adele’s writeblr

Being too busy with work/school

Wanting to focus on other projects

Being bad with deadlines

Not wanting to

Literally just not wanting to

That's it

You don't need a reason or an 'excuse'

If you don't want to do it then don't

Don't feel pressured into it

Or like you're not a real writer for not wanting to do it

It's ok to work at your own pace

And if you are doing NaNoWriMo

It's okay to stop if you're burnt out

You don't have to 'push through'

Please don't put writing before your needs

Look after yourself

You're a real writer no matter what

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Planning

There are a few ways to plan out a city for your D&D campaign and they can be as detailed or as specific as you need. Figure out what you need the city for.

Main Hub: If the entire campaign revolves around this city, it’s important to flesh it out with detail so you can answer PCs’ inevitable questions and let them do what they want to do. Create complex relationships between NPCs, factions, economy, religion, and politics for the PCs to unravel each time they return to the city.

Major Location: This won’t be the only city the PCs visit, but they will spend some time here. Flesh out the city with its various districts and some relevant plot hooks and NPCs. Flesh out the city by working from vague to specific as players spend more time there. You don’t want to develop the place too much if the players end up leaving for another location.

Just a Visit: If the PCs are only visiting the area, you only need to plan or map out the relevant parts of the city and create the NPCs they need to encounter or are likely to encounter (like shopkeepers when they go to restock supplies). Plan out a description of the city with a few key landmarks and interesting features that give the city character if they wish to revisit it later.

Passing Remark: The players will likely never reach this city unless they work toward it. Come up with an elevator pitch with a one-sentence description of the city so the campaign world feels larger and maybe you will even entice them to go. What is the city famous for? What is its most prominent landmark? What are its relationships to other cities (trade/politics)? Once you answer these you don’t need to go any further until the PCs say “We want to go there”

Once you know how detailed you need to be, there are two ways to plan a city (two that I use, anyway). I will either create a list of traits to inform how the city looks, or create a map and use it to inform what’s in the city. Often, these methods end up playing with each other and lead to map reworks or second drafts, and that’s okay. Trust me, your first idea is never your best!

Map Draft

Let’s start with making a map because it’s more freeform and easier to explain. The first thing you decide when making a map is what the focus will be. This will often be a power center (like a castle or tower) or an identifying landmark (like a mountain, lake, great tree, giant shard of crystal, anything really). Once you have that, work fast and loose to imagine how the city springs up from there. Create masses of buildings (not individual ones) and create districts. Give the map an interesting and asymmetrical silhouette or shape (unless you’re going for a symmetrical look to emphasize a city’s lawful alignment). As you get more detailed remember that everything should highlight the focal point for your city map. As far as specific areas to fill in, here is a handy list of things to keep in mind.

City Defenses: In a world with giant creatures and cloistered kingdoms, some cities opt for walls, gates, towers, siege weapons, or other such things.

Commerce Center: Where does the majority of trade take place in the city? Are there different areas for this?

Districts: Most cities tend to divide into districts, like residential, commercial, industrial, governmental, religious, or military districts. Try to come up with unique districts that let them differ from districts in other cities.

Entry Points: Where do people enter and leave the city? There is most likely more than one way to do so (for the safety of the city).

Landmarks: Besides the focal point, your city should 100% always have something the players will remember to help them visualize the city. There can be other smaller landmarks, perhaps one in each city district.

Lower Class: If you have a lower class district, they will have smaller, more densely-packed buildings. They may exist both inside and outside the city walls, but tends to spread further from the power center.

Power Center: Whoever leads the city is probably going to have a big building or walled district or point of interest to display their station.

Upper Class: If you have an upper class district, they will have larger buildings, more leisure space, more monuments, and possibly be walled off from the rest of the city. They are more likely to be closer to the power center.

Water source: Many cities needs access to water to keep their huge population alive, so don’t neglect this.

City Features/Traits

Cities have a variety of traits that make them unique from one another. Determine the nature of these traits to help flesh out your city. A flavorful city has positive traits and negative ones; strengths as well as flaws.

Power Center/Government: Who holds the power in your city? Look at various forms of government and don’t limit yourself to just monarchy. Cities can have a democracy, republic, military, theocracy, or perhaps an arcane form of leadership. You can get creative with fantasy elements or add complications to your government to make the city unique: perhaps a strange sentient crown controls the queen, or a ghost of a king maintains control of their monarchy beyond death. Perhaps the oligarchy is a sham and a secretive cult really bends the city to its whims.

Complications don’t always means evil plots, but they can make things difficult when trying to influence the city as a whole. The city’s government isn’t necessarily its center of power. If the city’s senate is in the thieves’ guild’s pocket, the PCs may have to parley with the guild instead of the senate.

Economy: Cities aren’t often self-sufficient. They specialize in certain resources and lack in others, which leads to imports and exports. A mining city might have a booming metals and stone industry, exporting raw ores and gems or even refined ones with jewelry, but might lack in wood or food and need to import it from a neighboring town. These help define the city’s relations to other cities nearby. The city’s economy can also differ within its own gates. Consider the disparity of wealth in your city between the rich and poor.

How does the city spend its wealth? An interesting city will prioritize one aspect over others, or neglect one aspect in favor of others. Here are some things a city can spend its wealth on:

Expansion: The city seeks physical growth by buildings structures to expand its borders or establishing colonies in distant lands. Cities that neglect expansion might not suffer as much but may be content with their position on a global scale.

Infrastructure/Transportation: The city focuses on being as efficient as possible with well-maintained systems and structures in place. A city that neglects infrastructure might find themselves at odds with merchants and nobles who frequent the use of roads and bureaucratic systems, while residents are forced to tolerate the city’s difficulties.

Residences: The city focuses on making its housing maintained and affordable and expanding. The city wants people living inside it rather than commuting to the city. A city that neglects this may have slums or shantytowns and may be over- or underpopulated.

Military/City Defense: The city seeks to defend itself by maintaining its walls and guard towers, ensuring regular and frequent patrols and lookouts. They likely have a standing army that is maintained in case of attack. Perhaps their relationships with other kingdoms are strained. A city that neglects this is either in peacetime or is vulnerable. The streets may be rampant with unchecked crime.

Education/Technology: The city seeks to improve its people and its efficiency. In the case of a fantasy city, this may involve magic and magic items, but could also simply be a city attempting to revolutionize and move beyond other cities with something that improves an existing system. A city that neglects this may have masses that are easier to manipulate and may be stuck in the past.

Food/Health: The city focuses on its people’s wellbeing by ensuring they can get enough food and water to live and enough health care (either through doctors or priests) to persist. A city that neglects this may have very unhappy and unhealthy people. The masses tend to revolt when their society betrays them of these core things.

Extravagance: The city focuses on its appearance or the arts. The city may have a lot of excess wealth to spend on this or might rely on pilgrims and tourists for its economy and presents a gorgeous face to draw them in. Cities often neglect this first unless they are doing well or the rich seek to pacify the poor without giving up their station. Cities that do neglect this are often utilitarian with only a few striking monuments or important structures.

Military: What serves as the city’s military? Try to pick a focus for the city that takes advantage of its position. A coastal city will have a powerful navy to defend its docks and trade routes. A mountainous city may have fantastic archers and catapults to take advantage of their height. A city surrounded by plains will have a good cavalry to make quick maneuvers. A city in a wooded region will have infantry to navigate the terrain better than cavalry, and take advantage of the plentiful cover against arrowfire.

How large is the military? One city might have a daunting and powerful military presence while another might only have a standing militia. It depends on how much conflict the city faces, within and without its walls.

How does the city use its military? Are they actively defending the city? Are they campaigning in foreign lands? Are they attacking another city? Is the military used to keep its rebelling population in line? Consider this, as it will prominently let players know what the city and its leadership will live and die for.

Religion(s): Cities might have multiple religions or just one. Choose which ones feature prominently in the city, if any, and how much city life revolves around those religions. I won’t go into the detail of every deity and religion in the D&D universe, but consider that each has its own specific dogma, style, and portfolio that will influence how its worshipers act. A city that worships a chaotic-evil deity will differ vastly from one that worships a lawful-good one. A city with many deities will be different than both.

Figure out where each religion’s center of power lies in your city, and how much influence they have.

Shops/Taverns: Although they often serve as minor details in the grand scheme of a city, shops and taverns should be interesting and memorable for the players’ experience. Shop owners and innkeepers are an important reflection of the city, demonstrating how the populace views the city in which it lives. Moreover, filling a shop with items to buy and a tavern with quest hooks gives the players easy places to restock and find information when visiting the city. Put interesting characters in there to help characterize the city.

Landmarks: Landmarks define the setting and location and can even serve metaphorical or narrative meaning for the city. They help players visualize the city in their mind and remember it. Landmarks can be manmade or naturally-occurring, as long as it gives players groundwork to know where they are. The bigger and more unusual it is, the more interesting and memorable your city will be. Is there a giant shard of permanently-frozen ice from an ancient white dragon’s attack eons-ago looming as a grim reminder over the city? People tend to remember that sort of thing. Every city should be interesting, but just keep in mind not every city needs to have the same level of intrigue. If you have a main city the plot centers around, then go ham and go weird.

City Story: Cities can have stories just like any character, and when you start treating them like a character, it can have amazing results. Cities have backstories, conflicts, allies, and are filled with unique individuals who all contribute to the city’s traits.

History of the City: Cities aren’t built in a day. What happened to the city in the past to bring it where it is today? Disasters and war are useful historical tools that can be built around. The city recovers from such things but might never be the same. I have a city where a dragon’s attack caused a landslide that revealed an entry to the Underdark, and an entire city district built itself around it years later. History also adds layers to your campaign setting and makes it feel bigger and more unfathomable.

Factions: Cities draw people together, and people tend to group into communities. Those communities often have different goals that can come at odds with one another. This is where factions come in. Decide which factions are the most prominent in your city, establish their goals and ideals, and perhaps find a way to identify them. Figure out how they relate with other factions and what actions they have taken or plan to take to achieve their goals. Players love joining factions and it can give them an important stepping stone into the story of your world. Factions can include guilds, religious organizations, noble families, consortiums, or many such things.

Districts: Separating the city into more digestible portions can help players get to know it better and diversify it by forcing you to come up with unique areas of the city. Of course, don’t limit your city to such divisions. A commercial district can have a residential building, and an upper-class area can have an abandoned building housing squatters. The districts can even just be divisions in name only, much like street names. They may even be more memorable if they bear a unique name rather than simply “Merchant Ward” or “Warehouse District.”

What’s more interesting is creating something visually or culturally different for each district. Perhaps a district of a city named Towerhamme was built by giants from ages past and the colossal buildings have been subdivided by the humans now living there. Another district might consist of predominantly Thri-Kreen who worship Bralm (the goddess of insects and industry) and all speak a different dialect that mixes Thri-Kreen and Common. A district might lie in the dark underneath another district, with pillars as thick as trees holding up the buildings and streets above it, and come to be called the Night-Stone Forest. Not every district needs to be a didactic description of what’s in it.

NPCs: You don’t need to list everyone in the city, but make sure you know who the important people are. Name the people who are in power; those leading the government, religions, and factions. Name those important to your storyline. Think up interesting NPCs for the taverns and shops in your city. And most importantly, keep a list of random names handy so you can come up with them on the spot when PCs talk to people you didn’t prepare for. It may even be helpful to come up with interesting characters complete with backstories that the PCs can meet as allies or enemies. Just be careful with this, because you don’t know which NPCs your characters will become invested in until they do. The random throwaway character might be their favorite person to talk to while the most unique character that you delved into the deep history of was too boring for them. Make characters like crazy, but make backstories when you have to.

Foreign Relations: In terms of a city as a character, these are your city’s “bonds.” How does the city deal with other places? Economics and trading can be a large influence on how a city feels about another city or territory. If they rely a lot on each other they will tend to help each other out. If not, they might be indifferent or even enemies. Members of cities might feel differently than the city as a whole, but the city’s leadership most definitely will take some sort of diplomatic stance against other cities or territories.

A city’s diplomacy can be important to a storyline and add to the tone for the campaign. If two cities dislike each other, players will feel the tension if they travel between them. Friendly cities will be a different experience that carries less tension and more of an exploratory tone as the PCs wonder what awaits them.

every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person

even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday

exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them

if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love

make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you

if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders

don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts

i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less

sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer

How to Outline, Brainstorm, and Research Your Novel with Scrivener

A few days ago, I made a post outlining all of the basic reasons to love Scrivener, especially heading into NaNoWriMo. Today I thought I’d follow up on that post by highlighting a few ways to use Scrivener’s unique features to plan your novel. (I’ll follow this up later with short guides about drafting and revising in Scrivener, too.) 

Outlining 

In the binder on the left-hand side of the screen, you’ll see a folder for your manuscript. On the right-hand side of the toolbar, you’ll see a corkboard icon. Selecting both of these options will take you to the screen in he first image. 

Here, you can outline your novel. Clicking the green square on the toolbar will add a new text to your manuscript. An index card representing that text will appear on the corkboard. 

On the index card, there’s space for you to write a title and synopsis. Your index cards can represent chapter ideas or just short scenes. As you flesh out your plot, you can add more index cards, dragging and dropping cards to represent their approximate location in the manuscript.  (This will also change their location in the binder.) 

Here, you can throw every scene idea you have into your outline. Rearranging your entire story, tossing out entire plots, is a matter of a couple of clicks. 

If you have ideas for dialog and descriptions inside of scenes, you can type them up in the notes section in the Inspector on the right-hand side of your screen. 

If you’re not a fan of the corkboard, or want to utilise the space on the screen better, you can also outline in the screen in the second image by clicking the icon to the right of the corkboard icon in your toolbar. 

When you’re ready to start writing, simply click on the text in the binder (to view the text for that chapter alone) or on the text icon to the left of the corkboard in your toolbar (to view the entire manuscript). Your summary and notes will be in the inspector on the right-hand side of your drafting screen, ready for you to implement. 

Brainstorming 

Your manuscript is only the first folder in your binder. Scrivener automatically includes additional folders for character and location sketches. You can create additional folders to meet the needs of your manuscript. 

Characters 

Characters have their own folder in the binder, as well as their own corkboard. As you come up with characters for your manuscript, you can create index cards with their names or roles and a few notes. 

The text files accompanying these index cards will be character questionnaires. You can see an example of in the fourth image. The best thing about these questionnaires is that they are 100% customizable. Simply edit the template in the template folder of your binder before creating the text. 

You can also add images of your characters to their sketches. Simply drag and drop an image file into the box that acts as the ‘synopsis’ box on manuscript text index cards. 

This is a handy location for keeping all of your character brainstorming, where you can easily reference it while drafting. 

Locations 

The locations folder functions the same as the character folder, except with a template for location notes instead of a character questionnaire. Here, you can store information about cities, streets, buildings, etc. here. 

If you have trouble recalling layouts, designs, descriptions, etc., store that information in the location folder and it will always be a click away. 

Other

If there are other elements of your novel you’d like to keep track of you can do so easily. Create a new folder in your binder. In the template folder, add a new text and devise your template. When you want to add a new template text to your folder, click and hold the arrow next to the green ‘add’ button in your toolbar, and select your template. 

Writing a fantasy novel? Create folders for story elements like: magic spells, fantasy cultures, fantasy languages, magical beasts. Create your own encyclopedia of medieval fantasy weapons. 

Writing a murder mystery? Create folders for the different kinds of murders the villain carries out, for different murder weapons, for clues. 

Is your protagonist an art thief? Create a folder for all of the art pieces mentioned in the book. 

Etc.

Research

The research folder is my favorite. You can drag and drop almost any kind of file into it. Honestly, I don’t know of any file types that you can’t simply throw into Scrivener. 

Word docs? Yup. Movies? Yup. In the example above, I have an image, a song, a pdf, and a webpage. 

Yup. You can even save webpages to your Scrivener research folder. (To do this, right-click on the webpage in your browser, select ‘save as’ and save it to your desktop, drag it into your research folder, and you can check it out whether you’re connected to wifi or not.) 

Music and video files will play in the Scrivener window itself. Pdfs and word files can be read in Scrivener as well. 

As you research topics for your manuscript, you can throw literally everything into your research folder. It can act as a mood board with images or it can store a tome’s worth of .pdfs about topics in your manuscript. 

To organize it all, create subfolders for different characters, topics, file types, etc. 

You don’t need to open a bunch of programs to view webpages, images, and pdfs. 

You don’t need to lug around the various notebooks and paper scraps that hold your brainstorming. (Although you can totally brainstorm in a notebook while away from your computer, and type up the ideas you like in Scriv later.) 

You don’t have to worry about ever misplacing your outline. 

With Scrivener, all of your brainstorming, researching, and outlining is integrated into your manuscript file, perfectly organized and easily accessible.

Scrivener has a free NaNoWriMo special edition trial that can be used from now until December 7th. Download it here. 

 Inspired by @lilquill and her post here.

So a lot of times on Tumblr, I hear the phrase, “Write stories with black characters, but don’t write stories about being black.” This seems like a good sentiment to follow until you start seeing characters who are basically white and the only thing that’s black about them is a throwaway line about their skin color. 

Both of these strategies have valid points, but the problem is they’re both misunderstood. 

When we say that we don’t want stories about being black, we mean that we don’t want stories about black suffering. We don’t want stories about living in neighborhoods with gangs and drugs. We don’t want stories about people getting shot and police brutality. 

I can’t even write those stories without help. I never grew up in that environment. I grew up in nice suburban houses where I never had to worry about being in danger (for the most part. There were some crazy people in West Virginia where I lived, but that’s an entirely different thing.)

When we say that we don’t want stories about being black, we don’t want writers to strip characters of their blackness. There are so many great things about black culture that can enrich your character and make good representation without being offensive. 

So without further ado, here are some things about being black that don’t include drugs, gangs, and police brutality. 

Disclaimer: When I say “black culture,” I mean Black American culture. I don’t know a thing about what it’s like to be African, Caribbean, or black in a European or Asian country. I’m also writing this from a mixed-race and multicultural standpoint since I really didn’t grow up in predominantly black communities. 

More will be under the cut. 

Whenever I get stuck on a first draft, I realize it’s because I stopped thinking about what the most fun thing to write would be, I was thinking of the most fun thing to read. That’s a great thing to think about during revision. 

Mode 1: click-clack to the max, blindtouch 100%, haven’t looked at a keyboard in seven years

Here’s a little look into how I edit/plan!

I’ve been editing my novel for a few years now, but I’ve gone about it in a way that is really un-useful and time consuming. I’ve recently found that a tool that works for me is Trello!

I can have a section for each Act of my book, and within that, each chapter. 

I go through each chapter like a spark note summary, that way I don’t forget important details or what a character was wearing etc and I add comments for my future self to help edit things in the future. 

I also note any literary devices I’m using so I can make an interesting chapter feel cohesive and complete

I keep track of my character’s appearance and development throughout the story which really really helps when trying to write the conclusion!! 

It’s been helping so so much, and I would highly recommend it to people who like to see everything in one big board, opposed to everything stored in a compressed folder.