WordsOfAli

This is a smaller transgression in the mess that is Kataang, but it’s so baffling to me. Like, wouldn’t you want to find your (future) significant other funny? And his response is quite rude and unnecessary. I made a comment on a post the other day about how Aang doesn’t seem to like Katara, and this is just one of several examples of him not seeing her as a normal human being, one who makes silly jokes so that her friends don’t miss her brother as much. He doesn’t even bother to pretend to be amused.

There’s been an uptick in discussion regarding Aang seeing nothing wrong with how Katara is portrayed in the Ember Island Players, and it goes to show how Aang just…doesn’t seem to enjoy Katara’s essence and personality. He’s so worked up about being played by a girl that he doesn’t give a damn about Katara being shown as an over emotional woman who lusts over the “enemy.” No matter that Katara’s passion, optimism, and hope is what fuels the plot and enables other characters to overcome their obstacles. In fact, he agrees with this slut shaming portrayal of her, and blows up at her during their conversation on the balcony.

Aang is such a terrible partner to Katara. He doesn’t stand up for her, thinks she’ll jump straight to murder when it comes to Yon Rah, doesn’t find her funny, abandons her when things get tough, and overall rarely provides her with the support that she lends him. Apart from thinking she’s pretty and can be his mommy-wife, he rarely thinks of her highly.

bermudian tide benders 🌊

haitian chant benders 🌬️

grenadian spice benders 🔥

Edit: Some posts may be deleted

Character writing/development:

Character Arcs

Making Character Profiles

Character Development

Comic Relief Arc

Internal Conflict

Character Voices

Creating Distinct Characters

Creating Likeable Characters

Writing Strong Female Characters

Writing POC Characters

Building Tension

Writing Grumpy x Sunshine Tropes

Writing Sexuality & Gender

Writing Manipulative Characters

Writing Mature Young Characters

Writing Disoriented but Capable Characters

Plot devices/development:

Intrigue in Storytelling

Enemies to Lovers

Alternatives to Killing Characters

Worldbuilding

Misdirection

Things to Consider Before Killing Characters

Foreshadowing

Story Structure (+ Addition)

Killing Many Characters at Once

Narrative (+ how to write):

Emphasising the Stakes

Avoid Info-Dumping

Writing Without Dialogue

1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd Perspective

Fight Scenes (+ More)

Transitions

Pacing

Writing Prologues

Dialogue Tips

Writing War

Writing Cheating

Writing Miscommunication

Writing Unrequited Love

Writing a Slow Burn Btwn Introverts

Writing Admiration Without Attraction

Writing Dual POVs

Writing Unreliable Narrators

Naturally Conveying Character Age

Avoiding Repetition of "I" in 1st Person

Worldbuilding:

Worldbuilding: Questions to Consider

Creating Laws/Rules in Fantasy Worlds

Book writing:

Connected vs. Stand-Alone Series

A & B Stories

Parts of a Book (Chapters, Scenes, Arcs, Story Beats)

Writer resources:

Writing YouTube Channels, Podcasts, & Blogs

Online Writing Resources

Outlining/Writing/Editing Software

Translation Software for Writing

Writer help:

Losing Passion/Burnout

Overcoming Writer's Block

Fantasy terms:

How To Name Fantasy Races (Step-by-Step)

Naming Elemental Races

Naming Fire-Related Races

How To Name Fantasy Places

Ask games:

Character Ask Game #1

Character Ask Game #2

Character Ask Game #3

Miscellaneous:

Writing Tips

Writing Fantasy

Miscommunication Prompts

“As he gazed into your blue eyes…” I have brown eyes.

“You’re pale porcelain skin.” I’m black

“Your hair was a mess but you were late so you put it in a messy bun and ran out the house.” I have short ass dread locs.

Anonymous asked:

I have a question around linguistics within dialogue: my story is set in the early crusades with a character list that include European Christians, Middle Eastern Muslims, and Middle Eastern Christians. As - particularly during this time period - characters coming from different backgrounds would have different linguistical styles, I’m trying to avoid my Middle Eastern characters using expressions that are clearly of English origin, note which characters are speaking which language where necessary, and include transliterated Arabic words/phrases when appropriate. (Your ‘how to convey arabic language in a specific dialect is being spoken without lengthy descriptions of how words/specific letters are pronounced?’ answer was really helpful here, thank you!) However as a non-Arabic, English speaker I’m also wary of ‘over-peppering’ these Arabic idioms to the extent that the Europeans’ dialogue comes across as ‘standard’ and the Middle Eastern characters’ as ‘exotic’ (I’m conscious that overly formal and ornate language has been a pretty orientalist trope in the past, which I’m trying to avoid). Would you have any recommended rules of thumb on how to keep a good balance, or anything to be wary of/outright avoid here? Thank you so much for any advice you can share!

Love this. I’d try the placeholder method (just made this up.) Honestly, the best thing to do is just write the story first using whatever English expressions come naturally — even if you know they’re super modern or wouldn’t make sense in the time period and setting (like “a dime a dozen” or “barking up the wrong tree”). Don’t stress about making everything historically or culturally perfect right away. That’ll stall the writing process. These non-suitable phrases become ‘placeholders’ to switch out later. 

So keep track of those lines (you can highlight them or jot the the page/line # down somewhere), and then later on, if you know someone who speaks Arabic or is familiar with the culture, ask them to help swap in more fitting phrases, and do a sensitivity read overall. They might not translate word-for-word, but they can help you find alternatives that still match the vibe or emotion of certain idioms. They can also find spots for Arabic idioms that you wouldn’t have expected. 

I found this list from Reddit user AgileCzar about gulf dialect idioms from a decade ago:

خيرها في غيرها - "a better (one) in another (one)". Kind of like better luck next time, but without sarcasm

انا في وادي وانت في وادي - "I am in a valley and you are in a valley" - describes a situation where you and the other person are on different pages, not seeing eye to eye etc...

يوم عسل ويوم بصل - "A day of honey, a day of onions" - a response when someone asks how you're doing. Basically saying some days are good and some are bad.

شو لونك (shoo lunak) - "What's your color" - used in Kuwait as a greeting (like what's up)

I would never have thought to do any of these, but they’re really fun! Scouring the internet for options and figuring out where these go is a total second-pass sort of edit. You don’t want to put pressure on yourself to get it all right on the first draft. It's a lot easier to fix language stuff when you already have the story down.

I do this in scripts a lot when I know something needs to be in Spanish or Arabic, but I’m not clear on the exact wording because finishing the story is more important at that moment.

Good Luck and Happy Writing!

-Melanie 🌻

I’m taking a murder mystery class right now (will post about key things I learned when it’s done in a few weeks!) and the one place that me and my classmates tend to get stuck on or fall short of is motive.

Motive can be tricky because in order for the story to story the characters need to make mistakes and choose interesting and dramatic things, which means that their motive needs to be strong enough to justify those choices.

For a motive to be strong, it needs to relate to your readers on a deep level. We just won’t believe someone’s motive if we’ve never felt what they have before (even if what they’re feeling is being taken to the extreme). For this reason, you want to base your motives in instinctual human desires such as:

- Acceptance—to feel loved, appreciated, and like you belong - Curiosity—to learn, explore, understand - Family/Community—to lean on others and have them lean on you, to care for others - Honor—to be loyal to your values, group, or traditions - Idealism—to improve the world or affect change - Independence/agency—to be able to choose for yourself, freedom, autonomy, direction - Order/tranquility—to have stability, predictability, organization, the ability to rest, security - Power—to influence or lead others, to protect, to mentor - Intimacy/love—emotional and/or physical intimacy - Status—to be respected, recognized, and/or admired, to compete and win - Vengeance—to defend yourself or loved ones, to stand up for your beliefs - Survival—to live, to eat, to continue moving

While I might not relate to a character who kills out of jealousy, I can relate to their need to feel appreciated (acceptance), or recognized (status), or special to one person (intimacy), or even to right a wrong (idealism). That’s how I’d follow along with a character who makes decisions I would not make, but for reasons that I can relate to.

But note--desires are the jumping off point. Their reasons should be grounded in their backstory and specific to them--they need to feel appreciated because they have 5 siblings and their accomplishments have always gone unnoticed, for example.

The other thing that can kill a motive is if the action or solution the character comes up with gets too extreme, too fast. If there are solutions that are an easier step, we’re going to wonder why we aren’t taking that step instead of the more extreme decision we did take. There’re two steps to fix this:

1. Show your character considering and/or trying and failing those easier steps

In an example from my class, one of my classmates had the wife killing her husband over a trip he wanted them to go on, because if they left, she wouldn’t get to submit and win the town fair for the 15th year in a row. You can convince me that’s important to the wife, but we were all stuck with the same questions: well why doesn’t she just stay home while he goes on the trip? Why doesn’t she talk to him about it?

These easier solutions are going to make the motive for murder (to stay home and win the fair) fall flat. So, to build up to the murder, we need to see the wife trying just about everything under the sun: she asks to stay home, he says absolutely not! She talks to him about how important the fair is to her, he laughs her off. She pretends to be sick so she can’t go, he’s going to make her go anyway.

I want to see every action she takes peel back another possibility, forcing her to become more and more desperate, to consider worse and worse things, until she’s at the end of her rope and the only way she can stay home is to kill her husband. In this case, I would say her motivation isn’t even to win the fair, but it’s to have agency over herself. Which leads right into point 2…

2. There are deeper forces at work here

Using our example, the fact that those early possibilities didn’t succeed is because the husband is bullying and controlling his wife—he doesn’t take her interests or desires seriously, and is instead thinking about himself and what he wants. Adding layers to your motives are going to make them more believable.

A rational person would not kill another person over someone cheating on them. When we start to go through the obvious next steps, A talks to B about it—well, B just keeps denying, so then A follows B from work and confronts them with C, that doesn’t stop it either, so then A breaks up with B… and that ends it, you can see how just the motive of being accepted might not hold up. But if we layer motives, if we put to play a deeper force—Character A has a flawed worldview surrounding B and they believe it’s their job to control or “protect” B (power)—then we can justify more extreme actions.

For extreme/morally reprehensible actions like murder, you may need to use both techniques to convince us that this decision was believable and justified.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Psst... Did you know I launched a website?)

Head on over to www.gatesannai.com (or click here!) for exclusive blog posts, updates on my work, and pictures of my dog.

How to Add Movement to a Murder Mystery without Derailing the Story

Here are some ideas for you to consider!

1. Introduce a New Clue or Discovery

Unexpected Evidence: Have a character stumble upon a crucial piece of evidence. This could be a hidden note, a strange item, or an overlooked detail that propels the investigation forward.

Surprising Revelation: Perhaps someone finds a hidden compartment in the theater with items related to the murder. This could spark new theories and discussions among the characters.

2. Create a Disruption

Theatrical Effect: Use the theater setting to your advantage. For example, the lights could suddenly go out, or there could be an unexpected sound or event (like a prop falling) that causes chaos and forces the characters to act quickly.

Power Outage: A sudden blackout could create confusion and force the characters to rely on each other, which could reveal new dynamics and secrets.

3. Introduce Conflict

Accusations and Tension: Allow tensions to rise by having characters confront each other with accusations or suspicions. This could lead to heated arguments or confrontations that reveal more about each character's motives.

Personal Conflicts: Bring underlying personal conflicts or grudges to the surface. This could create drama and reveal new aspects of the characters that influence their behavior and decisions.

4. Add a Time Crunch

Imminent Threat: Introduce a sense of urgency by suggesting that the murderer might strike again or that there’s a time limit for solving the crime before a more severe consequence occurs (e.g., a ticking clock or a scheduled event).

Urgent Action: Characters could discover that they need to find a specific clue or solve a puzzle before the theater is locked down or before someone else arrives.

5. Dynamic Character Actions

Shifting Alliances: Characters might decide to split up to search the theater more effectively. This could lead to new discoveries and interactions.

Personal Goals: Characters could pursue personal objectives or hidden agendas that complicate the investigation and create movement in the story.

6. Revelatory Dialogue

New Information: Characters could reveal previously hidden motives or secrets in their conversations, adding new layers to the mystery and prompting action.

Unexpected Accusation: A character might make a surprising accusation that causes everyone to reevaluate their theories and actions.

If you like what I do and want to support me, please consider buying me a coffee! I also offer editing services and other writing advice on my Ko-fi! Become a member to receive exclusive content, early access, and prioritized writing prompt requests.

Platform Black fans, Black voices, opinions that are strongly pro-Black. Make real Black friends. It's one thing to say "oh I love these Black characters!" It's another thing to actually express that you love real Black people.