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Hello Campers!

It's July, which means camp Camp NaNoWriMo has officially started. If you're looking for fun and relaxing activities to boost your creativity than come join us in our writing adventure.

We have activities planned for every day this month excluding Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some will be writing prompts/sprints, and others will be more artistic like moodboards. If that sounds interesting then please join our server and follow our tumblr posts to see what activities we are doing each day!

If you're not part of the club already and are interested in writing with us, then check out our info post about our discord server here.

I'll encourage long fic writers to add on in the notes, but as someone who tends to prefer short and medium-length fic, I'll tell you how I go about it.

Get a premise that you just absolutely love. You're going to be writing this thing for months, if not longer, so you want it to be something you're willing to spend a lot of time thinking about.

Embrace subplots. You'll have your main plotline that you want to see through from beginning to end, but you can also weave in some subplots here or there. The way I do this so that I don't get lost down a rabbit hole is that I always make sure that every chapter has at least 1 thing that moves the main plot forward and then if I want to spend 1-2K with some side characters doing something fun I can do that as well. Subplots can extend for the length of the full narrative, but they can also just last a chapter or three. If you're used to writing short fic, these might give you that familiar feeling of "completion"

A chapter is only as long as it needs to be. Don't get hung up on having a consistent chapter length. Don't get hung up on hitting some arbitrary number every time. Instead, figure out what the next part of your story needs to include and write however many words it takes to get that chunk across. Varying your chapter lengths is a normal thing to do and not something to stress about.

The next thing that I find important personally may or may not be relevant to you, but I find that I can't plot anything in much detail. If I get too into the nitty gritty with my plotting, it just feels like I've already written it. I need to keep it at the level of "And then A and B meet C and hijinks ensue." I can figure out the particular hijinks later. It's the characters meeting up that's the next important thing for me to figure out. Getting too far ahead of myself is a death knell for me in writing long fics, but there are other writers who swear by it. Test out different ways of approaching it and see what works for you.

As someone who tends to write more briefly, another feature that's common to longer fics is more extensive descriptions. People spend time painting visual pictures of the setting or the characters or the actions that are happening. Write the more bare-bones style that focuses more on dialogue (if you're like me) and then go back and read through what you've just written and see if there are opportunities to add in more detail. This can lead to some really interesting characterization choices and also help you out with worldbuilding.

When it comes to worldbuilding, you don't have to get it all on the page. You just need to share what's relevant for the reader in that moment and what is useful to lay out now so that it's already there in a future chapter. You can have an encyclopedic knowledge of how your world works in your head, but it's not actually necessary. No one is going to be quizzing you later - and if they do, you can always figure it out at that point.

Now I might put that in initially when planning out the basic structure of a fic, to figure out the pacing, but once I get to chapter 5 I stop and write a new outline just for that chapter. Something like:

Mary is sewing while Olive is working on a spell across the room

Thinks about mother and what she's cooking up

Tired, puts down needle - Olive notices

She asks Olive to show her what she's doing

Olive sits down by her (cute moment, Mary gets flustered by proximity)

Teaches her about spell, Mary thinks she's being very nice

Olive unbends and shows a little more affection

If it's because you have an idea that needs the space and time to develop, then cool. If it's because you want to challenge yourself and try out a longform format, awesome. But if it's just because you feel like you should, that somehow a long fic is more valid, then my advice boils down to: a story should be as long as it needs to be. If you can tell the story you want coherently in short form, with the emotional impact that you're aiming for, then do that and try to ignore the misplaced shoulds. A story is not better or more valuable just because it's long. (A sentiment I stand behind completely as someone who too often finds herself writing 100k+ fics.)

My advice for actually writing long fic is to remember and refine your overarching emotional arc(s) at all times and to resist the urge to throw in subplots just because you like them if they're going to mess up the pacing of your story. Pacing a long fic is critically important and intensely difficult, especially in the middle. Ask yourself what purpose each scene serves as you write it. If you discover that you're duplicating something you've already done, figure out whether it can shed new light on the characters or plot or if you might have to let it go.

This is closely related to point 1 above.

But I very rarely plot out a whole story before I write it—I’ve conflicted with several writing teachers over it. I can’t do it in much detail at all and I usually can’t plan the end until I’ve already written the first third or so, I have to find the story as I write it.

This means I SUCK at predicting what length something is going to be with any kind of precision.

I can, however, usually tell if a fic is more a self-contained one-off (be it a one shot or a limited set of chapters) or something that’s gonna run for a while (either novel-like or more episodically serialized).

Either way, though, you kinda have to just let the fic become whatever length it ends up needing to be in order to tell the story you’re trying to tell.

If a story you expected and planned to have be a 50k+ longfic wraps itself up closer to the 20k mark, that’s okay! If you’ve written the whole thing before posting any (rather than doing it as a serialized WIP), then by all means take a couple editing passes, see if there’s places to flesh out details, add some scenes, explore some plot threads you didn’t pull on the first time through.

But don’t force it to double in length just because you want to have written something long. You’re gonna drive yourself nuts, make yourself unhappy with a perfectly good story, and probably end up with something that’s boggy and draggy for readers.

Let the story be the length it is.

Sometimes popular things are also quality. Sometimes quality things are also popular. But those are two different metrics on two different scales.

What you see as "good" will depend on which scale you value more in any given moment for any particular creation, and in the end neither popularity nor quality are what matters most.

Tokenism refers to giving the empty appearance of inclusivity or diversity, often to avoid criticism. In writing, tokenism refers to adding minorities to an otherwise homogenous cast (think a cast of white male characters in the West) in name or appearance only, without putting in the effort to develop these characters.

The problem with tokenism is that token characters are forced to be the sole representation of their particular group. The consequence is twofold. First, undeveloped token characters often become platforms for stereotypes. Think the sassy Black friend, the smart Asian friend, etc.

Second, token characters often become creator mouthpieces. Many of us have heard someone excuse their racism by saying they have a POC friend. The token character, the proverbial Friend of Color, can be made to excuse or even promote biases about their race, ethnicity, or culture.

There is no inherent issue with having only one of a particular identity, or having a white protagonist and a POC best friend. The problem comes when you make the character a spokesperson for their identity and/or saddle them with stereotypes and cliches. To avoid tokenism, write the character from a place of empathy, make them three dimensional, do your research on their identity, and avoid stereotypes.

Further Reading:

Why We Need More Directors of Color

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This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. Take a look to learn more about writing POC representation!

Coding is the practice of adapting key characteristics of a real life demographic group within a fictional setting, such that while the source group is not named explicitly, the adaptation is intentional. This has been heavily used in satire and controlled forms of media to use subtext when explicit labeling was not possible or desired. Coding has also been used in worldbuilding for speculative fiction when the author finds it useful to incorporate references to real life groups in settings where they might not exist.

The difference between effective and ineffective coding comes down to if audiences easily recognize the group being coded. However, effective coding does not necessarily mean good coding. Good coding should resonate with the group that the coding is based on, not just the general audience. There are many historical examples of effective but bad coding. These tend to rely on stereotypes and cultural appropriation to villainize or satirize a group with a bastardized portrayal.

Further Reading:

See our #coding tag.

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This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. Check it out for more FAQs like this one!

Welcome to the WritingWithColor Askbox Masterpost!

Table of Contents:

1. The Ask Tutorial (Guidelines and Tips for a good ask)

Topic & Content Rules

How to Write an Ask We’ll Answer!

2. FAQs and Area-Specific Guides

General FAQ for Newcomers

FAQs by Topic

Specific Recommended Reading

3. Etiquette for the Blog and Asks

A Disclaimer to our International Readers

The WWC Code of Conduct

4. Moving Forward

Where we started

In the summer of 2014, bookworm Colette Aburime founded WritingWithColor, WWC for short, to help writers add diverse representation of People of Color (POC) to their creative works, with a focus on Western fiction. At the time, the majority white-run advice blogs were unequipped for POC-focused Q&A. Some even banned questions about writing POC outright. 

Having a passion for reading, especially books that actually had a variety of BIPOC main characters, she felt compelled to bridge the gap in the writing advice world. Thus, WritingWithColor was born.

Since then, WritingWithColor has gained over 100,000 followers! We are committed as ever to help writers create more respectful, diverse, and inclusive works. With a changing and ever growing team of diverse moderators, we serve a broader demographic to promote thoughtful representation of marginalized groups that are not one’s own.

Where we are now

Generous donations from our readers have allowed us to purchase the domain writingwithcolor.org! With this, we can expand beyond Tumblr and make our resources independent and available for years to come. By revamping the old FAQ ahead of the website opening, we hope to touch base again with our long-time followers, welcome some new faces, and try our best to start everyone on the same page.

In the meantime, we’re sure you have noticed that the blog goes through cycles of inactivity and askbox closures. The most common reason for this is the backlog of questions. The second most common reason is moderator burn-out.

Asking these questions and fielding user feedback is taxing. All moderators work or study full-time in some capacity, and many of us also have households, partners and dependents. Establishing firmer guidelines will help us more consistently provide you with the feedback with which you have generously entrusted us over the years.

Important Notice:

To submit an ask going forward, you will be required to attest that you have read through the required portions of this Masterpost, which doubles as the WWC Terms & Conditions.

DO NOT share the askbox link, as we need all askers to read the Terms and Conditions before you ask a question. Sharing the askbox form link directly will likely result in questions being deleted as we can tell when people haven’t read the required material. Instead, redirect other askers to this post.

We’ve taken the feedback and critiques from many of you over the years about the time it takes to hear from us as well as issues over limitations in our responses. However, please do not use WWC for emergency questions, as answering asks is a time-consuming process.

If the above is clear, please stick with us as we provide you with our recommendations, tips, and guidelines when using the WWC askbox.

It has been a while! Well, we wanted to announce some big things coming your way!

WWC Askbox: Soft Re-Opening

Wednesday, Nov 1, 2023 to Thursday, Nov 30, 2023

In light of the recent attention WWC has received by the writeblr community, and the reception to our Guide to Academic Research—the mods have decided that we will temporarily reopen to your questions and test some important changes to the site! As you may have noticed, we've taken a much-needed break to catch up on our personal lives and restore our inspiration to answer the hundreds of Q&A that we receive. 

Once the submission window is up on Nov 30, we will evaluate how our new system is going, tinker some more, and reopen once again once the construction dust clears.

New Rules and FAQ! 

We are pleased to announce our new and improved Masterpost, which we hope will be a more centralized, more informative resource for those new and returning to WWC. 

Brand-new FAQs, with new answers and content for further reading

Code of Conduct and other etiquette rules

The Ask Tutorial—a guide to writing a good ask that we’ll answer!

Moving forward, all followers are required to go through the masterpost to submit a question so they are aware of the new rules, terms & conditions. 

Read the masterpost here and ask your question!

New Process

We're piloting out our own personal askbox via Google Forms. This will help us streamline the process and keep track of everyone’s questions.

We are also introducing the Deletion Log, a public, anonymous ledger that lets you know if your question (identified by a number code) has been deleted due to a rule violation, and what you can do to resubmit. Check out the Deletion Log here. 

Want to submit an ask? 

The below are topics of asks that we will get to right away, based on the mods who are currently active. 

Black 

Chinese

Colonialism

Iranian/Persian 

Japanese (INCLUDING: Anime fanfic questions! Only Mod Rina will be answering anime questions, and only if she feels that the ask would make for an educational post.)

Jewish

Mixed race

South Asian: Hindu, Indian, Punjabi, Sikh (please remember that when asking about South Asia you must indicate region & time period) 

Taiwanese 

Writing/Publishing industry 

Coming Soon: Writingwithcolor.org

We've made tremendous progress on writingwithcolor.org and are almost ready to show off the more permanent residence of WritingWithColor! However, it'll take a lot of time to fully transfer posts and links. To get the new look and all its benefits to you faster, we plan for a soft launch of the content. This will include back and forth linking between WritingWithColor.org and our home on Tumblr. We'll try to keep things seamless and your viewing experience on Tumblr shouldn't be too interrupted. Launch date is coming soon!

New Mod Applications

We still have some applications from our last call of mods and folks to respond to. So if you haven’t heard back, sorry for the delay, but no worries—we will get back to you as we start shaking the dust off our bones and getting back into Q&A. Once we are ready to invite more mods again, we'll continue our outreach.

A Special Thanks To You All

We want to thank you for your continued support, whether it’s been viewership, spreading the word about us, or sending us a tip that supports our domain and future projects for you all. The whole team really appreciates it. We will keep bringing you our best advice and guides on all things good writing with inclusivity. 

Be well and keep writing!

Amendment to Do Not Ask:

Non-questions that are just comments. If you have feedback regarding a particular post or want to voice your opinions, you may do so in the notes. Please note that all of our Etiquette rules apply.

Amendment to Restricted Topics:

Topics for which there are no active mods | Exceptions: multiple/mixed topics that include an identity group from the list below, and general topics like worldbuilding that a mod of a different identity may wish to speak to.

OK TO SEND: Topics with Active Mods (Updated 11/7/23) - Black - Chinese - Colonialism - Iranian/Persian - Japanese - Jewish - Languages/Linguistics/Conlanging/Names - Mixed race - South Asian: Hindu, Indian, Punjabi, Sikh - Taiwanese - Worldbuilding - Writing/Publishing industry - Mixed topic asks that include at least one of the above

Some of you may be wondering why we have put this rule in place after having accepted these questions for so long. The answer is simple: data bloat. In the past, we constantly experienced slowdowns and freezing applications—the backlog of asks that no one could answer kept weighing down the files we used to host the asks and our answers. By limiting submissions to asks that we can answer, we can keep our systems running more smoothly.

We will update this list on the Masterpost rules as new mods come in.

The above two rules will retroactively apply to asks sent before this 11/7/23 update. We apologize for the inconvenience.