#mistakes to avoid

[the-aspiring-writers-blog]

Tips for writing characters in-character for a story:

So I've heard of a few incidents and even read stories where writers make the personality of a character so OOC that it doesn't even seem like the original character anymore. And this is something that I'd like to address to new writers as a HUGE no no. Most of your readers who are familiar with the characters will be turned off by your story if you continue writing them like this (once in a while is fine and that too don't overdo it). So what can you do to stop making this mistake?

Get to know your characters well. Whenever you are watching a show, focus on thier personality traits. If need be, you can even note it down. Do they swear alot? Are they shy? Are they outspoken? Are they aggressive? etc. You get the idea. Use those traits of theirs in your writing.

If two or more of your characters are starting to sound too much like each other in a story, try focusing on what makes them different from each other. Note down their names on top, make a line in the middle of your page (something like this: |) and then write their separate traits that you pick up on under each of their respective headings.

Character sheets are also a good way to help keep your characters in-character but I've never really tried those so I honestly don't know how effective they are.

Last but not least - try reading the stories that they are in as much as you can so that you can get a general idea of how to write them from others. Sometimes you just need a different perspective. This is especially easy in fanfics, where people are writing the same characters or pairing in HUNDREDS of different fics. Again, you will come across some fics that mischaracterize a character as well but those will be few and far in between when you consider a number in hundreds or thousands. Again because most good writers know what a turn-off mischaracterization is and generally steer clear of it.

[michaelathisten]

5 Mistakes I Made As An Indie Dev-And How To Avoid Them

“The wise learn from their mistakes. The exceptionally wise learn from the mistakes of others.”

-some guy from Fablehaven I’m probably quoting incorrectly

Welcome to the beginning of a brand new 12 Days of Tumblr! I had fun with this last year, so I’m bringing it back-as the title suggests, one post every day through the 12 days of Christmas! Stick around for everything from extra game lore, tips and tricks on bringing your own stories to life, my goals going into the new year, and even a little bit about my personal life!

Now on to the topic of today’s post-5 mistakes I made while making games, and how to avoid them!

1-Procrastinating

I’m sure many of you are familiar with this! Procrastination is a problem most of us struggle with. Interestingly, even procrastination can be good in some instances-helping you get more time to refine ideas before you execute them-but of course, then there’s procrastinating too much, and that’s what I did. (Let’s be honest… I still do! But I’m working on changing that.) It’s a problem with many aspects of my life from classes to cleaning, but here let’s focus on how it affected my games. It’s deceptive at first because I wouldn’t neglect my games completely-I would work on them little by little throughout the time allotted for a game jam. The problem was, I wouldn’t work enough. I waited until close to the deadline to really get serious, sometimes having to cut corners. This and another problem on this list really held my third game back from it’s full potential-Like Veins Beneath The Town. I had to rush the puzzles without thorough testing, I had to rush the art causing a slight dip in quality with things like shading, and I had to cut some content just to meet the deadline. What can you do to avoid this? There are tons of tips out there and I’m no expert, but I’ll say this: make a schedule. It’s hard to hear and harder to stick to, but it has to be done. It can be according to the time you’ll spend each day working on it, or according to the progress you should be making throughout your time slot (for example, “have sprites done Monday, first level by Wednesday, art by Friday” or something like that). Is your game a hobby without a deadline? Then make an easy schedule! But if you don’t have a schedule at all, odds are you won’t finish. Once you have a schedule, it takes some getting used to-but once you’re used to it, it will make everything better! Make good habits, make good progress! Make bad habits… make bad progress. Make inconsistent habits, make inconsistent progress. You can always edit your schedule if it’s not working for you, but do yourself a favor and at least have one! Your game will thank you!!!

2-Not creating backups

I ignored this one until it caught up to me as I was working on the fourth game, A Hollow Harvest. A plugin I used changed a map’s info and made it so I couldn’t load up the game-and when I tried to fix that by tampering with the map files, I LOST EVERYTHING. What saved me was a test copy I already had uploaded on my website-I was able to download it and save most of my progress, thank goodness. But it could have been much, muchworse.

Why did I ignore making backups all this time? Pretty simple: it was tedious and I was lazy. Why would I stop what I was doing to make an extra copy when I could make more progress instead? But it only takes about a minute-upload it to a cloud, or deploy an extra copy to your computer (even better if you keep a backup in a usb in case something happens to your computer). You don’t even have to make one every time you work on your game, but think about how much progress you can stand the idea of losing and adjust your backup frequency accordingly. Even I was relatively lucky-others have lost entire projects. Learn from my mistake and keep your work safe!

3-Not creating an outline

This one’s controversial, because let’s face it: outlines aren’t fun. Many people, including myself, find it much more fun and mysterious to make things as you go along-but if you want your game to succeed, be it for time or continuity issues, you’ll greatly improve your chances by going in with a plan. I’m doing alright when it comes to making them now, but it wasn’t that way when I started, and the development process was a lot harder for it!

How you make your outline greatly depends, but think of it as organization. You can make it pretty barebones (I often do), just be sure to have a clear idea of how the game is going to start, how it is going to end, and what needs to happen to get there. For example, my outlines are often a list of the game’s levels and the major events that happen in them. In They Watch From The Walls for instance, I would have where the keys would be in a room, and what rooms would have the Pumpkin keys. It can be that simple! Of course more details will serve you better, but on the flipside don’t over plan or it’ll be hard to adjust the rest of the story to any changes you might make.

4-Overestimating my skill

Here we get to a problem in the content of my game itself. In Like Veins Beneath The Town, I made a boss fight with very broken mechanics. It started because I overestimated my programming skill-saw someone else do it well in their game and thought I could easily make one too-and then, combining with my procrastination, I had to stick to it when I ran out of time to either refine the idea or sub it out with a different climax. Make sure you have a basic idea of how to do everything you plan on making. For this reason, if you can help it, I highly recommend starting with a non-public practice project. I made pieces of a few different games before I started my first public project (The Well Speaks To Me), so by the time I had to do it for real I had a decent understanding of how to make text, art, and basic events. After that, test complicated ideas before you commit to them! You don’t have to polish them at all-if you’re testing a chase mechanic, test it on a blank map full of grass and make sure it works. This will make everything go so much smoother!

5-Inconsistent Posting Schedule

Now this one is only for people who are trying to grow an audience. If your game is a fun hobby project or something to show off to your friends, don’t worry about this! But if like me, you want to grow a large player base (or even sell your games one day!) then this is crucial: Post to your social medias consistently! I failed to do this in everything but my last 12 Days of Tumblr… yikes! (One more new years resolution, I guess!)

Now a lot of you might hate this part of being a developer. I completely understand-on one hand, I love interacting with my players through comments and such, but on the other hand, I hate being tied down to social media every so often. What I recommend is to start small. At least a post a week is most optimal, but if you’re not there yet, try holding yourself to a post every two weeks. I let my social medias thrive with content as soon as I had any and then die for a few months at a time-which is terrible!!! Never do that if you’re serious about marketing!!!

In conclusion, know your skill, make a plan and a schedule, follow through-and post about your progress along the way to keep your players excited! Make backups, don't procrastinate. These five basic tips can help you no matter what type of game you're making. Have other tips and advice for developers? Comment them on this post! And of course, if you guys like this then I can write more advice like this in the future. Hope it helps you-and happy game making!

[nanowrimo]

Properly Coded: Creating Characters of Color (Part 4)

Diversity makes stories better, plain and simple. This year, we’ve partnered with the good folks at Writing With Color to get some advice on how to write stories populated with people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. In the fourth part of her sub-series “Properly Coded,” Alexa White talks about a few mistakes to avoid when writing characters of color:

We are finally making characters.

You should have an idea of their frames of reference, their backgrounds, and the world they inhabit. You should also use tools like WWC’s Research Chart to help you flesh out the character.

Except even with all that work, you’re probably still caught up in a few little things that you need to work through in order to really be respectful.

1. Cultural purity is a toxic concept 

Say it with me: cultures interacting with the modern world will grow and change to adapt to modern society, and this does not necessarily mean they are getting destroyed.

This means Natives have rules for digital content sharing and own cell phones. A Korean family might have a tradition of making bacon cheeseburgers every Friday. An Indian woman might prefer ballet to kathak. All because they have been exposed to the modern world and have taken what they like from it.

None of this means they’re “doing their culture wrong.”

Culture is an ever-growing, ever-evolving, ever-shifting thing that is highly adaptable to everything you can possibly throw at it. These societies have handled invention, innovation, technological advancement, and cultural diffusion for sometimes millennia. 

We are not museum dioramas that popped up in the 1800s that were thrust into the modern world and are frantically working on returning to “the old ways.” The problems occur when we aren’t allowed to make choices for ourselves, and our ways of life are actively getting stomped out because of assimilation. But individual people can and will take what they like from other cultures to enjoy. That is their right.

2. We’re not “on” 24/7

When you start to consume the emotional labour of people of colour, you might subconsciously start to pick up that activism is their hobby. They often dedicate a lot of time to it, complain about the isms they face on the regular, and just generally be very open about interacting with the systems that harm us.

Do not conflate “interacting and existing” with “the contents of life.”

We’re dancers. Cooks. Dog walkers. Artists. We kick back and play Minecraft at the end of a long day adjusting spreadsheets to fit our boss’ needs. Our hobbies span the same gamut as every other white person, even if (sometimes) the expression of it is different.

Despite all the differences in experience, humans have always been humans. Graffiti translated across the globe ends up looking all like the same thing; we tell jokes, cook dinner, play games, sleep, date, raise children. 

Just because we had different experiences than you, doesn’t mean we’re made of different stuff.

3. Not everyone is going to be the same kind of self-aware

Activism on the internet  often has the same sort of end point: freedom of some sort. We’re all working towards about the same goal. But not everyone is going to agree with how that looks, and what steps should be taken to reach it.

You have to be very careful writing about inter-community issues (colourism being a pretty common one), but you also have to be very careful that all your characters don’t end up sounding like the same small cluster of activists. Disagreements on the nuance of how to accomplish something happen, even among those small clusters. And if you don’t have that disagreement, everyone is going to be a cardboard cut out.

Go forth and make characters

This series was a basic toolkit to get you started at square 1. It’s not exhaustive; it’s not even that comprehensive. It is a beginning.

Keep learning. Never stop learning. Because the minute you stop is the minute you lose the plot.

Happy writing.

~Alexa

Alexa White, also known as Mod Lesya on Writing with Color, is a Mohawk two spirit person from Southern Ontario, who joined Writing with Color to help educate others. A lifelong lover of storytelling, she dedicates her focus to making characters feel like they come from whatever setting they’re supposed to exist in. If she is not found writing, she is playing with her cat, cooking, or drawing.

[digitapranshi]

Why Most Content Marketing Still Fails to Drive Sales in 2026 (And How to Fix It)

Most brands aren't short on content. They're short on content that actually closes deals. Walk into any marketing team's content calendar and you'll find blog posts, social captions, and email sequences stacked for months — yet when you ask which piece of content directly influenced the last ten sales, most teams go quiet.

That gap between content volume and content value has only widened in 2026, as AI makes it easier than ever to publish more while making it harder than ever to be noticed.

The Real Problem Isn't a Lack of Content

Search visibility has fundamentally shifted. A large share of searches today are answered directly on the results page, without a single click to any website. Buyers increasingly start their research inside AI chat tools rather than typing a query into Google. For brands still measuring success purely by traffic volume, this shift can feel like the ground disappearing beneath them.

But traffic was always a proxy metric. What businesses actually need is influence at the moment someone is deciding who to trust and who to buy from — and that moment now happens earlier, often before a person ever lands on a website.

Buyers Have Changed Their Research Habits — Has Your Content?

Think about how differently people research a purchase today compared to five years ago. Instead of comparing five blog posts across five open tabs, a buyer might ask an AI assistant a single question and get a synthesized answer pulling from multiple sources at once.

This changes what "good content" means. Content built purely to rank — stuffed with keywords, structured around search intent alone — increasingly gets summarized and skipped. Content built around real expertise, original data, and a distinct point of view is what gets cited, quoted, and trusted by both AI tools and human readers.

Three Signals That Your Content Isn't Built to Convert

1. It answers questions nobody in your sales pipeline actually asks. Content built entirely off keyword research, with no input from sales or customer support conversations, often misses the specific objections and questions that come up right before someone buys.

2. It sounds like it could belong to any competitor. If you removed your logo, would a reader know this was your brand's content? Generic, safe, AI-polished writing blends into the background. Content with a specific point of view, backed by real experience, stands out — and increasingly, it's also what AI models prefer to cite.

3. It has no clear next step. A blog post that informs but doesn't guide the reader toward a decision leaves the hardest part of the job undone. Every piece of content should end somewhere — a demo, a download, a direct conversation.

Turning Insight Into Action

Fixing this doesn't require an entirely new content strategy — it requires a sharper one. Start by auditing your best-performing content against actual sales outcomes, not just traffic numbers. Identify the handful of pieces that salespeople actually reference in conversations, and study what makes them different from the ones nobody remembers.

From there, build content backward from real buyer questions instead of forward from keyword lists. For a deeper breakdown of the specific strategies working in 2026 — including how brands are adapting to AI-driven search while still driving measurable sales — [this guide on content marketing strategies for 2026](INSERT URL) is worth a read.

The Bottom Line

Content marketing in 2026 isn't failing because brands aren't publishing enough. It's failing where content is built for algorithms instead of for the actual moment a buyer decides who to trust. The brands pulling ahead this year are the ones treating content as a sales tool first and a traffic tool second — because in a world where AI answers most questions before anyone clicks a link, trust and specificity are what still cut through.

[laweekly01]

25+ Mistakes You Must Avoid During Industrial Relocation

Industrial plant relocation is complex—and costly if done wrong. Learn 25+ key pitfalls related to planning, budgeting, communication, safety, operational disruptions, and vendor coordination. A must-read for project managers and operations teams!

[shivam-k1234]

Avoid These Mistakes When Investing in Mutual Funds

Avoid These Mistakes when Investing in Mutual Funds

Financial awareness has increased among people. They have started investing in mutual funds to build a strong portfolio and fulfill their investment goals. Mutual funds allow you to diversify your portfolio and earn high returns on investment. If you are good at studying markets, then it's better to invest in mutual funds than buying stocks. You can start investing in mutual funds with as low as ₹500 of monthly SIP.

Common Mistakes Made by Mutual Fund Investors

Different Mutual fund schemes carry different investment objectives. It has been found that people invest in mutual funds without considering their goals. This mistake shall be avoided. For long-term goals like retirement planning, child education, etc., an investor shall invest in equity mutual funds. On the other hand, for short-term goals like buying a car or planning a vacation, an investor can invest in debt mutual funds.

It has been found that people invest in mutual funds without doing any research. Proper research is very necessary before investing in mutual funds. You shall know the fund type, exit load, lock-in period, historical returns, etc., of the scheme well in advance. If you don't do proper research, then you may buy or sell the mutual funds at inappropriate prices. So, research is very necessary. Use authenticated sources for research.

Each investor has his/her own risk-taking capacity. Some can take high risks, whereas some are risk-averse. It has been found that investors at times invest in schemes without considering their risk appetite and later on face loss from investment. Understand the scheme properly before investing. Debt funds are advisable for risk-averse investors. Whereas investors who are ready to take high risks to earn high returns can invest in equity mutual funds.

Some people invest all their savings in a single mutual fund scheme. And then when an emergency arises, they have to redeem this mutual fund and affect their investment goal. So, before you start investing in mutual fund schemes to achieve goals, you shall plan an emergency fund. The emergency fund will help you to deal with unexpected emergencies. An emergency fund can be created by setting aside a fixed amount every month. This can be kept in bank FDs or liquid mutual funds.

After you invest your money in mutual funds, it's also necessary to review them at periodic intervals. Through this, you can achieve your investment goals. If periodic evaluation is not done, your mutual fund portfolio may not be worthy enough to give good returns.

At times it has been found that an investor puts all his money in a single mutual fund scheme. This is not a good idea. Because if the fund doesn't perform well, then you would face a huge loss. Instead of this, try to have a diversified portfolio. So, to have a good amount of return, you need to invest your money in different mutual fund schemes. This will reduce your overall risk.

Diversification is necessary to reduce the overall risk and earn higher returns. But it doesn't mean that you need to invest in too many funds. An investor at times makes this mistake. Investing in too many funds will over-diversify your portfolio. So, in order to diversify the risk, it would be advisable to divide the investment into a few funds.

Investors at times react to market fluctuations and redeem their mutual funds. This is not good for your finances. You need to understand that investing in mutual funds is a long-term game. So, stop reacting to short-term market fluctuations. Also, you shall avoid blindly following the stock market experts and business news channels. They at times affect your decisions negatively.

If you have a good understanding of finances, then you can plan your investments. But if you are not good at managing finances, then it's better to take the help of a financial advisor. A financial advisor will guide you to select the right mutual fund and fulfill your investment goals.

Some people keep on waiting for the perfect time to start investments. You need to understand that it's not possible to time the market for anyone. So instead of waiting for the perfect time, you shall start investing right now.

Common Mistakes done by Investors in Mutual Funds:

Investing without any Goal

No Research

Avoiding Risk Appetite

No Emergency Fund

No Review of Investments

No Diversification

Investing in a Lot of Funds

Affected by Short-term Fluctuations

Not Consulting Financial Advisors

Delaying Investments

Conclusion

People make some common mistakes while investing in mutual funds. If they avoid these mistakes, then they can earn higher returns and achieve their financial goals. After investing in a mutual fund scheme, wait for sufficient time to earn good returns.

References Used:

TradeBrains

Economic Times

[affiliateproductsreview]

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[affiliateproductsreview]

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