pattern books, mostly for blankets, because that was what this lady loved to make most. Plus, I also have a bunch of gauge swatches she made, pinned to little bits of card covered in perfect schoolteacher handwriting setting out the patterns they were made to test.

And also...

My coworker brought another bag, full of yarn and...knitted blanket squares. Her mother's last started project, before she got too sick to continue. And she asked if there was anything I could do with it.

It turned out, there are twelve completed squares, and I quickly located the pattern book they are from amid those given to me. It's a book of 60 patterns, meant to be put together however the maker wishes into blankets of 20 squares. I figured out which of the numbered patterns were already made, and selected eight more that I thought might go well with them.

So now! I am working on completing! My coworker's mother's last knitting project!

And I really am feeling very good about doing it.

noirandchocolate

Whoa this blew up a lil' bit huh! I've been so happy reading the notes and seeing other people's similar stories and such. And I've received some very sweet messages about this too. Thank you so much! <3 Crafting is such a bonding experience--across families, with those who've passed, just in general a very communal thing. I'm happy if my post brought some nice feelings to people's days, too.

I come bearing a small update! I have completed three of the eight squares I picked to make and just started a fourth. Here’s what the project looks like so far:

(Why yes I did stand on my bed to take this photo.)

The squares are in big need of blocking to get 'em to a uniform size, of course, but this is what we’ve got! Mine are the one at top right and the middle two in the second row.

My coworker told me her mother especially liked to make blankets featuring a popcorn/bobble stitch, but I didn’t find any squares like that among those she’d made for this project, so that’s why I chose to make the one to the left of the book. <3 Otherwise, it seems like she picked a mix of squares with cables and not, with graphic motifs versus repeating textures, so I chose mine to reflect that and have decided on a layout that I hope shows off the variety.

Apparently Mom's usual blankets were knitted all in one piece; coworker said she’d never seen her make a square sampler like this. Meanwhile samplers are MY favorite kind to make, so I’ve been having a lot of fun.

Oh! And I wanted to share this, because a few people in the notes have done so: If you're a crafter and want to help out finishing people's projects, or you have a project you'd like to see finished but can't work on yourself, try checking out Loose Ends! It's a volunteer program where you can submit projects that need finishing or sign up to be a finisher. They match volunteers with submitted projects based on location and other factors. It looks really fun and, like I said up there, a great way to connect with people through crafting.

noirandchocolate

‘Nother small update, I showed my coworker some progress photos and she immediately zeroed in on that one square with the popcorn stitches. She said she recognized that one because her mom had once made an entire blanket like that (as in, not in separate squares, she repeated that pattern across a whole blanket’s width).

I told her why I chose that square, like I told you guys up there, and she said she was so glad she gave her mom’s stuff to me because I’m “making sure her work is finished beautifully.” Ahhh, my heart, it grows.

(Also! I’m on the last of my eight squares! And then I have to put them together, which is less fun than making them, but I’ll do my best!)

vanillivilovesreus

@noirandchocolate is this tue booklet?

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/leisure-arts-leaflet-932-60-easy-to-knit-pattern-stitches-combine-to-create-sampler-afghans

noirandchocolate

YES!! And cool, it looks like it CAN still be bought! That’s good news, thanks so much for finding it in case anybody else wants to check it out!

Aaaaaand I have a big update tonight! All the squares are DONE!!

You can compare the final layout to what is posted up there to find my squares. :D

I had to fix the crochet borders on several of Coworker’s Mom’s because they didn’t have a uniform 48 stitches per side as called for in the pattern book, but now that’s taken care of, I can start…

ASSEMBLING.

noirandchocolate