Author: mohawkward

curiousgeorgiana:

Stumbled across this really useful tool for anyone doing NaNoWriMo or planning any writing schedule—Pacemaker.

You can customize a variety of settings for your word count schedule—like writing significantly more on the weekends, or less, taking a few days off, or even generate a random daily word count target. Then you can display the schedule by calendar, graph, or table and share it with others.

Plus you can adjust the date range, so if you fall behind, it’s easy to update the word count plan and catch up.

Check it out here.

Do you have any advice for creative journaling? I know many writers enjoy having journals for creativity and I was wondering if you knew anything about how to go about starting a journal with plots, story ideas, etc as a writer and not just for personal journaling. Thanks so much and I love your blog!

nimblesnotebook:

Here.

I would also suggest:

  • Looking at my “prompts” and “inspiration” tags.
  • Recording your dreams and turning them into stories.
  • Free writing for one minute and then taking one phrase or line you like as something to use in a story.
  • Keeping a section reserved for recording short descriptions of your story ideas that you don’t want to forget.
  • Writing a journal entry from the perspective of one of your characters.
  • Writing a page filled with small notes as if your characters are writing to each other during class.
  • Turning the bottom corner of the entire journal into a flip book that illustrates one of your character’s story arcs (if you’re like me it’ll be with stick figures).
  • Maps of worlds, islands, countries, towns, or even just your character’s room.
  • Maybe color coding with ink to differentiate between pages that hold plots, characters, lines of dialogue, prose, etc.
  • Keeping track of character motives.
  • Write out plots in a visual manner, with names in different colors, phrases that describe a plot twist in stylized letters taking up a whole page, adjectives being written/drawn as the thing they’re describing (red being written in red, sharp being written with sharp letters, furry being written with letters that look fuzzy/furry, etc.), underlining important phrases, and doing anything else that makes it “pop” or that emphasizes certain points or moods.
  • Don’t fix grammar or spelling mistakes right away. Instead, go back and edit with a different colored pen when you’re done writing on that page to get some editing practice.
  • Try writing out plots as if one of your characters has read your book and must summarize it. This is practice for seeing what, to your character, are the most important parts of the story.
  • Keeping a list of names you might want to use later, along with their meanings if that is important to you.

ancwritingresources:

Resource: Writing Evil

So you’re writing your villain, the ultimate “bad guy,” the antagonist. Whether you’ve had experience with the world’s evil or not, an antagonist is a must in any story (though “evil” and “antagonist” do have separate meanings). Before you write the baddest bad guy to ever bad, remember that a critical teacher, a political rival, and even nature can present just as much of a contrast to your protagonist as a raging sociopath. Often “too evil” can present far more of a problem than “not evil enough” because the villain, bad as they might be, should still be human. Here are some guides I hope will help in writing believable (but still scary) bad guys:

General:

Often, in hopes of making the scariest villain possible, writers jump to the “insane” to psychopaths and sociopaths, anyone who stands outside of “the social norm.” It should be noted, however, that a very small percentage of sociopaths or psychopaths are violent or participate in criminal behavior. But in case this is the route you choose to go down (which can be written excellently as well), here are some more resources: 

Psychopath Vs. Sociopath Vs. Apathy
How to Write a Sociopath: 
Violence
Whether your antagonist is the most evil person alive or simply doesn’t see eye to eye with your protagonist, the most important thing to remember is to make sure he/she/other contrasts fully with your main character. They must create an obstacle, a road block, must present complications to your main character’s goal; but don’t forget to give them their own story as well. No one, not even the bad guy, should be two-dimensional. 

Tips for writing a Sweet Polly Olliver and Sweet on Polly Oliver situation in a good way?

nimblesnotebook:

For those who don’t know, a Sweet Polly Oliver is a female character who dress up as and takes the role of a man for whatever reason and Sweet on Polly Oliver is when a male character becomes attracted to this character, which often causes a lot of internal conflict. Examples are Mulan and She’s the Man/Twelfth Night.

Sweet Polly Oliver:

  • Your character be believable. What makes your character perceived as male varies by time period and culture. In some places it might be as simple as changing clothes. In others more elaborate measures will be needed. Either way, you have to make sure your character won’t raise suspicions on sight. This also means that your character should enter the world of a new gender with some difficulty. She won’t be used to the social behaviors and she may start noticing extremely subtle gender roles.
  • Your character needs a reason. Female characters dress up as male characters for a reason. Furthermore, dressing as a guy needs to be related to their reason. It can’t just be “I need a disguise of any kind and therefore will choose to be male”. It should be “in order to achieve X, I must be male”. A cliche would be women dressing as men to become warriors/knights or to go to war, but you can still make it more original by playing with motive and situation (even just changing the time period to, for an American example, the Civil War can change it up from the common medieval setting).
  • The Name: It’s easier for people to change their name to the masculine version because they’ll most likely respond to it, but try to do something else. “Samantha” to “Samuel”, “Gabriela” to “Gabriel”, “Colleen” to “Collin”…while convenient it’s a bit cheesy and it has the potential to give away you character’s identity depending on the situation.
  • What it is Not: Because I feel like I need to clarify this, this trope does not include: masculine women being mistaken for men, female characters dressing up as men for entertainment, and trans men.

Sweet On Polly Oliver

The main problem I have with this trope is how the characters confront their sexuality. Men who are attracted to the woman-in-disguise often try to reassert their heterosexuality while women who are attracted to them woman-in-disguise are disgusted when they find out they actually had a crush on another woman.

In addition, you should have reasons for why this character is attracted to the female character in disguise, just like you would have reasons for why they would like any other character. Try to avoid the “there’s just something about him” narrative as if your character can just “see right through the disguise”.

5 Tips for Writing Action-Packed Fight Scenes

cutsceneaddict:

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Conflict is vital to every story.

And often, that conflict escalates from disagreement and dislike to physical combat. In the world of fiction—especially genres such as fantasy and sci-fi—writing satisfying, dynamic fighting sequences is often a necessity.

Let’s take a deeper look at the adrenalin-laced topic of fighting, as well as a few tips that will help you write more dynamic, intense battle scenes in your stories.

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