Tag Archives: writing

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viewtokill:

your character should be more than a tragic backstory. more than i lost my parents at a young age so now i rebel against the world. more than i have all these wicked skills without proper background or training. 

sass is great, and so is silence — but when aren’t they using their biting wit? when do they speak up? do they use their ass-kicking skills for good? for evil? have they lost people along the way — actually, it’s inevitable, so what happened after the funeral? did your character attend? did they seek revenge, or search for answers at the bottom of a bottle? 

don’t toss around tragedies if you’re not going to apply them to your characterization. alcoholics aren’t just loud and physically abusive; ptsd doesn’t mean you’ve boarded up the windows and refuse to leave your house. you won’t always continue to hate your parents after they’ve died. you will doubt your life decisions. being rich doesn’t make you sexy. being smart doesn’t make you socially awkward [ alternatively, it doesn’t make you the most attractive person in the room. ] even if you’re wicked smart, you’ll still get some things wrong. 

do your research. if you put your character through traumatic events, not everyone walks away unscathed. but being haunted by the ghosts of your past doesn’t make you attractive either. it’s a nitty gritty, dirty fucking business. you get mad, your world loses color, you feel alone, and sometimes you ask yourself why you’re the one who lived. 

treat your character like their own person. just because you wouldn’t say something to someone doesn’t mean they’ll keep their trap shut. it doesn’t mean they’ll want a big wedding or fast cars or apple pie made the way your mother taught you. maybe you’re pro-life and your character is pro-choice. maybe it’s vice versa. just because your character is a dick doesn’t mean it should be a reflection on yourself. but if they’re going to be a dick, and you want it to be believable, give them a reason to be a dick. a reason to hate the world, only slightly less than they hate the people living in it. maybe more. maybe it’s maybelline.

being smart and young and witty and attractive doesn’t mean your character will be respected. it doesn’t mean your character deserves to be respected. older, more experienced characters may trust your character less because they’re so damn young, no matter what you do or say to try to prove them wrong. 

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Think about it: We read fiction not just to see ourselves but also to imagine ourselves as we might be. When we recognize ourselves in the characters of a novel, we are gratified. We identify with them. But that is just the beginning. If self-recognition is all we wanted from fiction, we would be satisfied with letters, journals and statistical surveys of the population at large. But we are not satisfied with those things.
We crave stories, particularly the intensely intimate form of story called the novel. That is because a novel, uniquely among art forms, presents powerful points of view, strong conflicts and a helping of human life that affirms a higher truth. Characters in breakout fiction may seem realistic, even average, but they are bigger than their circumstances. They do not just suffer, but strive. They do not practice patience, but act. They do not merely survive, but endure.

Donald Mass, Writing the Breakout Novel  (via gabapplewrites)
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I wish people as a whole could realize that an explanation for being bad doesn’t excuse it – and that a viewpoint character doesn’t always have the moral high ground (or all the information). – Referring to the Changeling discussion here a little while ago, specifically.

askmerriauthor:

Agreed.  I come across that particular logical fallacy quite a lot, actually.  It’s one thing when a person acknowledges they’re doing something bad and owns up to indeed being in the wrong because of it, but many are under the impression that acknowledging it suddenly gives them a blank cheque to keep doing it without consequence.  As if admitting they’re doing something bad somehow makes it okay and suddenly anyone who calls them out on it is actually in the wrong.

Case in point, my depiction of The Witch in those last two One Word Stories with her.  I wrote them in a manner that, on first glance, makes it look like Starswirl betrayed The Witch’s trust and she had a wiser vantage point she was acting on.  But that’s only at first glance.  Actually consider the implications of everything that happened and it becomes pretty glaring just how selfish and heartless she was really being.  But in her case, she doesn’t make excuses for her behavior.  She’s the villain in those stories full stop and makes absolutely no effort whatsoever to justify her actions in order to make them easier to swallow.

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sadisticfiction replied to your post “celeskid replied to your post:£ why can’t you? D: I mean if you love…”

Hmm… well maybe you can keep working on those side projects and try to get something published? I mean you said you’ve finished novels before :O Do you not think any of them are worthy?

WELL… They all need heavy revision and my energy/confidence ratio wavers greatly. I work full-time as a web developer, so I honestly don’t have a lot of free time. I… really could manage what time I do have better, though. The second novel I wrote is actually in fairly decent shape, just needs some reworking… and I have like 3 others that are at 60% of their first draft. 

Ughhh yeah. I need to work on them. And get something sent out. That’s one of my goals for the year! Get something sent out to agents, see if I can get some representation. 

Huu… 

I’ve taken university classes, run/participated in writing groups for years, so much workshopping, conferences, editor consults, author lectures… you’d think I’d have a handle on this. Several peeps from my writing group have submitted, a couple of them have gotten published, and here I am just… shrug? I even have a published author who has more or less been my mentor for the past several years (and she’s asked me if I’m afraid of success; doesn’t know why I’m not moving forward)… 

This blog has been a great way to practice, though, holy moly… I think I’ve learned a LOT in the 9 months I’ve been doing this. So much writing, trying out different styles, giving myself homework and tough challenges… and all publicly available for people to read. I’m even starting to proofread a little bit (but I’m still super lazy, let’s be honest). 

I’m in a fantastic critique group right now… very small, and the two ladies I write with are so talented… ughh and they keep pestering me because I haven’t submitted in mooooonths… 

I don’t even remember where I was going with this, but I’m soapboxing like Hakuba so I should stop it. HAH.

:V

tldr; I need to write… esp since I have basically lost all confidence in my ability to art. 

image

ps I feel super old now

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Japan is America in Disguise!

ghostflowerdreams:

Japan, why must you be American in disguise? Is it because I don’t know ditty squat about you? 

Hmm, yes. That’s exactly it.

When working on stories about Japan, it seems that many tend to forget that it’s well…Japan. It’s pretty different from America (and other places) and no matter who a person is or where they’re from they will get culture shock (which is pretty true when you enter different countries either way).

But, when it comes to certain aspects of Japan, it’s hard to accept or let the blunder slip by if something obliviously canon in the anime is ignored, especially if it’s something that’s true. I find it important for stories to be accurate because the best kind are those that honor the whole fandom by focusing on the details, the facts, the characters and when effort is put into making it seem real, it shows. You know, when stories that make you think like, ‘wow, this story is so good that if I didn’t know any better I would have honesty believe this happen for real in the book’ or something to that extent.

One of the first thing I’ll focus on is the fact that Japanese schools are not the same as American ones. But sometimes I wonder if writers honesty believe that they are. Or worst, they just didn’t want to do the research on it and Americanize Japan…well more like they made it America disguised as Japan. 

To break down the information of what Japanese schools are like I’ve split it into three parts, A, B and C. The letter A contains all the facts and information about the elementary school from grade 1 to grade 6 in how it’s run and so on. The letter B is about grades 7 through 9 which is secondary school (the equivalent of junior high school). The letter C deals with the upper secondary education, which contains grades 10 through 12 which is high school. All together it’s explains how Japanese schools are run, the duties of the students and of the teachers. Basically everything that happens in it.

As a warning, there’s massive amount of information. So I hope it doesn’t scare you off.

Read More

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Fishsticks Chapter Seven – The Dance

Fishsticks Chapter Seven – The Dance

((Also, for those interested in my writing, I posted a chapter from the novel I’m currently working on… it’s rough, but I’d love some feedback from anyone who has interest/time. Thanks! <3))
If you read this and leave a comment I swear I will love you forever. Reader interest is a huge motivator for me to keep working. 🙂 I wrote this well over a year ago, so its probably a bit…