Tag Archives: advice

Worst Villains

Hello Fiction Lovers!

First of all I’d like to apologize for posting late this week and I thought I’d share a fun, helpful video by one of my favorite vloggers, Jenna Moreci. In the video she’ll talk about her top 10 villain pet peeves and what makes them so terrible. To mention some of the villains that she talks about and that I definitely agree with her opinion about are: the cartoon villain, villain who doesn’t really do anything, chatty villain, femme fatale, and the bad guy who sucks at being the bad guy.

Here’s the link: 10 Worst Villain Pet Peeves

I hope you all enjoy the video and let me know if you have any questions!

Writing Women Characters as Human Beings

Guest Blog by Kate Elliott (Found on Tor.com)

Source: https://www.tor.com/2015/03/04/writing-women-characters-as-human-beings/

Hello Fiction Lovers!

So I’ve been reading more writing advice posts and I came across this one that I thought made some really good points. I think that it won’t only help writers write better female characters, but more well rounded characters overall. It can also help if you feel like you’ve been stuck writing cliches or stereotypes. One thing that she made me realize is that even though I have multiple women characters I don’t often have them talk to each other because they are part of different subplots. And that’s something I should fix because they are all in a single manor and would talk to each other more often than I’m have them do so. She also makes a good point about preconceptions and how there is a difference between choosing to make a character more of a stereotype or two-dimensional, and simply doing so without realizing it.

I strongly encourage you to click on the above link even if you have the most well-rounded female characters because it can help you view writing in a new way and help with other parts of writing as well. Please let me know if you have any questions and feel free to share your thoughts on this topic as well!

Active Characters

Hello Fiction Lovers!

First of all, I want to apologize for getting this out late. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about this week and I took so long debating it that Monday was over before I got to writing it. That said, lately I’ve thinking about active characters and so I finally decided that I should write about them.

In my experience, readers a very partial to active characters over passive characters. I think this is because we would rather see someone working toward something instead something being done to someone. The latter can be frustrating, especially when it happens over and over again, which is never a terrible fun emotion to feel. The frustration with the character can lead to frustration with the book/story and can cause a reader to stop reading–something no writer wants, and most likely the reader isn’t satisfied with having to put a book down either. That isn’t to say that a character can’t be passive, just that they shouldn’t be passive all the time. When a character, especially a main character, is passive continuously it raises the question of what they are contributing to the story, why they are there, because it feels like they can be replaced with any other passive person and the story would be the same. So, when you’re writing make sure that you give reasons/let the characters take actions to show why they are the ones that must be in this particular story.

There are two reasons why I think some writers have trouble writing active characters: they think they are writing active characters but their characters are reacting instead of acting, and they place their characters in confining places/situations so it seems like there is nothing for their characters to do. To solve the first problem, I would ask yourself if something happens and then your characters act, because that is an example of reacting and reacting is more passive. Let your characters make a plan and act on it to move the plot forward instead. Reaction can be fine, especially when characters are caught off-guard but please don’t use it for every plot point. As for the second problem, remember that every action doesn’t have to be some huge story altering thing. Maybe your character just wants a piece of cheese or to make friends with the prisoner in the next cell over. If they are stuck in a cell or some other place where they can’t move around much let them make a plan to escape or to minimize the danger/discomfort they are in, and then let them act on that plan.

I hope that this was helpful and please let me know if you have any questions! Feel free to post your thoughts on active characters in the comments and I hope you all have a good week!

The Clues to a Great Story

Hello Fiction Lovers!

So I’ve been watching TED talks recently and this week I thought I’d share one with you that I thought made some good points. The speaker of the TED talk is Andrew Stanton and he talks about the clues to a great story. He doesn’t specifically talk about writing but a lot of what he says can be related back to it. I hope you like it and let me know what you think in the comments!

Here’s the link: https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story?referrer=playlist-how_to_tell_a_story

Writing Combat In Fantasy – Part One: Top Ten Tips

10 tips for writing realistic combat scenes in fantasy fiction. Guest blog by Danie Ware.

Source: Writing Combat In Fantasy – Part One: Top Ten Tips

Hello Fiction Lovers!

This week I thought I’d share one of my favorite posts from Fantasy Faction. It helped me make my combat scenes more realistic and flow better. Hopefully it will do the same for you!

Let me know what you think of the post in the comments or if you have any questions. I hope you all have a good week!

Favorite Quotes

Hello Fiction Lovers!

For this week I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes about writing. Whenever I see them I start thinking about how I can write better and/or these quotes make me want to write. So without further ado, here they are:

“If there is a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

–Toni Morrison

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that simple and that hard.”

–Neil Gaiman

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

–Thomas Mann

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e,  do not cave into endless requests to have ‘essential’ and ‘long overdue’ meetings on those days.”

–J. K. Rowling

“Have a point.”

–Phillip Round (My Lit. Professor)

Most of these are classics that I’ve seen time and again when I’m looking up stuff about writing, but even with that repetition they still hold true for me and don’t get old. Do you have quotes or sayings that stand up to the test of time as well? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any questions feel free to ask me those as well and I hope you all have a good week!

 

 

7 Ways to Help Generate More Story Ideas

Hello Fiction Lovers!

I’ve been looking through some of my old writing lately and that got me thinking about how I–and others–come up with different story ideas. Of course there is no absolute way to come up with a new idea that you’ll want to write, but trying out these different things can give you a push in the right direction if you’re stuck. They can also just be nice to do as ways to get the muse whispering.

  1. Read (and possibly write) story prompts. Reading other people’s ideas and making them your own can be very fulfilling and open your eyes to things you never would have thought on your own.
  2. Listen to music. If you want to write a story with a certain tone, listen to music with that tone whether it’s calming or rage filled or anything in between. Lyrics can also work like story prompts to help you think of things you wouldn’t have thought of.
  3. Move to some place new. If you always write in a chair move to the floor or try to write standing. If you always write inside take a few hours and spend time in a nearby park. Always write at home? Try writing at a coffee shop.
  4. Read. Reading others’ work can help you spark some ideas of your own (just make sure you don’t plagiarize because that’s pretty uncool). Also, sometimes it can be good to step away from writing just for a bit and relax with a good book.
  5. Have an odd conversation. Ask a friend/family member/significant other/stranger what they would do if they suddenly gained an ability or magic. What if they could become immortal but could only eat oranges and chocolate? How would they react if the floor really did turn into lava?
  6. Try something new. Your characters can probably do all sorts of things you can’t do. I know mine can. You don’t have to take up the art of sword fencing or learn an ancient language, but you could try making a new recipe or trying out a new hobby. Sometimes doing something new can help make your brain make connections between ideas that were missing before.
  7. Describe a scene/character down to the very last detail. Sometimes you just have to get to know your characters/world better in order to have the story revealed to you. This can also just help with character depth and worldbuilding in general.

Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have any questions and feel free to post your thoughts–or any other suggestions you might have–in the comments.

On the Matter of Never Having Enough Time

Hello Fiction Lovers!

This week I thought I’d step away from the more technical side of writing and throw my two cents in about something people love to complain and give advice about: not having enough time to do the things we want to do, the things we have to do, and the things others want us to do. I know I’ve complained about the amount of classes and homework I have, the number of clubs I’m participating in, the lack of weekends because of my part-time job, the cost of procrastinating, and not having enough time to pick up all the hobbies I want to do, read all the books I want to read, watch all the shows that vie for my attention. I complain everyday as well as swapped advice even though I dislike the fact that I do so.

Perhaps you’re wondering why you should care? Perhaps you would like to point out that I’m participating in those very acts right now? In reply, at the risk of sounding pompous, I’ll say that you should care because that focus on time is part of what’s hindering us and I know. There have been nights when I’ve lain awake worrying about the lack of time to take care of all my responsibilities and wants and realized that I wasted more than it’s fair share of time worrying about time and effectively doing nothing but making myself feel guilty. Doing so doesn’t help. I realized, too, that I wasn’t enjoying the activities I was participating in as much because I was always worried about the next thing and how much time everything took. To tell the truth I still am, but accepting that I’m only this busy because I decided to do all these things has helped a bit, brought some of the fun back instead of feeling as though I was slowly being compressed.

This worry–obsession–with time stems somewhat from my culture of things always needing to get better, quicker, faster. It makes it difficult to enjoy the moment and remember that not every moment of everyday has to be productive. We–or at least I do–need downtime to recuperate, think through things, breathe so we don’t end up pushing too hard and breaking. There is a balance to be found and I am still working on finding it, especially since I tend to like to binge things (binge watch, binge read, binge work). It’s not so much the matter of not having enough time as learning to be selective, know what’s important, not be a pushover. It’s understanding that time isn’t a commodity that’s continually slipping through my fingers, but something I should be glad to have at all. It might sound cliche, but I think if I started appreciating time more instead of complaining and worrying about it, I’d find I suddenly have more of it.

Thanks for reading and listening to my musing. Let me know if you have any questions and feel free to post your thoughts in the comments. I hope you all have a great week!

POV: A Spectrum

Hello Fiction Lovers!

This week I thought I’d talk about point of view (POV). For those you who don’t know there are three main types of POV: first person, second person, and third person. First person tells the story from the character’s point of view using “I” while second person makes use of “you” and talks directly to the reader, placing them in the story. Third person tells the story from an outside perspective and is more likely to use “they” and/or name the characters outside of dialogue.

Most people tend to think that first person is the most intimate between reader and character while third person is the most distant, and second person is often ignored. I used to belong to that group until recently when a teacher pointed out and showed how there is actually a range of distance between reader and character that can occur in any of the POVs. A character in first person could just list off the things that were happening and leave it to the reader to interpret their importance, or third person you could delve into a character’s mind and know them even better than the character knows. Both can be interesting if done right and, of course, there is all the space to mix and match in between the two extremes or do the opposites of the examples.

Distance is not decided by the POV, but rather how much insight we are allowed to see into the characters. Is it just action after action without any adjectives to tell us the character’s take on events–like a movie where we have rely on what we see and hear to understand what’s happening? Or do we, as readers, get to know everything the character knows with all their biases and beliefs put forth for us to shift through and understand? Neither way is better than the other, and both can be useful depending on what story–not to mention character–you are trying to tell.

Nor should we just continue to ignore second person. Yes, I will admit that the POV can make it hard to vary up the start of the sentences and it can be hard to keep up for longer pieces, but there are stories that could have more impact if told in second person. It can be done right and well. It can also be a good exercise if you like you’re writing in rote and need to do something different from what you’re used to.

So please put more thought into POV than just first person=intimate and third person=distant because there is more to POV than that, and understanding that point can help you find out the best POV and distance on the spectrum for your story. Also, branching out from what you are used to is a good way to get better at writing–that way you can learn more about what works for you and what doesn’t.

Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a good week! Please let me know if you have any questions and feel free to post any thoughts you have about POV in the comments.