I need a Beta

#Knife #Knives #Cuchillo #Faca #Couteau #нож #ナイフ #刀#pisau #سكين

Modern Knife Types / Blade Shapes

For sources: http://sword-site.com/thread/1111/diagrams-modern-knife-types

The Perks:

Sharing your negative life experiences with characters can be therapeutic. If you don’t have anyone to talk to or if you have trouble explaining your difficulties, writing your negative experiences into the lives of your characters can help you find an outlet for your feelings and shed light on important problems in your life.

Sharing your positive life experiences with characters can be therapeutic. The reasons for this are the same as above, but are positive and more about sharing than informing.

Sharing your traits is inevitable. Whether it’s your vices, your virtues, your likes, your dislikes, your insecurities, or your fears, some of your characters are going to end up having commonalities with you. If you want to talk about how you don’t like your nose, give a character your nose and write about it. If you want to talk about your favorite hobby, give it to a character and write about it.

Semi-autobiographical fiction exists. There are countless published works that are semi-autobiographical featuring a character based on the author. These works are not frowned upon nor are they considered lazy writing. However, they are still fictionalized and while they may go through the same experiences as the author, they may have different personalities and differences in back story.

They can serve as a base. If you just started writing, you may have difficulties creating characters. You may not know where to start or you may get overwhelmed with giving your characters traits and back stories. Using yourself as a base can help get you started.

The Pits:

The biggest downfall of creating a self-insert character is making a perfect version or an idealized version of you, in which case the character becomes unbelievable, flat, static, and boring. To avoid this, your character should not be too much like you. There still needs to be variety and differences.

Another pit of creating these characters is reacting too negatively to criticism of these characters. Although you may have based a character on yourself, that character is not you. You should not see that character as you.

If you’re not someone who develops character before story, you might find it a little difficult to decide who deserves a place in your novel. Even if you figured out your protagonist, there will probably be several other characters that need to be thought about, depending on your story.

Choose your main characters by considering these important questions:

Why type of protagonist does your story need?

If you’ve already developed the basics of your story, you’ll need to know who it will revolve around. Think about your story and what type of person it needs. What should your protagonist be like? What do they want? How will they get it? Are they motivated? Is there something extraordinary about it? You don’t have to settle on your first idea. Experiment!

Who will stand in your protagonist’s way?

Do you have a villain in mind? What do they think about what the protagonist is trying to do? You need to consider that something will need to slow down or prevent the protagonist from getting what they want, if it’s not just their own flaws or an outside force. Your antagonist deserves just as much attention as your protagonist.

What characters will support your protagonist’s journey?

Take some time to think about side characters. How will they help or aid your protagonist? What are their own personal goals/motivations? What’s their purpose in the story? Remember, each character should want something.

Will you be switching POVs?

If you want to switch POVs, you might need more than one main character. Develop those characters separately and make sure you get each of their voices just right so they don’t sound the same. Consider which characters you want to focus on and how their stories might fit together.