Just Having Fun

Jackson “Just Jack is Fine” Overland/Frost Studies Page

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)

Watch birds. Watch different inds of birds. Especially watch the birds trying to land gracefully on things and crashing facefirst into a tree because they underestimated how sturdy a branch was and picture your character doing that.

Don’t forget the preening needed to keep the wings in good condition if there are feathers - again with watching the birds cleaning their feathers.

Folding and refolding because if a human can’t get comfortable with four limbs, imagine how much more awkward it’ll be when you have a pair of giant ass wings sticking off your back as well. Do they have a specially made bed for it? Chairs with low backs? How do they live with their wings in place?

Balance - birds generally use their tails to balance their body out as they fly/land etc. How does your character do that? Does he/she show the booty? Also, think of those thigh muscles and the strength required to hold them horizontal while flying.

Can you hide your babies under them like a mama duck?

Dustbaths. Or bird-bath style washing for the wings. How does that work when you can’t fluff up the feathers on the rest of your body?

Want to collaborate on a Google Doc with Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Dickinson, Dickens and Poe? 

Click here. Start typing. Enjoy the hilarity. 

aND FYODOR DOSTOYVESKY ADDED ‘ I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners.”

Five children are forced to engage in guerilla warfare, espionage and repeated murder to protect their loved ones from alien parasites as they wait for the other, heroic aliens to finally arrive. When they do, the “good” aliens turn out to not give a shit about humans, caused the whole intergalactic war through their own shittiness and are willing to exterminate whole planets themselves to get at their hated enemies.

A child repeatedly experiences his intestines hanging out of his body while in various animal forms

A child is mentally tortured until broken and never gets better

A child in the form of a fly experiences getting splattered and smeared against a ceiling until his friends who are also flies at the time can peel his body off and take him somewhere he can transform back into a whole human before his insect mind fades completely

A child is shrunken and experiences having her eyeballs digested out of her head inside her friend’s stomach while she’s in the form of a tiny elephant

The heroes are forced to permanently imprison another child in the body of a rat because he knows too much and they abandon him on a tiny island with only other rats and garbage for company. Rumors circulate that the island is haunted but it’s actually his psychic screams reaching distant boaters.

A race of devastatingly powerful, violent aliens turn out to be mental toddlers who don’t know what they’re doing and are just bred to think they’re playing one big game before they’re killed at age three so they don’t learn the truth

An alien spends a few centuries hanging from the parasitic tentacle of a much bigger alien, surrounded by millions of rotting corpses attached to its other moon-spanning tendrils. They engage in mental warfare until one finally absorbs the other completely.

It turns out another seemingly “evil” alien race is simply driven to kill and eat everything in sight because it was separated from its original world where food was continuous and the entire specie’s life is the torture of perpetual starvation

A peaceful robot willingly removes its inhibition against violence to help in the war, only to slaughter a huge number of alien-controlled humans so gruesomely that nobody dares think about or speak of it again and it is the only thing left undescribed in a book series that already describes entrails getting torn out and skulls getting smashed

A child stays too long in the form of a flea and instead of turning back into a human, accidentally turns momentarily into one big, giant flea that can only writhe and moan because it shouldn’t exist and can’t live at that scale.

The kids discover Atlantis, then discover that Atlanteans are inbred mutants who paralyze any humans they find, dissect them alive to figure out how their organs work, then stuff the corpses as kitschy museum displays for their children.

I need more people to follow and play with.

Your Honor, there is a clear contradiction in this photo. 

As you can see from this piece of evidence, Gatorade bottles are topped with an orange lid. 

But in the photo above, the lids are black. Which means that the bottles in this photo can’t be Gatorade bottles.

Mr. Wright, didn’t you go to art school? I sure didn’t, but I still know what happens when you mix orange and blue!

In case you forgot, take a look at this!

If you look closely, you can even see an orange tint!