Uncommon Questions For OCs And Their Creators:

Some people aren’t going to like what you write. Write it anyway.

Some people, people you know objectively suck at being a human being, will get more kudos, more comments, more recs. Write it anyway.

Some of your friends aren’t going to read what you write. Write it anyway.

Some of the people you support the most won’t support your work. Write it anyway.

Some people are going to say your characterization is 100% wrong. X would never. Write it anyway.

It’s been done before. Write it anyway.

Your writing might not measure up to the fandom greats. Write it anyway. (I can guarantee they didn’t measure up at some point either)

Some people aren’t going to rec your work. Write it anyway. (And make your own recs)

Write it anyway.

Write it anyway.

Write it anyway.

LET ME TELL Y’ALL ABOUT THIS WRITING APP

Fighter’s Block is the best writing app I’ve come across in a long time.

You type in the amount of words you want to write and as you write, your mini lil avatar fights a monster. Each word you write acts a hit towards your monster, and once you’ve hit your word count the monster is defeated!!!

How cute!!!!

Work quick though as how long you spent not writing decreases your avatar’s health. It’s a productive fight to the death against the clock!

Best things about this app:

You can PAUSE it!!!! Need go get a cup of tea? Need to sneeze? You can!!!!!

Settings are adjustable! You can change the monster’s speed and the attacks!

You can change the theme and font!

You can level up!!!!! The number of words you write equals your EXP. You can unlock one avatar thus far, but I believe there may be more in the future!

You can minimise the fight above if it serves as a distraction, and only show the decreasing green bar.

Best of all: If you don’t hit the target word count in time, YOUR WORK DOES NOT DISAPPEAR. In the past I’ve lost so much work because I wasn’t typing fast enough, or sneezed.I cannot express enough how thankful I am that it presents a challenge where the consequence is a knock of pride and not a fit of rage.

Honestly, I urge all writers out there to give this app a go. It’s my new favourite thing. 

“people think doing magick is all dignified and shit, but yesterday I threw a hotdog onto the ground and shrieked wordlessly at it to cast a curse.”

“You’re mine.”

“Do you promise?” It was a foolish, needy question and it embarrassed them as soon as it came out. “Forever?”

“Oh,” the demon cupped their cheek. “Always.”

Writing Prompt #297: Hook, Line and Sinker

It only took fifty two seconds for sixteen people to disappear into thin air.

Ways to un-stick a stuck story

Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

Start fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between will come with time.

Tips On How to Write Characters with Wings (For both fanfic writers and original content writers)

So I’ve been reading a lot of fics lately where people are either

A) Putting wings onto canon characters

B) Making OCs with wings

So I decided that, with the influx of people who are writing winged characters (and therefore the influx of errors that come with writing winged characters), I’d make a little thing to help you slap a pair of wings onto anyone!

This is also a bit personal, too, because the MC in my upcoming novel has wings!

1. Know that there are a lot of types of wings to choose from

Part of being a writer is the desire to take something (whether it be a pre-existing work or an idea in your head) and make it into your own. So, instead of just going with the classic bird wings, why not spice it up a bit? If your character is an angel, you certainly don’t have to stick to the classic depictions of angel wings. Why not give them butterfly wings or dragonfly wings?

Here’s a small list of different types of wings to choose from:

Bat wings

Beetle wings

Bird wings

Butterfly/Moth wings

Dragonfly wings

Note that these wings are for animals who can fly. There are also animals who can “fly” that actually glide, such as sugar gliders and flying squirrels.

Yeah, so the options are pretty limited, but feel free to make up your own kinds of wings that aren’t necessarily based on a pre-existing creature’s wings!

2. Be familiar with the anatomy of your character’s wings and their limits

If your wings are completely unique, draw them out. A diagram or picture is key when it comes to things like description. I’m not gonna tell you what everything does and give you Animal Wing Anatomy 101, that’s for you to research. Know that there are different types of wings and that they have different uses, strengths, and weaknesses.

3. Never use the full extent of your research! 

Surprise, surprise!

“But wait, Maddy!” you cry, writing utensil in hand and poised to stab me. “I thought we were supposed to were supposed to show our research!”

Well, you are. Technically that’s not wrong. But, readers don’t want to know ALL of it. Over-described wings are sometimes worse than under-described wings; what sucks more than not knowing what a character’s wings look like is having to look up wing anatomy in the middle of the chapter!

Only use the most basic of vocabulary when it comes to describing the parts of the wing. Most of the time, you just have to say “bat wing” or “feathery wing” and the readers get the basic idea. (Like seriously, do you think the readers know what a dactylopatagium brevis is????? It’s a part of skin on a bat’s wing btw)

4. Don’t bring your character’s wings up only when they’re needed!!!!

Unless your character’s wings can fade away when they’re not needed, wings are a 100% real, 24/7 thing! It’s bothersome when writers mention the wings in one chapter and then only bring them up when there’s a daring escape that needs to be performed! Most of the time, I forget that the characters even have wings at all!

There is also the fact that wings aren’t all pros and no cons. If they’re functional, they’re probably big, and if they’re muscular, they’re probably bulky. If your character is clumsy, they’ll probably knock things over constantly, and if they’re not clumsy, they’ll still knock things over constantly.

Your wings are two (or four, or five, or six quintillion) extra appendages; they’re a part of your character! You don’t have to spend every second reminding the readers that they’re there, but don’t go long stretches of time without even mentioning them.

5. Your character’s wings can be a good way to indicate their mood or to provide for that little bit of description that you think you make be lacking

Why wouldn’t you want to describe the wings? I mean, you don’t want to describe every minute detail over and over again, but it’ll boost your word count a lot more than you think. They can also be used to convey your character’s feelings without explicitly telling the reader! It’s like a new set of facial expressions!

See? You can tell he’s wary and ready to fight from the movement of his wings! Also he’s crouching next to a dead body but that’s not relevant right now

Here’s a list of wing language (?) that you can incorporate into your story that will not only increase your word count, but will also add to the sustenance of your story!

Nervous

Twitch

Flutter

Ripple

Fold tightly

Fidget

Flap

Angry

Flare

Bristle

Fluff up

Ripple

Beat

Raise up

Snap open

Happy

Flutter

Curl up

Ripple

Wave

Flap

During Battle

Bludgeon

Smack

Bat

Clout

Whack

Kick someone’s legs out from under them

Snap someones neck (only for muscular wings like bat and bird wings)

Problems that may come with having wings

Poke out from under blankets and let all of the cold air in

Stepped on

Get pins and needles from being folded for too long

Squashed on chairs/ in beds/ in crowded hallways

Vulnerable in battle

Molting (for bird wings)

Hope this helped!!!

You ever write something and you think, “I’ve used this exact sentence structure/phrasing/convention approximately eight million times before but goddammit I’m going to do it again?”

That’s about where I’m at right now.

An aye-write guide to Showing vs. Telling

I’ll bet that if you’ve ever taken an English class or a creative writing class, you’ll have come across the phrase “Show, don’t tell.”  It’s pretty much a creative writing staple! Anton Chekov once said “ Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.” In other words, showing should help you to create mental pictures in a reader’s head.

Showing helps readers bond with the characters, helps them experience the emotions and action more vividly, and helps immerse them in the world you have created. So “show, not tell” is definitely not bad advice - in certain circumstances. But it has its place. More on that later. 

So How do I Show? 

Dialogue

Thoughts/Feelings

Actions

Visual Details

So instead, of telling me “He was angry”, show me how his face face flushes red, how his throat tightens, how he slams his fist, how he raises his voice, how his jaw clenches, how he feels hot and prickly, how his breathing gets rapid, how his thoughts turn to static, etc.

Instead of telling me “The cafeteria was in chaos”, you could show me  someone covered in food and slowly turning crimson, children rampaging under the feet of helpless adults, frenzied shouting, etc. 

Handy Hint! Try to avoid phrases like “I heard”, “I felt”, “I smelled”, etc. These are still “telling words” (also known as filters) and may weaken your prose, as your readers could be taken out of the experience and you may lose their attention.

Is Showing Always The Right Thing to Do? 

No! Absolutely not! Showing is not always right and telling is not always wrong! It’s important to develop the skill and instinct to know when to use showing and when to use telling, as both can be appropriate in certain occasions. 

So, “Show, don’t tell” becomes “Show versus tell”. 

What is Showing and Telling? 

Showing is “The grass caressed his feet and a smile softened his eyes. A hot puff of air brushed past his wrinkled cheek as the sky paled yellow, then crimson, and within a breath, electric indigo”

Telling is “The old man stood in the grass and relaxed as the sun went down.”

Both of these excerpts are perfectly acceptable to use in your writing! But both do different things, although their meanings are pretty much the same. The first example is immersive, sweeping, visual, engaging. The second example is much more pared back and functional. But both have their places in prose! 

Telling is functional. Think about when you tell people things. You tell your children dinner is ready. The news reporter tells you there’s a drop in crime rates. Your best friend tells you she’ll be late because her car broke down on the way to yours. These are brief and mundane moments in everyday life. 

So, do these deserve multiple paragraphs with sensory detail and action/feeling/thought for every little thing? Do you need to spend an entire paragraph agonising over a minor detail when there’s a sword dangling (physically or metaphorically) over your MC’s head? No. And I’ll explain why. 

When To Use Telling

As before, telling is functional. It’s brief. It’s efficient. It gives a gist of a situation without getting bogged down in detail.

Showing is slow, rich, expansive, and most certainly not efficient! 

Here’s an example of some telling: 

“Years passed, and I thought of Emily less and less. I confined her to some dark dusty corner of my brain. I had to elbow my memories of her to the side. I was too busy with other things. Finishing school, then university a year later. Life was full and enjoyable. But then, one dark cold September night…”

You can’t show this example, unless you wanted to waste page after page of your MC waking up, going through everyday life, to get to the point your actual story started. If you do that, you will likely kill off any interest a reader would have in your novel and likely, your book itself.

Summing Up 

Showing: 

Should be used for anything dramatic

Uses thoughts, feelings, dialogue, action, and visual detail 

Will likely be used more than telling

Telling: 

Can be used for 

Delivering factual information

Glossing over unnecessary details 

Connecting scenes

Showing the passage of time 

Adding backstory (not all at once!) 

Another Halloween themed post.

Part I: Superstitions

GHOSTS AND SPIRITS

Iron and Ghosts

The Early Ghost

Guide to Ghosts

Ghosts

Gravestone Symbolism

10 Little Known Mysterious Ghost Types

Ghost Types

The Different Types of Ghosts

Haunted Places

Cemetery Folklore

Writing a Ghost Story

Tips for Writing Ghost Stories

Ghost Cliches

Horror Cliches

ZOMBIES

The Science of Zombies

Zombie Biology

Zombie Sociology

Zombie Myths

Stage II and Stage III Zombies (pictures)

Vampires vs Zombies

Undead Creatures

Zombies

Guide on Zombies

SHAPE SHIFTERS AND HOMINIDS

Werewolves and other were-beasts

The Shape Shifting Process

Shape Shifters

Hominids of the World

Werewolf Myths

Science of Werewolves

Werewolf Behavior

Werewolves vs Vampires vs Zombies

Werewolf Anatomy

Wolf Body Language

Lycanthropy

Werewolf Myths and Truths

History of the Werewolf Legend

SEA CREATURES

The Mermaid

Sea Creatures

Books About Mermaids and Sea Folklore

Sea Creatures: Books

YA Mermaid Novels

Best Mermaid Books

Awesome Mermaid Books

Mermaid Anatomy

A Dissection of Mermaid Anatomy

VAMPIRES

African Vampires

Writing the A-Typical Vampire

So You Want to Write a Vampire Novel

Avoiding Vampire Cliches

Vampire Cliches

Vampire Burial

Vampire Mythology

Vampire Biology

Vampire Virology

Vampire Sociology

Vampires in Folklore and Literature

AVIAN CREATURES

Underused Bird Mythologies

FAIRIES AND FAE

Types of Faeries A-Z

A Guide to Fairies

Other Names for Fairies

Books About Faery

Best YA Fairy Books

Best YA Fantasy Series About the Fae

ANGELS AND DEMONS

A Glory of Angels

Angels and Demons Resource Post

Do You Give Angels Flaws or Not?

Unusual Angels

More:

Creating Creepy Creatures

Mythology Meme

Master Post of World Mythology, Creatures, and Folklore

Figures of Norse Mythology

Those Who Haunt the Earth

Writing Horror, Paranormal, and Supernatural

Genre: YA Supernatural

List of Mythical Creatures

Mythological Creature Picture Spam

How to Make Your Supernatural Characters Unique

Supernatural Theme Story

Myths and Urban Legends Masterpost

Original Gods, Goddesses, and Myths

World Building Basics: Myths and Legends

Mythical Creatures and Beings

Symbols by Word

Mythology Meme

Writing Paranormal Characters into the Real World