IMSA WRITE(s)

A story the character wrote is being made into a movie and the character is not happy with results at all.

The character loses a notebook full of their ideas and someone else finds it.

There character enters a writing contest, which turns out to be a decoy for something else entirely.

The character has just finished their masterpiece when an identical novel, identical word for word, is published by someone else.

The character accepts a bet from a friend that they can turn a ridiculous premise into a bestseller. 

The character is sucked into their novel.

The character is hired to ghostwrite a celebrity’s autobiography.

The character is doing research for a true crime book and they get drawn in too deep.

The character’s fans demand a different ending to their newest book.

The character needs to sell a story or they can’t get their inheritance (it was a clause in the will).

The character meets a fascinating person at book signing.

The character writes a character inspired by someone in their life and the person gets upset.

The character has a specific writing ritual, which gets interrupted.

The character writes erotica or romance under a pseudonym and their love interest buys it.

Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening

Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.

Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

Warning: I reference violence and sexual assault (non-explicitly).

People like to write about characters who work in stressful and morbid professions (as cops, firefighters, FBI agents, CIA agents, intelligence analysts, etc.), and so here are some tips about writing those types of workplaces/professions (in general).

People develop gallows humor. Especially if you’re staring at really awful things for hours at a time, weeks on end, you end up needing ways to cope. People will make jokes while reading about terrible things, or about the terrible things, as a way to cope.

Things come out wrong. The way that people end up talking about the things that they see can end up coming out really inappropriately, at least to people who aren’t involved or people who are new. They will say that sexual assault isn’t interesting because people don’t want to research it, or say that Pakistan is better than Nigeria because it has better information coming out of it, or that they wished more people were using bombs instead of beheadings because they’re easier to deal with. That doesn’t mean necessarily that they don’t see what’s going on as horrible or noteworthy, but things need to be generalized and simplified because if everything is taken personally it becomes unmanageable.

People burn out. It’s really easy to burn out when you spend all of your time dealing with horrible things. TV shows like to show this burnout as being explosive and sometimes deadly, with people taking a gun into their workplace and shooting up the place. That’s not what it usually looks like. It more frequently looks like someone just at some point not being able to deal with it anymore and leaving. This can also come from the fact that people in these fields often work long hours in high-stress positions. Their social life or marital life may suffer from this, and they may end up with unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the stress.

Character A is on their way to sell the engagement ring they once bought for Character B (but they never got to propose) when they run into Character B again.

Character A moved out of town after the breakup. Now they need to come back for a few days and all hotels are booked full and the only person they can turn to there is Character B.

Character A is injured. Character B works in the ER.

Character A is injured. Character B is still listed as their emergency contact.

Character A’s family doesn’t know about the breakup and they keep insisting Character B comes visit. 

Character A misses a dish Character B’s mother used to make so they call for a recipe.

The characters have a child together and are both invited to school by the kid’s teacher.

The characters are actors and are cast in the same project. Bonus points if their relationship was a secret.

The characters are both invited to a mutual friend’s wedding. Bonus points if they didn’t know they shared this friend.

Character A stumbles upon Character B’s dating profile.

The characters do the same sport and meet again at a competition.

A friend tries to set the characters up, not knowing they used to date. 

The characters are hired by the same company and meet every day in the office.

The characters are suspected of a crime which happened while they were dating.

[A Secret Named Sophie - Writing Playlist] is a compilation of all the tracks I listened to while writing the book of the same name! If you’ve read the book and wondered what I was listening to, or would like to see what one of my *personal* playlists looks like— then I have a treat for you! ★

♪ Click here to listen to this mix on 8tracks ♪

So, what is this playlist about?

Secrets. To me, this playlist echoes with the feeling that the world around you is not as it appears, and you’re being kept in the darkness. Somber. Dark. And a little personal. This playlist is as much about fear of the dark as it is about fear of real, tangible monsters. The kind that people don’t write folk stories about.

Now, generally I would not include tracks with lyrics, but I included the last four tracks at the request of a few followers who wanted me to include not only the tracks I wrote to— but also the tracks I listened to casually to inspire myself to write this book. I hope you enjoy this mix~ ♥︎

Want more writing advice, writer positivity, and more? Follow me!

✚ Writing Advice Blog: maxkirin.tumblr.com ✚ YouTube Channel: youtube.com/mistrekirin ✚ Twitter: twitter.com/mistrekirin ✚ Writing Playlists: 8tracks.com/mkirin ✚ Instagram: instagram.com/maxkirin ✚ Free Stories: wattpad.com/mkirin

Anonymous said: Hello! Is it possible for the whole Earth’s law enforcement (SIS, FBI, CIA, detectives, spies etc) to be compiled into one huge organisation that manages big crimes (like homicide etc) on an international basis?

No, but seriously though, I know you meant something much larger than INTERPOL, but you’ve got to start somewhere. INTERPOL is a massive international law enforcement agency, and it’s a tiny real-life version of what I think you’re proposing. With that in mind, INTERPOL has a great About page to get you started. Here is a excerpt from their gloriously functional website:

INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 190 member countries.

Our role is to enable police around the world to work together to make the world a safer place. Our high-tech infrastructure of technical and operational support helps meet the growing challenges of fighting crime in the 21st century.

SUPPORTING POLICE WORLDWIDE

We work to ensure that police around the world have access to the tools and services necessary to do their jobs effectively. We provide targeted training, expert investigative support, relevant data and secure communications channels.

This combined framework helps police on the ground understand crime trends, analyse information, conduct operations and, ultimately, arrest as many criminals as possible.

NEUTRALITY

At INTERPOL, we aim to facilitate international police cooperation even where diplomatic relations do not exist between particular countries. Action is taken within the limits of existing laws in different countries and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our Constitution prohibits ‘any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character’.

VISION AND MISSION

The vision: “Connecting police for a safer world”.

The mission: “Preventing and fighting crime through enhanced cooperation and innovation on police and security matters”

Read the full vision and mission.

A GLOBAL PRESENCE

The General Secretariat is located in Lyon, France, and operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. INTERPOL also has seven regional offices across the world and a representative office at the United Nations in New York and at the European Union in Brussels. Each of our 190 member countries maintains a National Central Bureau staffed by its own highly trained law enforcement officials.

Here’s another fun tid-bit I found: “The Organization’s official name is “ICPO–INTERPOL”. The official abbreviation “ICPO” stands for ‘International Criminal Police Organization’. In French this is “O.I.P.C.”, which stands for “Organisation internationale de police criminelle”. The word “INTERPOL” is a contraction of “international police”, and was chosen in 1946 as the telegraphic address. Until 1956, the Organization was known as the International Criminal Police Commission.” (x)

There are several other international law enforcement agencies currently operating around the world, but I’ll leave you to research those for yourself. For now, it occurs to me that you might like to read about how enforcement of international law works and/or might work. Here are two links for you:

How Is International Law Enforced? from Globalization 101

Enforcing International Law from the American Society of International Law

And here are a few links about the International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEA) established by then-President Clinton in October of 1995:

ILEETA.org

International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEA) from the U.S. Department of State

International Law Enforcement Academy from Wikipedia

While I was Googling, I came across this pretty interesting website called Policeone. It has an international topic section which documents “police news from around the world.” Check it out.

I don’t think I’ve outright answered your question yet. Do I think that a vast global law enforcement organization like the one you’re describing could exist? Yes, eventually. Do I think it would be run particularly well? No.

I wonder who the spies would spy on if not each other’s countries. I wonder how misdemeanors would be handled, and who would decide which crimes were large and which were small. I wonder how a murder in Yemen would be solved if the detectives assigned to it were stationed in Peru. (Or something along those lines. You get it.) I wonder how resources would be allocated and who would pay for everything. I wonder what you mean when you say that this huge organization would “manage” big crimes. (Do you mean “solve” or “orchestrate”?) I wonder how countries would decide which crimes were crimes, especially when rape is still legal in many countries while homosexuality is a crime in others. (To my western mind, that is backwards thinking.) I wonder how borders would be defined in this brave new world. I wonder how countries’ militaries would work. I wonder who runs this giant agency. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. And I’m skeptical that it could ever really work.

But who cares what I think? Write what you want to write. Who’s going to stop you? (This feeling, incidentally, that you can write whatever you want and no one can stop you is delicious and should be savored whenever possible.)

Convince your readers that what you’re proposing in your story is possible—or, at the very least, plausible. You can do it. There’s a mantra improvisational actors have that I think applies well to this situation: SELL IT! It means throw your whole self—everything you know and feel and believe—into convincing others of your truth, even if it’s a boldface lie. Sweat with the effort of this work until your own sweat becomes proof of its veracity. Even if you’re not sure. Even if you’re worried what you have is not enough. SELL IT!

If you’re starting from real-world facts and stretching them to suit your own purposes, SELL IT! If you’re baking up a whole universe from scratch, SELL IT! Research is part of selling it yes, but so is sheer moxie. You’ve got to have both. You’ve got to be meticulous and gregarious. It’s a balance, and you’ll find that balance for yourself as you grow as a writer.  

In conclusion, please do your own research. I’ve found some stuff for you to look into here, but nothing replaces the confidence you get from doing your own research. It’s a fundamental part of the creative process. If I did all of your research for you, you would be limited to only the things I could think of, and that’s no good. You have to fall down a few dozen research rabbit holes. You have to get lost, learn, have ideas along the way. Research is how you grow your story.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by how much there is to know, and that’s perfectly fine. There’s a lot to know out there, after all. Eventually, research will become another vital step of your creative work. It’s all part of writing.

Do the best you can and fake it around the edges. Trust me, that’s what everyone else is doing, too.

Good luck with your story, and thanks for your question! I hope this helped!

-C

What would your character do if:

They saw someone being chased by a group of people?

They woke up in a strange bedroom with no recollection of getting there?

They heard a gunshot?

Someone walked in on them getting changed?

They met someone who claimed to be from the future?

They found an abandoned baby animal?

They were asked to look after someone else’s child for a day?

They had to buy a gift for a close friend?

They were sold a faulty product?

They found out they’ve been robbed?

They met their double?

Someone asked them to play Spin the Bottle?

Their significant other suddenly left them?

They accidentally hurt someone?

Welcome back to the Virtual Writing Academy, a show where we learn by writing! This time around I have a very special writing exercise for you— so get ready to write! Today, the task is simple: what happens when the hero who is supposed to save the world… is not a good person?

Today’s writing musical recommendations are:

Sorrow [Writing Mix] - Listen

“I Had A Name” by Alex Roe - Listen & Download

➤ Missed our previous classes? Check out the playlist!

Want more writing advice, writer positivity, and more? Follow me!

✚ Writing Advice Blog: maxkirin.tumblr.com ✚ YouTube Channel: youtube.com/mistrekirin ✚ Twitter: twitter.com/mistrekirin ✚ Writing Playlists: 8tracks.com/mkirin ✚ Instagram: instagram.com/maxkirin ✚ Free Stories: wattpad.com/mkirin