Compose a Revolution

HEY WRITER FRIENDS

there’s this amazing site called realtimeboardwhich is like a whiteboard where you can plan and draw webs and family trees and timelines and all that sort of stuff. you can also insert videos, documents, photos, and lots of other things. you can put notes and post-its and, best of all, you can invite other people to be on the board with you and edit together!! 

I started the preparation for a novel and wondered what kind of things I should ask my most important characters. So I looked around on the net and put this list together. 

1. What is your full name?

2. Date and place of birth?

3. Tell me about your parents?

4. Brothers? Sisters? 

5. Where/how do you live? (alone or with someone; in what kind of home?)

6. Do you have a job? If yes what is it?

7. How do you look? Hair, eye and skin color, height, weight, any marks, style of dress.

8. Do you have any allergies, mental illnesses, psychical weaknesses?

9. Are you left or right handed?

10. Do you have any tics, certain habbits or other things like that?

11. What do you usually carry in your pockets?

12. Describe your childhood

13. Did you like going to school?

14. Where did you learn most of the things you know?

15. Who did you look up to when you were younger?

16. Did you like your family? Why/why not?

17. What was your dream job?

18. What kind of child were you?

19. What’s the most important thing you did in your life?

20. Have you ever had any romantic relationships? And if they ended, why did you break up?

21. Do you have a relationship now?

22. What is your greatest regret?

23. What is the worst thing you ever did?

24. What are you scared of?

25. Best memory? And worst?

26. What are your religious views?

27. Would you kill anyone? If yes, why?

28. Would you die for anyone?

29. Do you make friends quickly?

30. How would you describe your manners?

31. Turn ons? 

32. Turn offs?

33. Are you close to your family? Why/why not?

34. If you desperately need help, who do you turn to?

35. Your hobbies?

36. Your most treasured possession?

37. Favourite color and food?

38. Favourite book/genre?

39. Do you smoke/drink/do drugs? And if so, why?

40. What is your favourite way of spending a Saturday?

41. How do you deal with stress?

42. Favourite joke?

43. How do you react if someone disturbs your routine?

44. Do you like yourself?

45. Introvert or extrovert?

46. What are you good at?

47. And what are you not good at?

48. What words describe you?

49. what is your weakness?

50. What would you want to add that you feel is important?

My best advice would be to look at how other authors name places and stories.

Naming Stories

Look at the books you have on your shelf. Taking a gander at my own, the average amount of words in a book title is one-three. Very few have more than that. That’s not to say you can’t have more than that (The Forest of Hands & Teeth, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Return of the King, The Fault in Our Stars, Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment) but look at the structure of the titles in those cases. The extra words tend to be ‘the’, ‘of’, ‘and’, in’. Those that have character names in the title don’t emphasise the character called Joe Smith; the names grab attention, are different.

What is the theme of your story? What do you want people to think when they see the title? If you could put a maximum of three words to your story, what would they be?

Naming Places

Sticking with one of my previous examples, Harry Potter is a big one for quirky, interesting place names, but when you strip them down, they can look a little… obvious. Given the world in the series, it makes sense that a lot of the place names use words and phrases that one might associate with witchcraft. Then in the case of Azkaban - sounds a lot like Alcatraz, doesn’t it? Hogwarts is said to be named after the hogwort plant, too.

There’s nothing wrong with ‘obvious’, not in the slightest! In fact, an obvious name is much better than an obscure one, in my opinion.

Here are some other things to consider with naming places:

Setting

How would people in your world name things based on their environment and their understanding of it? For example, some place names come about because of what the land looks like. Think about the world you’ve created and the major places within it:

What is the weather like there?

What can be cultivated, grown or harvested there? What are the main exports, if any?

What kind of stereotypes exist?

Who/what ‘founded’ the land, or developed it?

What are the major landmarks?

What kind of animals/other species share the land with the main one?

Does the main species there have an affinity with anything in particular?

What kind of religions exist?

All of these things could give you place names. Even if you don’t stick with the first ideas you come up with, at least you’ll have something to work with.

Language

I’m not condoning that you take a word from somebody else’s language and throw it in as a place name to make your fictional city look ‘cooler’ but studying other languages can be very inspirational. If anything, it can give you a better understanding of how people all over the world name places and things with their own wording and concepts.

Ancient languages such as Latin are great if you’re writing a piece that would justify using it, too.

Or if you can, make up your own languages and words for your work and name things based on the rules of the language you’ve created.

Of course it goes without saying… do your research for this. Don’t just grab words willy-nilly from places and think it’s okay to use them if you have no real understanding of what the word means and what it is used for by those who speak the actual language.

Research

Look at how things and places are named in your own country, town, city or village. What inspired the name? The etymology of real place names is always a good place to start.

So yeah, sorry that this is super long uhm… I do hope it has helped you somewhat though…

- enlee.

If you’re writing anything where your characters are getting injured a lot, it might be helpful to have an injuries reference list on hand. WELL, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT BECAUSE I CREATED ONE. This is mostly the result of me having to look up something every time a character was gravely injured/being a lifeguard for seven years. I have some knowledge of first aid and how it might apply to the characters in your story.

Simple scrapes/cuts: There’s usually not much to worry about besides MAYBE an infection, which can be avoided with rubbing alcohol or peroxide. Remember, peroxide usually doesn’t burn or sting, but rubbing alcohol probably will.  These injuries will bleed for a short amount of time, but it shouldn’t last too long.

Bruising: These occur when the blood vessels break under the skin, forming discoloration of the skin. The colors can vary, but they are usually purplish, bluish, or yellow. Again, this injury is usually not serious if it’s a result of a bump or cut, but if there’s significant bruising over a large area of the body there might be a serious problem. Usually time heals bruising.

Anonymous asked: *Rolls around the floor* I feel like my writing sucks and no matter how much I write and edit it doesn’t get better. Do you have any tips on how to be confident in your writing?

*Throws around pillows so you don’t bang into the furniture*

Here are my steps.

Stop comparing your writing to that of other people’s. 

Seriously, stop. It’s not doing you any favors and it’s a surefire way to make yourself miserable.

Even published, successful authors have times when they’re convinced that they suck. (Except for Nicholas Sparks, but, well…)

Focus on what you do well in your writing, and don’t be humble. For this exercise, you are Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove. What is it about your writing that you’re most proud of? Are your verbs spot-on? Do your descriptive passages put Romantic-era writers to shame? Breathe humanity into your villains? Hell yeah! Think about what you’re good at, put them into list form, and pin it to the wall above your desk. See? You’re not nearly as bad as you think you are.

Make another list of what you believe are your weak points. Approach this step with courage. Brave heart, Tegan. The only catch is that you’re not allowed to make this list any longer than the list of good things. Let me repeat that: You are not allowed to make this list longer than the Good Things List. Got it? Okay.

Pin it up next to the list of good things. Compare the two. Squint at them and make a photographer’s square with your fingers. These two lists represent the base of your writing.

Now take the bad list down. Look at it again. Rank the items in order of Not-So-bad to Must-Fix-Immediately. That’s the order in which you’re going to work on improving them.

Work on improving them. Hit up the Internet for ways to combat your specific weaknesses. Write short pieces strictly for dissection purposes - use prompts to help you think of ideas. Write. Write. Write. Write like it’s keeping your electricity on.

Whenever you get discouraged, look at the list of Good Things you’ve kept pinned to the wall. Hey! You’re good at this! Really, you are good at this - and even better, you’re working on getting better. 

Remember: there are no real benchmarks. There’s no core standard for writers. Everyone comes at this thing in their own way, and that’s what makes writing such a cool art form: it truly is individualistic.

I really hope this helps. 

Accepting – too accepting; willing to excuse extreme behavior

Adaptable – used to traveling from situation to situation; may not be able to fully adapt/live in a permanent situation

Affable – accidentally befriends the wrong sort of people; pushes to befriend everyone

Affectionate –inappropriate affection

Alert – constantly on edge; paranoid

Altruistic – self-destructive behavior for the sake of their Cause

Apologetic – apologizes too much; is a doormat; guilt-ridden

Aspiring – becomes very ambitious; ruthless in their attempts to reach goals

Assertive – misunderstood as aggressive; actually aggressive; others react negatively when they take command all the time

Athletic – joints weakened from exercise; performance-enhancing drug abuse; competitive

                                      Character Development                                                  Experiment

ONE RULE: YOU HAVE TO TAKE WHAT YOU GET! DON’T TRY AGAIN!

ANY QUESTIONS?

HOW IT WORKS:

take a screenshot! 

first three colors are for your character’s physical appearance, rather easy!

the other colors “describe” your character (voice, character traits, temper).

think about it! what do you associate with your color?

BONUS: Element. 

(EXAMPLES: I got black for voice - he has a deep, silent voice, white for temper - she’s calm etc.)