daily romance fic prompts

I for one do not like children. They're small and completely irrational at some times. But children are often a intregal part of stories, especially if they are the ones telling the story. So how can we write the little buggers?

Do's & Don'ts

Don't make child wise and omniscient. It's creepy and just plain stupid.

Don't try make the kids cute. Forced cuteness is sickening and will no doubt bring up some annoying memories for your older readers.

Don't treat child characters as if they're stupid. Kids can be pretty aware of things going on around them. They're not stupid.

For the Love of God, no baby talk.

Do give them a personality. They are still people. You have to give them characterization on par with that of those around them.

They should have their own goals, wants, tastes and opinions. Kids have a lot of opinions.

Treat them as people rather than objects. They are not there to be passed around and looked at. They are kids.

Children through the years

Children are dynamic, they are constantly changing as they age. They will begin to grow traits as they age, grow a personality and become people.

1-2 Years Old

Children are beginning to learn basic skills as walking and talking by age 1. At age 2, called the Terrible Twos, children are easily excitable, speaking coherent sentences (though they may need encouragement) and able to create chaos. They are able to begin learning to tools like forks and cups but they will not be coordinate just yet. As kids are still getting to grips with their emotions, they are likely to have mood swings, ranging from happy one minute to pulling out your hair the next.

3-4 Years Old

Kids at this age can start to take care of themselves. They are dress themselves, go to the bathroom by themselves and generally keep themselves together to a certain point. They will begin to understand and follow directions. They will be able to speak complete sentences and understand most words. They will ask a lot of questions. They can be very imaginative at this age, likely to exaggerate. They will try to copy friends and older siblings.

5-6 Years Old

Children at this stage are more active and sure on their feet. They can play more elaborate games, actively interested in hobbies. They can safely use things like scissors, are able to be left in charge lf their appearance and tie their own shoelaces.

7-8 Years Old

Children at this age will cease to exaggerate and embellish stories. They are better at making friendships but are likely to get into spats. They are beginning to understand the social world around them and are more interested it it before. They will have formed a distinct personality at this stage and will use it. They are more independent, able to look after themselves.

9-11 Years Old

Children at this stage will begin to edge into the horror known as being a teenager. They will begin to learn life skills, able to take care of themselves and will begin to think they know it all but they are still kids. They still need supervision even if they think they don't. At this age, they will begin to gain an independent view and opinion of things. The whole social imagine problem will begin to become important to them, they will consider friends and imagine as important factors in their lives.

Kids as Narrators

It’s that time of year again! If you’re like me, you like to keep track of how much you’re writing all year and you might be a little obsessed with charts and graphs. I made a version of this for 2020, and since then I’ve made a lot of tweaks so it works better for me. I present to you…. the 2021 Word Trackers For The Year That Won’t Suck.

For The Whole Year

This tracker has a separate page for each month, and each seet has what you see above:

Daily spots where you can input which project you’re working on, whether or not it’s complete, if it’s for a fandom, and the number of words written

A running total of how much you’ve written for the year

A rolling average of how much you write each day

A percent of how many days you wrote this month (other months include a % for the year as well)

A bar graph ‘cause it’s pretty

If you want to change things around: you can delete the entire chart, the percent of days cells, and the “Project” “Complete?” and “Fandom” columns without having any issues. Most of the behind-the-scenes magic is tied to the “Words Written” column.

For The Monthly Challenges

This year I’ve also added a separate sheet in case you’re only interested in monthly challenges lik NaNoWriMo or Write-tober. This sheet only has two pages: one for a 30 day challenge and one for a 31 day challenge.

For these smaller trackers, all you have to do is put in your goal for the month (highlighted) and then how much you’re writing each day. The Total column adds up automatically, the Goal column will divide out automatically, and the % Complete column fills in as you go. The charts also automatically update according to your goal and how much you’re writing each day.

Where To Find Them

You have two options here. I like to use Google Drive so I can super easily access it from any of my devices or from someone else’s device that I have liberated for the day.

If you, too, like Google Drive, you can find the Google Sheets files HERE.

Anyone with the link can view the folder and the files inside of it, but you can’t edit them. SAVE YOUR OWN COPY. Put it in your own drive and go ham on them. 

I also know at least one of you out there uses Microsoft Excel instead, so I went ahead and made copies of the files for you. They look a tiny bit different, but they function exactly the same. All the same rules apply.

You can download the Microsoft Excel version from MediaFire HERE.

I get worried about originality.

“Oh, no,” I think. “I got inspired by this story, but if I write something from that inspiration, it’s not exactly my own work.”

“No, I shouldn’t write this, much less post it. It’s similar to another story that someone else wrote. They probably wrote it better, anyway.”

And I go down into this terrible mindless spiral where I curse my own lack of originality, curse my own writing, curse myself for ‘taking’ good ideas from other people and even daring to think that I could make it my own.

But how…stupid, is that? Inspiration is a lovely and beautiful thing, and I often forget. I once expressed these worries to a teacher I was close to, and she looked at me like I had grown a third eye.

“Nothing is new under the sun,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if someone else wrote it. The world hasn’t heard what you have to say about it.”

So I think that, to take myself out of the spiral. “The world has not heard what I have to say yet.” We all learn from watching other people, and I suppose hating the gentle, innocent inspiration that drives us to create something new is an evil in itself.

What we create is a reflection of ourselves, so I try to remember that it doesn’t matter if an idea is already “taken” by someone else. The world has not heard what I have to say.

fuck, i’m such a good writer.

if you haven’t, that day will come eventually, i promise. but until then, keep writing whatever your little working brain tells you, because one day you’ll consider it a masterpiece or absolute shit that’ll make you laugh and realize just how far you’ve come.

Well, hi. It’s the admin, and I’ve been busy with some important work.

You might not have known before this, but I am a Filipino, and our country has been dealing with the rising COVID cases and typhoons one after the other by incurring debt, hoping that this government would give us support, and fighting to have our voices heard. Except a typhoon hit us particularly hard. I have no idea whether you’ve seen the videos of the people trying to survive a drowning city. I have no idea whether you saw how inhumanely the people were treated. (I’m talking about the helicopter that just dropped off relief goods then left.)

We, citizens, had enough and took to social media to start donation drives. And your ADPG admin? They founded a youth-led charity organization, SAPPHELPS. 

We badly need your help. We are feeling hopeless, and they’ve projected more typhoons coming our way. We lost people to terrible disaster mitigation and response. We’re in the recovery stage and we need your help.

We have Instagram @sapphelps and we’re setting up our Twitter and Facebook page.

We’re fully prepared to show accountability like we haven’t been receiving. If you can follow us on IG, reblog this post, donate to our org, please know you’re already giving us a big help.

You can donate to Sapphelps by supporting our sponsors who have decided to team up with us:

pinyapii (@pinyapii on IG) is an Artist for A Cause who is donating 100% of their earnings from their commissions to Sapphelps Org 💚

FILOS! Baked By K is donating PHP 50 to Sapphelps for every product sold! Check their IG here

FILOS! 100% of Harana’s income will go to Sapphelps. Everything in their shop is 10% off 🧡 Check their IG here

There are other ways to support Sapphelps! You can donate to the channels listed below: GCash: 09190061735 | Ashley Martinez PayPal: [email protected] | Kiara Mae Triumfo BPI: 4559055463 | Cristina Triumfo 

Thank you for all your support. We’ve received PHP 47,625.1 and over a hundred items of in-kind donations so far! We spent PHP 11, 732 so far in supporting Hijas de Esther, and we are already putting our efforts in donating to Gentle Hands (another organization of two orphanages [one in Bulacan and another in Metro Manila]). We hope to provide them the items in the list found on their website here 

Based on the first posts it might seem like we are done with our job. That couldn’t be further from the truth. As students ourselves, we’ve decided that on top of orphanages and those affected by natural disasters, we will also be supporting individuals who are struggling to get their education amidst the pandemic.

We are not done at all. We are so far from done, and we need your help.