I Am Not An Expert

Let bad things happen to good people. Let your characters try and fail. And try again. And fail again. Let them be betrayed in the worst possible way. Let them betray others because they have no choice. Force them into situations that make them uncomfortable. Force them to argue or fight or bargain their way out. Drive them to the brink of insanity. Push them over the edge. Take everything away from them. Let them realize what they’ve lost.

Be kind to your characters.

Let faith and perseverance win out. Let love be enough. Let the Sun dry up the rain. Give them friends who will never leave. Let someone save them before the axe falls. Acquit them of false accusations. Give them the strength to stand up again. And again. When they’ve lost hope, give them something to believe in. Remind them there’s good in the world. Remind them there’s good in them, too. Surprise them. Make them laugh until they cry. Teach them that they can’t be broken.

Most importantly: balance.

·Write to your comfort level. Meaning: give yourself a break when you need it and push yourself when you’re feeling motivated.

·Seek out sources of motivation. There are very few times when motivation hits me out of nowhere. Read a good book. Watch a good movie. Write down your goals.

·Find your space. Coffee shop. Library. Your room with the music blasting and the TV playing your favorite show. Find whatever gets you in the right headspace.

·Your first draft is just the first draft. Too many writers stress out about the first draft and they forget it’s just the first step in completing your novel. You can add to it, build from it, or toss it away completely.

·You will be rejected. Even if you write the next big hit, you’ll be rejected. Read the reviews for some of your favorite books—I guarantee someone HATED it. Not everyone will like your work, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

·Write advice isn’t for everyone. There’s no one-size-fits-all plan for writers. Pick and choose advice that works for you, ignore what doesn’t. Not everything will relate directly to you and your style of writing.

·It’s okay to stay in. Want a night to yourself so you can write? Don’t be afraid to cancel your plans and focus on your writing hobby. You don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to work on your writing.

·Let ideas settle. It’s tempting to jump right in to a new writing idea, but let things settle for a bit. Brainstorm. See what comes next. An idea needs to have legs and it needs to take your story somewhere. Let it grow.

·Outlines aren’t set in stone. Be flexible with your outlines. Plan if you need to, but allow yourself to explore new ideas. Let your story go in an unexpected direction.

I may have written a post about this in the past. If I have, I’m writing this again because you’re always going to come across self-doubt, but you’re going to learn new ways of coping with it, of understanding how it has improved you as both a person and writer.

Self-doubt is ridiculously common among writers since the arts are so difficult to begin with. For one thing, it’s difficult to make a living off writing. For another, even when you do find a literary agent, there is no guarantee that agent will find a house for you. Even when you do find a publisher, there’s no guarantee that publisher will take on subsequent books from you. Even when you do find a publisher and have your novel published, there’s no guarantee that the publisher won’t fold. Or that your book will even sale at all.

So with all of these negative factors, how does one keep from caving in to self-doubt?

Remind yourself that all writers feel like failures at one point or another. This sounds negative, but it’s really not. It’s only reassurance and comfort that even your most favorite authors have felt this way at some point. But they kept persisting. If they hadn’t done so, you wouldn’t have found a book worth holding on to. Even if it’s just one reader whose life you’ve changed, you still affected someone’s entire world.

 Remember writing will always be there. Unlike other things in life, which can only be done for a certain amount of time–like ballet–writing will always, always be there, even if you have to take a break from it to distance yourself from the process and gain a new perspective. So you don’t need to rush the publication process because it can happen at any point in your life. You may not get published in your 20s, but you can in your 30s, or 40s, or 50s…as long as you still have a functioning mind.

Be upset. If you don’t let yourself feel that burgeoning disappointment, it’s going to eventually come to a head, and you’re going to be more likely to want to give up on writing. So when you get a rejection and you feel that initial sting, let yourself be upset or mad or whatever. Just make sure you know how to cope with those feelings so you don’t start replying to rejection letters with angry words.

Write something else. If your current project is killing you with self-doubt, put it away and work on something else. After the loss of my publisher, I retreated to poetry for a little bit, which proved to be very therapeutic for other areas of my life. I also had two poems published during this time.

Read. Not only does reading allow you to keep up on your skills while you’re distancing yourself from your project, but it can also keep your imagination alive and active. Books can keep you dreaming about the publication of your own book, too. Plus, many of the authors you read have been rejected a myriad of times before finding publication.

Remember you’re a writer. From what I understand, most people generally don’t choose to be writers. Writing chooses you. It’s just something that happens. It’s something you discover you enjoy, for whatever reason. Why do some people enjoy it and others don’t? Who knows. But all writers write, and so you must, too.  

A writing guide requested by galaxys–end

While the main plot is building, as a writer you still must keep the reader interested.

Expand your subplots.

Consider character relationships. Is your MC fighting with their best friend? Are the siblings having a break through?

Consider romantic relationships.

When achieving their goal becomes slow, does your character lose faith? Focus? Hope? What is their mental state like?

Does your character have a good support system? Are they lonely? Can your character motivate themselves, even when times get tough?

How is your character dealing with what’s going on in their life emotionally?

Are they happy? Grieving? Depressed? How are they coping? Do they have support from those in their life?

Is your character physically well?

Stress can have detrimental affects on health. Is your character run down? How is the character’s health in relation to their goal?

A lot of people confuse character strength with physical strength. It’s awesome if your female character can beat up 30 people in a room, but what does that actually tell us about her? There needs to be something more than just that.

So, how do you make your characters legitimately stronger? Here are a few tips to get your started:

Give them a goal

All characters should want something. It can be something small, like getting a good grade on a test, or it can be something big, like saving the world. Know your characters and what their goals are. This should help you shape the plot and prevent writer’s block.

Let them grow

Character growth is something that makes your story fascinating. Each character should make a change or grow, especially if you want your readers to root for them. This is usually the case with protagonists because common antagonist traits are that they are stubborn and they might not grow very much. Let us see your protagonist learn and become a stronger hero.

Define their character traits

You can make a character more relatable if you know what their traits are. Is your protagonist cautious? Are they afraid of failure? Are they lazy? Knowing specific details about your characters can help your story feel more real. You’ll actually get to know who your characters are and why they’d react a certain way.

Build relationships

Let your characters love or hate or have great friendships. Your character’s connection to other people in the story will help make them stronger. They’ll have more motivation to fight til the end and they’ll have something they care about. Don’t neglect these relationships.

Let them fail

A strong character doesn’t mean they do everything perfectly and lack struggle. Your characters need to fail. Most of us don’t get stronger by constantly succeeding. We fail, we pick ourselves back up, and we keep going. This will help keep your protagonist relatable and your readers will continue to root for their success.

a post on some shit i’ve seen

“I have a male character, but they’re very feminine so I think they might be a trans woman.”

This is not how being trans works. Being gender non-conforming =/= trans. Here is a list of reasons why this is sexist and transphobic.

It implies that men and women must behave a certain way and that anyone who does not adhere to these gender roles must be a different gender.

It implies that gender non-conforming trans people do not exist.

It negates sex dyshoria.

It enforces gender roles.

It enforces stereotypes and misconceptions trans people have been fighting against for a long time.

Your male character can be feminine without being trans. They are still a man.

“It’s offensive to describe trans people as being ‘born in the wrong body’.”

No, it’s not.

This is a narrative that many trans people use because it is an easy and succinct way to describe sex dysphoria. Dysphoria is more complicated than this, but this narrative is not offensive.

Stop silencing dysphoric people. Your character can describe themselves like this if they so choose to.

“I have a male character, but I picture him as having little body hair and wide hips, so I think I might make him a trans man–”

This is offensive. If you make a character trans because they posses physical characteristics that are seen as “undesirable” or “not typical” on people of their sex, then you are sexist and transphobic. 

Cis men can have wide hips and little body hair. Trans men can have narrow hips and a strong jaw. Cis women can have lots of body hair and a deep voice. Trans women can be short and curvy.

“My character is androgynous and it’s difficult to tell their gender so I’m making them non binary.”

Okay…

By claiming that non binary people are always androgynous appearing, you are creating a new set of gender roles and expectations while simultaneously doing everything in the first thing I talked about.

“Non binary” and “gender non-conforming” are not synonyms, but this doesn’t mean non binary people can’t be/aren’t gender non-conforming.

“Cis people are boring so my characters are all trans.”

This is the wrong mindset when talking about representation for trans people and when writing trans characters. When you equate “cis” to “boring” and “trans” to “cool” and “interesting,”, you are fetishizing and dehumanizing trans people. 

We are not trendy accessories that will make your story better simply by being there.

BTW, boring trans people exist. Because, you know, we’re people and not this year’s most popular Christmas gift.

“Reveal that your character is trans by showing their scars/body.”

Allies and transphobes alike have a fascination with the bodies of trans people. It has gotten to the point where “allies” spread private information about the medical lives of trans people to the general public. This has turned into a “how to spot a trans person” game.

Your characters do not need to be half-naked to show that they are trans.

“Dysphoria is self-loathing and can end up bringing too much angst to your story.”

Dysphoria is not self-loathing. This is a huge misconception. Dysphoria is a disconnect between someone’s brain and their physical sex.

When people experience sex dysphoria, their sex characteristics feel foreign. It is not simply “hating your body.” That narrative should not be used in fiction. Ever. It is false. Body positive feminists (both lib and rad) use it to vilify sex dysphoric people.

Do not ignore dysphoria. A lot of people don’t know what it actually is and confuse it for internalized misogyny. Dysphoria needs to be a part of fiction featuring trans characters so that we can work to end the misconceptions about it.

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Know the difference between a topic and a story, which is this: A topic sits still, and a story moves. A topic is an answer, while a story asks a question that connects to the reader’s heart and mind. For example, I got fired from my job yesterday is a topic. I got fired from my job yesterday and this morning I began planning my revenge — that is a story.

Don’t fly solo. Find the best writers who’ve written in this vein and study them like a detective. Figure out how they attacked the problem. They are your coaches.

Figure out what your subjects/characters want — what they really, truly, deeply want — put it up top, and and let that question — will they get it? –  fuel your narrative.

Inside the narrative, obstacles are your friend. The bigger the obstacle, the better the story.

Seek out opposites. For example, if you were describing something rough and crude, you should use images of elegance and refinement (i.e. “the abandoned Chevrolet was a lacework of rust”). Or, if a 330-pound defensive lineman enters a room, focus on how delicately and balletically he walks. Sentences are like batteries: opposites create energy.

Outline like crazy, and revise those outlines constantly. I use two kinds of outlines: big and small. The big outline is for the entire narrative arc; the smaller outline is for each chapter. Like construction blueprints, outlines sound dull, but in fact are the opposite: the place where the most important creative moves happen.

Figure on a 10:1 efficiency ratio — that is, 10 pages of rough drafts and notes for every one page of quality writing. Which you’ll have to revise over and over again, of course.

Read like a thief. Underline good stuff, and read it over and over again until you figure out how they did that. When you find a passage, image, or description you love, write it down on a card and keep all those cards in one place.

Ignore small criticism.

Listen intently to big criticism. If someone doesn’t “get” your writing, it’s not their fault. It’s yours.

10 + 1 things to do in October to get ready for NaNoWriMO

It’s October. Do you know what that means? October is not just the month of fear and monsters, it’s also high time you started getting ready for November – for NaNoWriMo. What can you do in order to prepare? 1. Sign up on the NaNoWriMo website. If you haven’t yet created a profile on the official NaNoWriMo website, you should get on that now. It’s been relaunched already and it’s ready for the…

This is a really hard question to answer without context and primarily why we don’t talk about how to write superpowers in anything other than generalities. Every setting with magic or superpowers come with their own rules and we’re not privy to what those rules are. Our focus on “realism”, technically just how weapons work in the real world, comes from that. Telling me “superpower” or even “telepathy” or “telekinesis” doesn’t actually help me much if I don’t know what it affects, it’s strengths and limitations, or how it gets used. I mean, even just telekinesis runs the gamut from “can pick up silverware” to “fling bus with startling accuracy” to “devour star system”. Move over to Star Wars, you’ll find Luke’s small time stuff in the Original Trilogy like choking, jumping, and retrieving fallen weapons to Starkiller dragging an entire star destroyer out of orbit. In the EU, one Sith Lord used the Force to slam two stars together to destroy a fleet that was chasing them. Babylon 5′s telepaths go from “can’t quite read your mind, but can tell their minds are being read” to “detonate entire planet”.

How do you write a fight scene with superpowers? You have to figure out what the superpowers can do and what they can’t do. Where the assumed upper limit is, where the actual upper limit is, and what that means for your story. Unfortunately, the primary onus for that is going to be on you.

You’ve got to figure out how the powers work, how they manifest, and the rules this society has erected to keep everyone in check. How they influence their day to day lives. How they’ve evolved to make use of them. Etc. Really good settings have very solid world building that show all levels of the society and how the powers at play have affected them. Harry Potter, for example, does an excellent job of showing the utility of magic and how the Wizarding World has evolved their use of magic to aid their everyday lives. Rowling creates a sense of wonder while simultaneously grounding the reader into her world through some rather mundane activities like travel or cleaning the kitchen.

So, world building. Fantasy settings need it. The rule set grounds you into the world. Writing combat is fairly easy once you gain a basic understanding of the rules, how they get broken, and how people behave when under pressure. Once you as the author figure out how to start thinking from that perspective, it gets a lot easier to predict how your characters are going to behave. While superpowers ultimately don’t alter the baseline of how people behave that much, they do change how the problems get solved. New toolkit, new methods with which to solve problems. Start asking yourself some basic questions:If I had this power, what would I do with it?

How would I use it to affect my day to day existence?

What parts of my life would it make easier?

What would it make harder?

If someone was threatening me, what would I do?

Inside out rather than outside in. Then, consider the other character’s perspective in the scene. How do they respond? What do they do? If everyone has the same power and one character is more experienced at using theirs than the character who just activated their powers, then it’s unlikely the newbie can overpower them. Even if they are actually stronger. And, as you said, the strength talent is the based on hard work anyway. Your protagonist is probably going to get their ass beat the first time out and that’s okay.

Really.

(And if they show their special Chosen One ability in that fight when under pressure, I just want you to know that’s… very cliche. Not that you can’t do it, just know almost everyone does.)

If you’re confused or unsure then I suggest a Lit Review to see if that inspires any ideas. A Lit Review is when you go out and read a bunch of novels or view a lot of media that’s similar to your own idea to gain a better understanding of your genre. You’re not reading or viewing for enjoyment so much as raiding for ideas. It’s helpful to review what other authors have done in order to find inspiration for your own work.

You want to write a scene which involves a character new to their powers and unsure of how they work fighting someone else? Get thee to the fantasy section of the library or start reviewing superhero movies. From bad to good, there are a lot of examples from the humorous to the serious of characters screwing up, nearly dying, or scraping by.

This is all important when it comes to writing training sequences. Why? You as the author are teaching your audience about your setting. Your characters actually have to learn something and that something should be applicable to the job they’re going to perform. This requires understanding that something well enough that you can communicate what it is, what it does, and why to the characters and your audience. You want to write a training sequence for a spy? You need to understand the tradecraft and what a spy actually does. You want to write a military training sequence a la boot camp? Probably best to learn what the military is actually doing because they’re not just teaching their recruits how to kill people.

Sports movies are often mocked for being corny and cheesy, but the secondary aspects of the training are actually more important than the training itself. In the Karate Kid remake, for example, a huge part of Dre’s evolution as a character comes from his training with Mr. Han. He’s not learning to beat people up, he’s learning responsibility, respect, and building his confidence.

Good training sequences demonstrate an author’s understanding of their setting, their characters, and their subject matter. So, to teach, you first must develop your own understanding.

All combat training comes in three tiers: the physical (the body) and the psychological (the mind), and the additional overlay of whatever their training is molding them to become. This is the insidious part of training that most writer’s miss. Training isn’t just teaching you how to fight or how to use your powers, it’s changing how you think, it’s affecting your morals and your values, it’s redefining your perspective, and, in some cases, a character can come out of it as an entirely different person.

Is your character’s mind being broken down so that they can be remolded into a proper fighting machine? This is what Stanley Kubrick was talking about in Full Metal Jacket, the military’s dehumanization of recruits and stripping them of their previous identities in order to transform them into soldiers. I bring up Full Metal Jacket because it remains the go to resource for most writers when they’re writing military training sequences, but many imitate without understanding. The other big one is Fight Club. Often the theme of dehumanization actually ends up in the story through the training sequences and is portrayed as a good thing. Divergent is one such example where the themes of dehumanization and rather brutal abuse are introduced via Dauntless training methods but never extrapolated on.

Why? Because the process of transforming someone into an out and out psychopath is treated as “just hardcore” in a lot of fiction. That is the point of the Fight Club itself, by the way. It’s not about teaching someone how to actually be good at fighting. It’s actually about adrenaline junkies, about getting high off asserting physical dominance over someone else. If you want a novel that’s legitimately talking about “toxic masculinity”, then Fight Club is it. Real training doesn’t actually look anything like Fight Club, but then Fight Club isn’t actually about creating competent soldiers.

Some Quick Don’ts:

1) Don’t overestimate to be more impressive.

This is a pitfall almost everyone falls down the first time, but I’m mentioning it because everyone falls down it. Figure out what people can get away with in the real world when training, then compare that to the characters in your setting, and build into that. There’s nothing more annoying than the character who supposedly spent a year or five in solitary confinement showing no signs of sensory deprivation or crawling up the walls.

Boot Camp does blast you with near constant exercise in order to weaken your mind. If you’re interested in what they actually do, there are resources available to tell you the training regimen. It’s fairly sophisticated in what it’s actually doing.

2) Don’t go for shock value

The ones who fall down the Fight Club trap are usually going for shock value. Shock value is worthless in the long run. Substance is better.

3) Don’t forget that this is about teaching.

If the sequence isn’t teaching us something about the world, the powers, and the characters or advancing the plot, then the sequence is not necessary. And really pay attention to what your training is saying. This isn’t really one of those “fake it until you make it” endeavors, you gotta teach.

This is actually a really great, but really hard and subjective question. What the story of a theme is, or how it forms, is something that I, personally, didn’t really think about until It was asked. 

WHAT IS A STORY’S THEME?

Starting simple; we should discover what we even mean when we talk about creating or finding a theme. The theme of a story is not the plot, and it is not the moral. For example; 

The plot of a story is that Josie’s friend died, and she wants to bring her back to life.

The morals of the story are that messing with the balance of nature has horrible consequences and that grief is an emotion we all must come to terms with. 

The themes of the story are loss, fighting nature & the finality of death. 

THEME OR CONTENT?

There are two ways to look at this;

How can a story have a theme, without the story existing?

How can you write a story without knowing your theme?

I tend to be of the first school of thought; because I believe the story is of the utmost importance and comes before all other criteria; such as marketability, political correctness, etc. It’s not a popular opinion; but it’s mine. I believe in freedom of expression and freedom of art. I also believe that what an author wanted to say is not as important as what they did say. 

So, I try to find the theme of my story within my writing. For example; the last project I’m working on is set in the Post-Apocalyptic future of a World that isn’t our own. I didn’t know if when I got the inspiration, but, it was an idea-based inspiration. After I did research, created a setting, worked out some outlining and character; I realized my theme was staring me in the face. 

It’s about ideas; crafting and being allowed to express them. It’s about respecting history. It’s about the internet; and whether what is started there can be truly tangible. (Spoilers: you know the answer.) 

Yet, there are people who begin with the theme of the story. 

It all comes down to what your inspiration is. Some people, imagine while riding on a bus or sitting at school/work, a girl who can summon the world of dreams into reality in the palm of her hand. Then, they go and write a story about that and the theme comes later. 

Some people, get inspiration from emotion instead of a sudden idea. So, they might be going through a rough time. Let’s say they’ve been made homeless, and they decide they want to write a story about being homeless to bring awareness to those people; and give them something to relate too. People who have ever been in that situation would read it, and relate to it. However, they still need an interesting story; so then they work on that. 

FINDING YOUR THEME

Do stories need a theme? Ehh. Even if you don’t intentionally put one in there, they will end up having one. So what we’re really talking about when finding the theme of your story is simply knowing what you want the theme to be; knowing what you’re trying to say.

This is where feelings start to get hurt. Some people believe that simply having a character who does awful things in your story constitutes the author saying that these things are all right to do. But it’s so much more than that. It’s how the characters around them, and the narrative, and the words, handle that character. It’s why so many people think that books like Twilight are saying it’s okay for your love interest to stalk you. 

If you all ready have something written; Read it. 

Don’t worry. You might not know your theme when writing your first draft. There’s no reason to force it. When you read through your work, try to see what it is saying to you. 

You can also try reading other books and short stories. See if you can jot down what the plot is, the moral is and the theme is. See if you can identify the theme. Sometimes, it has little to do with the plot; but it is made obvious in events and even how the character’s talk to one another. 

Ask yourself the following;

Do I need to tell a story about this?

Am I happy with what I am saying?

I didn’t create my theme. It was there. My character’s felt it and argued over it. But I was happy with it, and that’s the main thing. I feel it reflects my beliefs, and is something I’d be proud to put out there into the world of thought.

If you’re not happy with your theme, if you think it is saying something you do not agree with; then rethink it. You don’t have to change anything about your plot or characters if you don’t want too. Just approach them from different angles. Approach the life lessons they learn, their relationships and their beliefs.

First of all, this character is a she. There are nearly no exceptions. She lives in middle-class America (or its equivalent), and she’s the extreme version of the girl next door. She knows nothing about sex, and if she’s ever kissed someone, it was a sweet peck and nothing more. When the people around her make sex jokes, she’s completely lost or maybe only has a vague inkling of what they’re talking about. She’s never bothered to google anything, and the extent of her knowledge is anatomical and medical at best.

Why this is bad: Sure, there are people in the world who don’t know anything about sex, but the chances of those people being matched up with this background are slim to none. Have you seen public school? Or private school, for that matter? Kids talk, and even the most virginal of people learn a lot from their friends. The odds that this girl knows nothing is about one in none. Whether it’s kids being curious about their own (or others’) bodies or a poor choice of google searching, they figure these things out on their own. And once you’ve hit 23, you’ve at least learned some stuff secondhand. Even asexual people are not excluded from this, as many have either had sexual encounters before or have heard the same chatter around the lunchroom table as everyone else.

But where this trope gets especially gross is that these characters, after being shown to be naive about sex, are then highly sexualized and even infantilized. Not only does this give off some bad porn vibes, it boils the character down to this single trope. The character’s sexual awakening is either used for laughs (”Now that she got her first boyfriend, we keep finding them making out in the kitchen! Ha ha, young love!”) or to make fetishistic sex scenes (a la 50 Shades). Either way, nothing good comes of it.

How you can fix it: As always, I’m going to tell you to think of your character as an actual human being. Do you know people in your life who live up to this trope in some ways? I know I do, but those people still understand sex and dirty jokes. Just because they’ve never done anything themselves doesn’t mean they don’t get the innuendos. It doesn’t mean when they walk in on their roommate and her boyfriend snuggling naked underneath the covers that she doesn’t know what might have just happened. She’s had 23 years to learn this stuff. While these people might not know as much as others, they’re still going to have a basic grasp on what sex is and what it involves. And as for the sexualization and infantilization of these people? It’s gross. Stop.