#write fantasy

[wildswrites]

(id: a horizontal collage of three photos, the first on the left is a girl with her back turned, arms wrapped around herself. the one in the middle is a picture of the night sky with a clear view of the stars and the milky way. the last on the right is of two people sitting in a car, sunshine blocking the viewer from seeing any detail about the people. the picture is taken from the backseat. end id)

images come from unsplash and can be found in my s&a collection.

okay so I fully expect this to get zero notes and that’s okay! but, if you’re willing to play a little game with me i would really appreciate that. i’m going to call this exposure writing aka the “i need motivation” game.

for every like this post gets, i will write three sentences.

for every reblog this post gets, i will write six sentences.

for every twelve sentences i write, i will share them and tag those who made it possible.

i will be working on my wip: starlight & ashes. it is the story of two girls who woke up, sharing a bed with a stranger, but each other is not the only thing that they’ve forgotten. what follows is their journey in rediscovering themselves, their magic, their relationship to each other, and those that they have forgotten. it will be a duology, with the first book being about what happened to them, and the second book about exacting revenge upon the person who did this to them. i am over seventy thousand words into the first draft of book one.

any interaction with this post is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!!

[archangelbelletti]

How NOT to write a Latinx character

If you’re writing a book with a latinx character, here are some stereotypes you should avoid.

TW: microaggressions, straight up r*cism

They’re the only character to be a drug dealer → of course, if you’re writing a book where all your characters are involved in drug dealing and general crimes, this won’t apply, but if you have, say, a group of 6 people and the latinx character is a drug dealer things are getting stereotyped.

They’re lazy

They’re servants to white people (maids, etc)

They can’t speak English without an accent and people mock them;

You’re writing them being bilingual incorrectly (@prosebyanngie has great posts about bilingualism, check them out!)

They’re poor, uneducated etc.

They’re undocumented, clandestines, etc

They’re sexualized for their race → if you have a latinx person and you always describe them as lascive or sexual, this is not good. Try instead treating them like a person who likes to be intimate only with people they actually like.

They’re that character that “steals” the mc’s love interest 

This is not a comprehensive guide but definitely this will help you shrug off some of these stereotypes!

[archangelbelletti]

How to write stabbing injuries

TW: stabbing, blood, death, injuries.

Have you ever watched movies and realized that actors don't always react to stabbing injuries the same way?

How much can you fight after getting wounded that way, and how much does it hurt?

Let's dive in!

1.

During a fight against an opponent who has a knife in their hand, it is highly probable that your character won't realize they've been stabbed until the fight is over.

This happens due to the amount of adrenaline the body is producing while fighting for their life.

2.

If the knife gets turned inside the wound, it will take a lot longer to close.

Don't make the villain do this and then the hero keep fighting like nothing happened an hour after, it's totally not realistic.

3.

If the weapon gets extracted or moved out of the wound, the body will start bleeding fast, so, it's better for your hero to avoid playing Rambo and taking the knife out because 1) it will be painful as hell, 2) it will probably cause their death if they're alone

4.

Wounds in non-vital [keep reading]

[archangelbelletti]

How to pace your book

(If sharing on Instagram please tag @irbelletti)

During the last months, I wrote the first draft of my new book and re-read the last one. I learned more about rhythm, and noticed some issues and how to solve them.

So, here are some tips for how to pace your book!

1. Sections

The first thing you should do to pace your book if you’re an outliner is get an overview of how it is going to feel to the reader.

Where are the big moments, those parts where the plot really unfolds and important things happen?

Those are the stones you should start building from!

I suggest not putting two of those plot points too close together, or the pace is going to feel a lot faster than it should be.

I used a three-act structure for HASTAR and each act starts or ends with a big plot point. In the middle, I have smaller events and then fillers (like little chats between the characters where relationships are built, reflexive parts, and any kind of moment where their personality can be exposed without crashing against the plot).

2. Chapter length

A chapter should be 3000-5000 words long, or so the writing community says, even though it’s okay to think that your chapters can be as long as you need them to be.

At the same time, though, consider that a chapter that is 500 words long is a VERY fast chapter and is probably going to make your reader go “So? What happened here?”, which is something that my beta readers told me about my old book.

For TALE OF SPACE AND TAROT, before changing my POVs and shrinking them from 9 (nine!) to 6, I had many chapters that were really too short, and cut the breathing pace of the book way too much.

Being an underwriter I never struggled with caper being too long, but as a reader I can’t stand when a book has chapters that never end. They exhaust me, and even if the story is interesting, I have a really hard time understanding when it’s okay to put down the book and be sure to pick it back up again.

So, in conclusion:

In my opinion, the best books have an average chapter length of 4000 words max. Some chapters can be as short as 500 (these will give your reader a breather) and some can be a little longer (these are the chapters where big, long events happen, like a final battle or the ending, where you solve all conflicts).

3. Chapter openings

You can start your chapter in medias res (in the middle of the action), by describing something (the weather, a character, a landscape, a feeling), with dialogue, with shock, with a dream… The ways to start a chapter are many! The only thing you should consider is this:

If the chapter has a plot twist in it, the kind of plot twist that will leave your readers in tears, start it slow. Your character wakes up to have breakfast, the weather is nice, everything is nice and slow and familiar. Build up the rhythm and give the reader a big shock.

If the chapter is the cont’d of a very anxiety-inducing chapter that you ended with a cliffhanger, then, immediately dive into the action.

3. Chapter middle

I’ve seen a lot of bestseller authors doing this (including visual media), but I just can’t stand it. [keep reading]

[evergreens-world]

For anyone interested in writing fantasy, i found an app that has some excellent guildlines and suggestions and helpful tips for writing fantasy stories. Its called "Write Fantasy". Definitely would recommend as it has prompted me to think about aspects of my characters and plot devices that i had never really considered deeply before.