Yeet

This is a worksheet for people like me, who see the dreaded Triangular Mountain of Plot Points and curl up inside. Stories don’t always need to form the shape of a triangle with their conflict, climax, and resolution.

Try these steps out to make a rough draft of your first plotline.

(I say first because most writers always go back and add or delete ideas along the way! What you plan with these steps doesn’t have to be permanent.)

Step 1: Set the Scene

Filling out these points will expand your story and make it seem more real in your mind, if it isn’t something that you have a good concept of already.

This is the step you’ll want to return to if you’re struggling to write later because there aren’t enough concrete details about your fictional world/cast of characters.

My story takes place in (city, country, kingdom, world, universe): __________

The year is: _____

My character(s) is(are): __________

Their current situation is: __________

Step 2: Pinpoint Your Theme

Stories have themes, even when you don’t realize it. Concrete themes, like survival, love, or death, are more straightforward. In Room, the story is about how the main characters survive through a testament to their love for each other.

Or you could want to write about something more fluid, like the experience of growing up. A coming of age theme (like in The Perks of Being a Wallflower) will demonstrate how the young protagonist matures in their identity or their world view by the end of the book.

Whatever your theme is, write it at the top of your planning page or document. I’ve found that I have to return it while outlining when I feel lost or stuck. It’s easy to wander away from your theme when you get excited or if it’s been a while since you got your initial idea. (And you’ll need a concrete theme if you decide to pitch your manuscript to literary agents, so you’re saving your future self a bit of extra work.)

Step 3: Create Your Initial Conflict

Every story needs an initial conflict to kick things off, even if your outline would look more like the line on a heart rate monitor than a triangle. Think about Georgie sailing his boat down the street and going missing in It or Prim getting selected at the reaping in The Hunger Games.

__________ will happen to X character(s) and cause them to react by doing __________.

Because my character(s) had that reaction, the world starts changing by __________.

Step 4: Make Each Chapter a Bullet Point

Chapter One

This will likely include all of the information you planned from Step 1 and 2. The initial conflict is often the hook at the end of the first chapter, but it can happen before or after too!

Chapter Two

When my character sees the world changing in the above ways, they respond by doing __________.

Chapter Three (etc.)

Keep in mind that each chapter needs to have a point that drives your character or plot towards your main theme or conclusion.

Don’t panic if you don’t have all the details of your plot in mind yet! Remember, this bullet point stage is for rough draft planning. You could come up with five chapters that end the book. That’s awesome—go write what you plan!

You’ll get more ideas as you start writing. When inspiration strikes, jump back into the heart of your bullet point list and thread ideas in wherever they fit best. That’s what’s so great about working with a list form instead of writing everything in a simple shape. You have endless room and the eternal ability to expand your fictional world.

Sometimes this part of novel outlining takes me a month. Sometimes many. It depends on how vivid the story is to me when I think about it.

Most of the time, I let my outlines marinate. Make this bullet point list or one without chapter headers. Open your notes when you get an idea for a scene detail, a conflict, dialogue, or anything else. When you want to organize, you’ll have pages of thoughts that came to you while you were working out or grocery shopping. Use them as inspiration to piece together a longer story (or throw out the ideas that aren’t as great as you thought they were).

Step 4: Read Through Your Outline

You’ll have quite a few things going on within your outline at this point, so review everything when you feel like you’ve reached the halfway point or end of your story. You’ll get a feel for the flow, see if the thematic threads or character arcs connect where they should, and spot gaps that need more details.

Writers who don’t typically plan—don’t worry. Read through your bullet point list to refresh yourself.

If you don’t get any ideas like the list above, just start writing. You can update your list with what you write in each chapter as you go, just so you’ll always know where you are in the plot when you sit back down to write again.

Step 5: Check Your Theme or Point

After reviewing your outline, consider if it carries and fulfills your theme or main point that you listed at the top of your document. It should! That’s what creates the bliss of closing a book and knowing every loose end got tied up.

Step 6: Write Your Heart Out

Writers who haven’t written with an existing outline might panic a bit here too. Let me set the scene—when I have a working bullet list outline, I keep it open in its own tab. Then I have another tab with my manuscript.

I usually split my screen in half so I can see both documents, but the manuscript takes up more space so I can see the entirety of each paragraph. I review where I’m at in my outline, then jump into the writing process. The outline is always a click away if I can’t quite remember where the chapter is going, what specific details I planned, or where it’s supposed to end.

Optional Step: Include a “Possible Plot Points” Section

I love letting outlines sit so I can add to them over the course of weeks or even months. At the same time, it creates tons of random ideas that don’t always fit into my outline when I sift through everything and make chapter headings.

The ideas or details that don’t make my outline go in a separate section that I call “Possible Plot Points.” If a chapter is noticeably short, boring, or just plain missing something, I’ll go back to this section. There’s usually something that I can add into my current chapter. Most of the time, I get inspired by the old ideas.

Nothing you write down during your outlining is a waste! Save it all. The stuff you don’t use will become useful later, I promise.

***

I won't waste your time: it's a scam. And as someone who participated in the contest on its debut and loved participating in it, this year's contest is nothing but a horror show waiting to happen.

If you don't want to know the reason behind it, that's all you need to know! Feel free to keep scrolling. If you'd like to know more about what's going on with Wattpad, please continue reading.

This post does not have a break due to the potential severity of the contest.

What is the Open Novella Contest?

The Open Novella Contest (ONC) is a yearly Wattpad event in which writers are tasked with writing a story between 20K-40K words in 12 weeks, basing their story around a set number of prompts created by Wattpad. For the past five years, the ONC has been received well among the Wattpad community, with tens of thousands participating. Some of the stories would later be sent/picked up by publishing companies, and with Wattpad's recent Premium update, authors are allowed to publish their stories through Wattpad.

So what's wrong with that?

Well, it should have been nothing. Previously, there was wrong with participating and having fun. This year, however, Wattpad decided they'd change the rules up, the first change being that mature stories are no longer allowed. Wattpad has always had strict guidelines regarding mature stories, and yet the platform is also a hotspot for mature stories. Previously, this was fine as long as it didn't break creative legal rules (ex. pornography) , This year, any mature story is likely to be disqualified from the contest.

But that's not the fun part, the publicity grant is:

Straight from Wattpad's rules:

Entry in the Contest constitutes permission for [Wattpad Corp.] Sponsor and its designees to use each entrant's and Prize Winners' Entries, as well as entrant's name, [Wattpad account] or other social media handle or ID, biological information, address (city and state) and likeness, for advertising and promotional purposes, in any manner, in any and all media now or hereafter devised, worldwide, in perpetuity, without further compensation, notification, or permission, except where prohibited by law and as otherwise provided herein. The preceding expressly includes, without limitation, any video associated with any winning Entry.

That's a lot to read, so let's break it down:

"Entry in the Contest constitutes permission for [Wattpad Corp.] Sponsor and its designees to use..."

By entering the contest, Wattpad and others associated with the contest can...

"...each entrant's and Prize Winners' Entries..."

Every entry is now Wattpad's and you don't have control over your own work.

"...as well as entrant's name, [Wattpad account] or other social media handle or ID, biological information, address (city and state) and likeness..."

Wattpad may use your real name (might not be preferred), your Wattpad name, your social medias, your birth date, your gender, your address, and all things needed to sign up for a Wattpad account...

"...for advertising and promotional purposes..."

Wattpad will use all of the above for "promotional purposes."

"...in any manner, in any and all media now or hereafter devised, worldwide, in perpetuity..."

Your name, address, social medias, and all others will be advertised freely and you'll have no control on which corners of the world it will reach.

"...except where prohibited by law and as otherwise provided herein."

If there's a law that will stop advertising, congrats. Your name, address, social medias, and all others won't get promoted there.

"The preceding expressly includes, without limitation, any video associated with any winning Entry."

Wattpad allows writers to add a video to your chapter which can help set the tone of the chapter. Basically, they're saying here that if you put Billy Joel's "Piano Man" with your writing, they don't care about the copyright. They'll still promote the story, which also breaks copyright rules in the music department. And if the company behind "Piano Man" decides to sue, the author takes the blow.

It doesn't stop there: let's talk Intellectual Property (aka copyright):

Straight from Wattpad again:

Each Prize Winner grants to [Wattpad Corp.] Sponsor and its designees the exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, sublicenseable right and license to use, perform, exhibit, reproduce, and/or otherwise exploit their winning Entry in any manner and in any and all distribution channels, venues or media no known or hereafter devised, without further notice or any compensation to entrant. The preceding grant of rights is subject to any rights retained by a social media operator in its social media platform. Each Prize Winner further waives any "Moral Rights of Authors" or similar natural rights of ownership they may have in user content. Each Prize Winner further agrees, upon Sponsor's request and without compensation of any kind, to execute any additional documents so as to effect, record, or perfect the grant of rights contemplated by this subsection.

By participating, entrants acknowledge that Sponsor may be working on or receive other Entries (or Sponsor's employees or third party independent contractors may create materials on their own), that are similar to identical in theme, format or other respects to that summited by entrant. By submitting an Entry, Sponsor does not waive any rights to use similar or related ideas previously known to Sponsor or developed by its employees, or obtained from sources other than entrant. Sponsor shall not have any liability to entrant for any direct, indirect, contributory, vicarious, secondary or other infringement or protection of any copyright in or to entrant's Entry.

I doubt anyone actually read that, so let's do a quick break down. First paragraph says that under the "Moral Rights of Authors," all winners (there are 5) give up the rights to their story upon winning. Wattpad may use the money earned off their work, which may be promoted at various venues or websites without he author's consent, to their own. The author receives nothing out of this.

Second paragraph says that any entrant gives up the rights to their story, and their work can be plagiarized. Paramount Pictures has already been called out for stealing Wattpad author's stories and turning them into original series, and this is basically saying the same thing. Because the work must be original, there are no legal liabilities for franchises to deal with.

It gets worse: Liability rules

Again from Wattpad (this was all in caps but for the sake of my sanity, I wrote it in normal writing)

Entrants hereby hold the released parties harmless from and against any third-party claim arising from use of the entry, including without limitation any claim arising out of or in connection with copyright, trademark, rights of publicity or privacy or false endorsement. Released parties are not responsible for lost, late, damaged, misdirected, illegible, incomplete, delayed, inaccurate, garbled, stolen or mutilated entries, or for any computer, online, telephone or technical malfunctions, delays or human errors that occur in the processing, transmission or receipt of entries, or for inaccurate transcription of entry information, or for entries that are stolen, misdirected, garbled, lost or delayed by computer transmissions, or if for any reason, the contest is not capable of being conducted as planned, including but not limited to infection by computer viruses, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or other causes. Released parties are not responsible for incorrect or inaccurate entry information whether caused by internet users or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the contest or by any technical or human error that may occur in the processing of the entries in the contest.

No one wants to read that either so here's the summary: If your work is damaged, hacked, deleted (by you, someone else, or Wattpad), or Wattpad straight up lost it (as the site sometimes does), Wattpad is not responsible and will not compensate you for the loss of your work.

So, to close this out, here's a kicker: the prizes

Remember how I said there were 5 winners? That's a lie, there's only 2 who get prizes. First place gets a year long Wattpad membership ($60 USD) with a professionally designed cover, and 2nd place get a month long Wattpad membership ($5 USD). Past years had 5 winners with real money compensation, as well as help getting their stories published with a professionally designed cover.

If that isn't enough to convince you to stay away, then by all means do enter the contest. But if you're disgusted by what you've just read, please, by all means...

When I first started writing fanfic, back in the mid 1990s (yes! the late twentieth century!) one of the discouraging things about it was that people treated fanfic as if it was disposable. It seemed like what most readers wanted was a constant stream of new content, whereas I tend to produce one big work every 6-12 months. It made me sad that people seemed to think there was no point to re-reading or saving old fic. There is no sell-by date on fiction! It does not get out of order! It can still work even years or decades later! 

Because it has to make room for your heart, your left lung is shaped differently to your right lung. To make up for the reduced space, your right lung has a sort of extra flap called the post-caval lobe, which looks similar to some kind of weird tongue.

February 1, 2022

I’m so so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

WHAT IS THE EARN IT ACT?

The EARN IT Act has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country. This is a bill that will make children less safe, undermine online safety and security, and trample free expression, because it carves out another exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), which the ACLU describes as “foundational to modern online communications.” This has been the law that has let the internet grow into what it is today, we’ve had this law since the 90s. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of this law because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship. Platforms will be incentivized to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSEM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

If this bill passes, we're going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms, for fear of the liability that could come with ever accidentally hosting CSAM, as well as the erasure of end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms.

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal's EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please, (Right now, right wing organizers are catgorizing books about racism as ‘porn’ to ban them from schools) which is a cherished goal of organizations that seek to reintroduce obscenity prosecutions for content now protected by Free Speech jurisprudence. This will 1000000% be used to eradicate anything LGBT online.

What this bill says it does on the surface is make platforms liable for their users’ activity if that activity involves sex and minors. However, because of 230, platforms are not liable at all about their users' activity. This has allowed platforms to grow and thrive and many niches online to as well. The bill also creates an unelected commission to create “best practices” to combat online child sexual exploitation. While these recommendations are nominally voluntary (so Americans have no decision on who gets to be on it), platforms that refuse to comply will be liable for criminal prosecutions and lawsuits should the government decide any of their users is engaging in online child sexual exploitation.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of "protecting kids" to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids.

The entire EARN IT act is based on *multiple* misunderstandings of the law and reality. It's a really really really bad policy that will do serious harm. But because Senator Blumenthal wants headlines, he'll pretend that it "helps protect the children." It won't. It'll do real damage. It will make CSEM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works -- without fear of liability for any "failure." Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on "obscenity" as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

NCOSE, the far right anti-LGBT hate group behind the global anti-sex legislations, is pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill?

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) along with a coalition of 26 civil society organizations urged the United States Senate to reject the EARN IT Act. Groups on the left and right, including the ACLU, Fight for the Future, EFF, and Hacking // Hustling oppose it. Because it threatens free expression online and will threaten marginalized people’s safety while being totally unnecessary and failing to fix the problem it claims to address. The EARN IT Act empowers states to give law enforcement access to users’ private conversations and force companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement. This is totally unnecessary. Platforms are already handing over CSAM to the federal government. It’s actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don't know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the "make child pornography worse" bill, but here we are.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

EARN IT Act was introduced yesterday! And it’s already scheduled to get marked up, which is the first step post-introduction. Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. IF YOU LIVE IN THESE STATES (IL, VT, CA, RI, MN, DE, CT, HI, NJ, and GA), CONTACT YOUR SENATOR AND HOUSE MEMBERS NOW. THIS IS URGENT. This is who gets first crack, and folks in all have Senators who are on the Judiciary committee.

I'm guessing this month or March is when the bill would be passed if there is no opposition 😭 The bill was re-introduced yesterday, already set for markup this Thursday. This feels like an attempt to fast track it this month. Additionally the current makeup of Congress favors those who want it passed. Back in 2020 it was mostly Senate republicans and democrats who are basically republicans (just like now, check the sponsors) pushing it with Ron Wyden using the filibuster to stop their efforts. The house dems didn't want to give Trump a win and needed to appear as pro-privacy/free speech for the 2020 election. Now the dems have the presidency, both chambers of Congress and if you've noticed have spent a few years repeatedly demanding social media censorship and desperately want to give Biden victories. biden isn't like obama who opposed sopa/pipa to appeal to younger voters. This is similar to how FOSTA passed with the group who made it happen last time back again. Far as I'm aware Wyden hasn't spoken about new earn it yet but even if he does oppose it, it's very possible there will be enough Senate democrats to join the republicans in passing it beating a filibuster. Then pelosi's band of house idiots pass it and we have to choose between breaking the law because they can't stop us from using encryption or being obedient sheep to a group who consider themselves above laws.

It already has a fifth of the Senate cosponsoring it. There is a very very very real chance this bill becomes law. This is an uphill battle that's going to happen fast and quick. PLEASE, FIGHT NOW.

202-224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

More sources to read about this bill:

https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/the-earn-it-act-is-anti-evidence

Fight for the Future’s Statement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=678EW8v09z8&t=1s

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220131/22423648395/senates-new-earn-it-bill-will-make-child-exploitation-problem-worse-not-better-still-attacks-encryption.shtml

EARN IT Act treats Myths as Facts.

https://surviveearnit.com/what-is-the-earn-it-act/ From 2020, but little has changed about the bill.

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/earn-it-act-back

Center for Democracy and Technology’s Statement

There was this post circulating around Tumblr a while back talking about how “useless” it is to try and call your senators. But, while it’s less effective than most of us would like and you should do other methods if you can, the main wrinkle to people pushing back against that is that it does matter if a bunch of constituents are complaining about the same issue in aggregate, notifying that it’s a widely held sentiment.

He's your repressed queer coded

he's the Karen asking for the manager

he's the poor little meow meow

he's got a point

he really doesn't have a point at all

he could do better

he could be better

he's fine as is

he's just a creature

he's a tumblr sexyman

he's a pathetic white boy

- and so on and so forth

me:

Danny can proudly say….he never thought that taking a small visit to his Aunt Alicia would help him as much as it did.

“This is….my great grandfather?” Danny asks for the 4th time. Aunt Alicia chuckles as she leans back in her old military green recliner.

“Yep, used to be a prison guard and he sure did love it” Aunt Alicia stops rocking to tap her chin, “from what momma used to tell me” Danny marvels at the image as Jazz pulls another photo from the photo to ask their mom about.

There is no doubt in Danny’s mind that this is Walker, but very much human.

“Wow” Danny mutters, “never seen him smile” Aunt Alicia moves so she can see the photo. She nods leaning back in her chair, and continues to rock.

“Eh, he was a very hard man to make smile and laugh but when you got a smile from him you felt as if there wasn’t anything else you couldn’t do” Danny thinks how the photo of this man is sooo different from the one he’s met. How this man who seems to be smiling and laughing is the same man who runs the ghost zone with such an iron fist.

“Was he..?” Danny bites his tongue in thought, “like tough? Or strict? At all or ever?” Aunt Alicia thinks for a moment.