dain’s nonsense

a BOG is a wetland that is acidic

Egyptian-Style Necklace with Scarabs (gold, steatite, lapis lazuli)   

Naples, Italy,  late 19th-early 20th century

Archaeological jewelry decorated with ancient and modern scarabs was popular in Europe during the second half of the 19th century. The Castellani workshop was famous for its copies of ancient jewelry, and this necklace has been attributed Giacinto Melillo, one of Alessandro Castellani’s apprentices and protégés (this necklace bears his mark on the clasp). He later took over Castellani’s workshop in Naples, which Henry Walters visited in 1903.

holy shit

Artists, creators, students, and researchers of all types, take note:

Digitized photos and text. 2D and 3D object renders. Music and other sound files. Videos. Research datasets. Collections metadata.

On a Creative Commons Zero license: Take what you want. Use it. No permission or attribution required. Yes, even for commercial use.

I apologize for the gap in posts. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately..

1) Find inspiration photos - create a folder on your desktop or browser and fill it with inspiration photos for your WIP. You can search for photos on Google Image Search or photo sites like Pixabay and Pexels.

2) Make a playlist - music can be very inspiring when you’re writing or planning a story, so try making a playlist for your WIP. You can do Google searches for things like “songs about love” or “songs about war” if you want songs that fit a specific theme. You can also look through the music you own and see if anything reminds you of your story.

3) Make aesthetics or mood boards - aesthetics and mood boards are photo collages that you make for your story. They can be general, for your whole story, for characters, for the setting, or even for a particular scene or event. Aesthetics are fun to make and can be very inspirational when you’re writing.

4) Draw a map or make a layout - try making a map of wherever your story takes place, whether that’s a town, kingdom, or a whole country or world. You can even draw layouts of things like high schools, houses, or other buildings in your story. Not only are they fun to do, but it can be a helpful tool for visualizing your setting, and sometimes it can lead to ideas about scenes or plot points.

5) Do a character interview - imagine that you’ve pulled your character out of a story into the room and now have the opportunity to interview them. What questions would you ask them? What do you want to know about them that you don’t already know? What do you think the reader would want to know? What might be pertinent to the story that you haven’t thought about yet?

6) Do a TV Crew follow around - no matter when or where your story takes place, imagine that you’ve dropped an invisible TV crew into your story’s world to follow your character around through an average day. Follow them from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed that night. What are they like when they wake up? What is their morning routine? What do they eat for breakfast? How do they get ready? What do they do throughout the day? Who do they interact with? What else do they eat and drink? What do they do for fun or relaxation? How to they make money or meet their basic needs? What is their bedtime routine like?

7) Try a writing tool - there are all kinds of interesting writing tools out there, both online and things, apps, and physical things. Story Cubes, plot generators, plot twist generators, the Storymatic, StoryForge, Story Dice, tarot cards, the Writer’s Toolbox… just to name a few!

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